Sir Steve Redgrave continues the campaign for the right to have books in alternative formats.
With only 5% of UK text books available in alternative formats, Sir Steve Redgrave argues the time has come to introduce a national electronic library.
18th Jan, 2007
Following an opening salvo in November, Sir Steve Redgrave today spoke out for the rights of dyslexic and visually impaired school children to have their text books and other material in an electronic format. Today, Sir Steve argued for a national electronic library.
Ofsted produced the 2020 report last week which identified that UK schools needed to change radically the way lessons are taught to prevent children from failing. One of the recommendations was to promote individual learning plans. Sir Steve who is dyslexic himself and whose daughter is dyslexic believes this is the way forward.
"We all learn in a different way - research in the States shows that students with learning difficulties such as dyslexia can show up to 40% improvement in exam results if they are given combined audio and text materials".
Sir Steve continued "if we had all our school books in a national electronic library, the schools could get hold of them very easily and transform them to the child's preferred format. This might be audio or a DAISY talking book for some children, for others it might be large print or Braille. Tools exist now to do the transformation from electronic texts very quickly and easily". Obviously visually impaired children will also benefit from this development. In all, Sir Steve believes, as many as 25% of the school going population would benefit from significant learning enhancement if this relatively simple step were taken.
Sir Steve understood the twin concerns of publishers and felt the Government needed to take an active part to alleviate those concerns. It was very important that publishers copy right was protected he said. They have a large investment to protect but the job of the library would be to issue the electronic copies in a secure environment. He also understood there may be some alterations to the publishers delivery processes, but in this instance he argued that the industry was moving inexorably towards XML filing and this was a perfect format for submission of materials to the national electronic library.
In the US, Congress has been looking at this issue for a few years and they are already at the implementation stage and expect delivery during 2007.
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