“Children who are learning to read and establishing their relationships to books need support and need the formats that allow them to do this without barriers.”

Laura Brady, Accessible Books in Classrooms Webinar

This final project is meant to be a living, digital artifact for librarians, teachers and parents to access learning resources for their Blind, Deaf or Hard of Hearing students and children with print disabilities.  This artifact is by no means indicative of the only resources available, nor is it or will is ever be complete.  As technology and teaching practices continue to evolve, this document will evolve with it.  For now, it is a starting point and a curation of resources that I have found useful, thoughtful and interesting during my research for this course.

The intention is also to give the adults some direction instead of having them dive in and start at square one.  With so much information available it feels very daunting to dive in and find the right resources when we are attempting to support a child with specific needs.  I hope that this artifact can get the ball rolling for those parents and professionals who have precious little time to spend researching and planning.

As this journey began one of the first seeds that Leading from the Library (2019) planted was that literacy is at the heart of libraries, “yet today’s modern libraries also include flexible spaces for additional authentic and personal learning opportunities. It’s not about choosing between literacy or innovative opportunities.  It’s about teaching literacy through innovative opportunities” (McClintock Miller and Bass p. xi).  I want to accentuate the word through in this passage because this is truly what we have been diving into with our inquiry work.  What are the technologies and tools that are going to facilitate the development of literacy for our students?

As I continued to dive down deep I decided that I would focus on my students with hearing exceptionalities. The framework that we followed with the weekly blog posts really supported me in focusing my research and discovering what was important.  This process kept bringing me back to the ISTE standard of using “technology to create, adapt and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs” (McClintock Miller and Bass, 2019, p.101). As the research wore on, I decided that I wanted to also include Blind students and students with other print disabilities.  This is the point where I became overwhelmed.  I would love to say that I was able to include everything I could imagine into this resource, but I had to stay true to my promise to make this resource more streamlined, curated and easy-to-use.  In no way to I just want to heap tons and tons of information onto educational professionals or parents just to prove how much research I can do.  So, this resource contains the greatest hits, if you will, and I will continue to add, or remove, and refine it as needed.

CREATING ACCESS TO LITERATURE DIGITAL RESOURCE

READING APPS

ASL with Care Bears from The ASL App. The app is very cool, cute and colourful and teaches signing to kids and adults.Signed Stories from The Sign Post is another website that offers videos that are closed captioned with American sign language.

Signed Stories from The Sign Post is another website that offers videos that are closed captioned with American sign language.

Let’s Read Asia has nearly 10,000 e-books and audio books that are available in at least 2 languages each for children from different cultures and focusing on under-served languages around the world. The books are organized into 15 categories such as, Science, Mighty Girls, Community, Folktales, Problem Solving and Critical Thinking to name a few, for free.  The issue of equitable access becomes less significant as long as there is some form of digital device with wifi available to a family or classroom.

Global Digital Library is similar to Let’s Read and includes a focus on mathematics as well.  The collection is very impressive and I was so pleased to see many primary level resources that address positive actions we can take to take better care of our planet and address the issues of climate change.

WEBSITES AND WEBINARS

LOCAL SUPPORT AND RESOURCES:

Thanks to Nicole David for finding this brand new webinar from The Canadian Children’s Centre called Accessible Books in the Classroom:

The teacher’s story at the end of the webinar really resonated with me.  It was about a mentor teacher who would record the next day’s chapter of a book every night for a student who needed audiobooks. This was an emotional example for me because it reminded me of my own mom who used to record herself reading books on cassette tapes for her students.  In those days I’m certain she could never have imagined a platform like Audible, for example, or Annick Press who work so hard to make audio and e-books so accessible for the students who need them.

The Canadian Children’s Centre

-This not-for-profit has been around since the 70s and work as tireless promoters of Canadian Children’s Literature.  There are so many resources available here it makes me dizzy.

Braille Literacy Canada

-A literal treasure trove of resources for people working with Blind learners.  It would be my first stop if I was looking to access Canadian services as they seem to be the authorities on how to access services.

