www.altformat.org is a large and detailed website focusing on how
developments in the production of alternative format materials can transform
the education of visually impaired and dyslexic students of all ages.
Campaigning for the right to alternative formats.
Leading the campaign is Sir Steve Redgrave CBE. He is dyslexic and has a
dyslexic daughter. He states:
Parents and the media would be up in arms if fully sighted pupils were expected
to study & learn, but the school/college couldn’t get hold of the books and
resources that were central to the curriculum. This is what many dyslexic and
visually impaired students are expected to cope with on a daily basis.
Altformat.org aims to:
• Highlight the benefits and improvements that print impaired students
achieve with access to their learning materials in the format of their
choice. Software programs exist to convert text into alternative formats
such as audio that plays back on an MP3 player. Software also exists
that can create digital books that can play synchronised audio and text
that allows the reader to steer through the text going from page to page
or chapter to chapter. You can tell the books where you want to go and it
will speak the sentence or page to you.
• Make students aware of the available software (New research reveals
that almost 90% of dyslexic school goers don’t know about the existence
of software to help them overcome their reading problems).
• Highlight the legal rights of these students to their preferred format.
Under the Disability Act, if you are a print impaired student you have a
right to have your books in an alternative format.
• Insist that Government policy makers and education ministers address
the current inequality in information access within the education sector.