BC Family Hearing Resource Society

-The Resource Society has wonderful (and extensive) book lists that I have been chipping away at to make sure I have books in the library that have representation for these kids.

The Centre for Equitable Library Access

-Access to Support groups, training for librarians, Bookshare, databases of content, resources and links to further support and education.

The National Network for Equitable Library Service

-Works in tandem with Canadian libraries and publishers to create access to reading formats for Canadians with print disabilities.

eBOUND Canada

-A Canadian non-profit out of Toronto who work with publishers to get their products out into the digital world.  They specialize in converting books into e-formats, creating audiobooks and even casting actors as required.

GLOBAL SUPPORT AND RESOURCES:

All Children Reading.  The mission statement at allchildrenreading.org is, “advancing EdTech innovation and research to improve reading outcomes for marginalized children in low-resource contexts” (allchildrenreading.org, 2022).  They strive to achieve these aims by providing free access to digital libraries through three different apps: Deaf World Around You, Let’s Read and Global Digital Library.

Deaf World Around You. The e-books that are offered can potentially be translated into 28 different local and national sign languages.  To the best of my understanding, if a child in Somalia needs a story translated into their local form of sign language, they can adjust the settings and a person will appear beside the screen and translate the story for them.  The translator is also, as far as I can tell, a member of that child’s culture, so they immediately see themselves mirrored in the story.  When I changed the setting to Samoan, a Samoan man appeared on the screen to translate the story.  As I said, mind blown!  The disadvantage that I noticed was that not every language had stories that were available, so there is still work to be done.

STORYTIME

El Deafo by Cece Bell Official Trailer on Apple TV+

Boy by Phil Cummings in American sign language with English voice-over.

CONCLUSION AND FINAL REFLECTION

As I continued to compile all of these resources, I began to imagine how it could become a website.  My experience at this point is at a deficit with creating websites, but I am starting to see the matrix of how to put one together.  I definitely learned so much about organization as this project took shape.  I can see how the materials that I have put together could become tabs and then the information would be more localized.  For now, it remains in a blog post as I feel this can be easily shared with colleagues and parents.

My initial goal was to put all of this information into a Canva presentation but as I began I started to feel overwhelmed by how to present the material.  Instead, I opted to create 2 slides that house the beautiful quote from the beginning of the blog post and a page that brings all the links to the apps together.  My hope would be to build an entire presentation on this, but I am also keeping in mind that everyone is busy and they need something they can access quickly.  Perhaps a librarian or a teacher could keep the slide on their desktop to go back to, or even to add to one day.

This has been quite the learning journey and I am relieved to be on the other end of it, however I can honestly say that I feel much more confident incorporating technology into my work than I ever have in the past.  I am grateful to all of my colleagues who I have followed along with throughout this course.  Being able to benefit from everyone’s learning has been incredibly valuable.  Please feel free to share this resource with anyone you think could use it.

WORKS CITED

Annick Press, & Hoffman, B. (2022, November 24). Annick Press. Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://www.annickpress.com/

Audible.com. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://www.audible.ca/

Boy by Phil Cummings in American sign language with English voice-over. YouTube. (2022, January 31). Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://youtu.be/GI4BvmO0E3Q

Braille Literacy Canada: Resources for Educators. Braille Literacy Canada | Resources for educators. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://www.brailleliteracycanada.ca/en/resources/educators

Canadian children’s Book centre. Canadian Children’s Book Centre. (2021, September 16). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://bookcentre.ca/about

Care bears: ASL with care bears app. YouTube. (2016, November 17). Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://youtu.be/OoC1gGbzt9I

Deaf world around you. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://deafworldaroundyou.org/View?id=183

Ebound Canada. eBOUND Canada Home Comments. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.eboundcanada.org/

El Deafo – official trailer: Apple TV+. YouTube. (2021, December 15). Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://youtu.be/SqZ9ncOYRS4

Free design tool: Presentations, video, social media | CANVA. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://www.canva.com/

ISTE standards: Educators. ISTE. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-teachers

Letsreadasia.org. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://www.letsreadasia.org/