EasyProducer Case Study: Modern Eyes Training Services evaluate Dolphin Producer

Modern-Eyes is an independent magazine for visually impaired people living in Gloucestershire providing up to the minute news, views and information on all aspects of living with a visual impairment. It's aim is to encourage people to make the most of their residual vision and to help them to appreciate the positive side of visual impairment rather than the negative.
They also offer training services to encourage visually impaired people to use computers. All their training materials and work books are designed for use with Dolphin computer software products and many of the manuals are now being produced as Digital Talking Books with the help of Dolphin Producer. We asked them to tell us about their experiences: "We have been using Dolphin's Producer software for nearly two months now. We have found it a very versatile piece of software. It is extremely easy to use and produces good quality Digital Talking Books (DTB) with several levels of navigation. At present, we are working with two groups of students at the Coney Hill Neighbourhood College in Gloucester. The College has really expanded their support for visually impaired learners.

It started as an enquiry from one student, which lead to the purchase of Supernova. Additional licenses were bought and a pilot group of four students started last summer. Now we have nearly twenty visually impaired students registered or waiting for places and the college is seeking funding for further licenses. And so far the only advertising has been word of mouth and recommendation! We have had to write new resource books for the students to use as only standard versions are available. Putting the standard books into audio was not an option as the commands are all designed for mouse users. Our students are all keyboard users. As all of our students are registered as either partially sighted or blind, none of them can use print easily. Since we have been working with our students, we have begun to compile a comprehensive catalogue of specially adapted workbooks.
Previously, we had tried getting work books recorded onto audio tape, but the costs were not sustainable. Until we discovered Dolphin's Producer software, we were finding it difficult to obtain funding to convert these workbooks to audio tape. Now we have Dolphin Producer, we are able to convert all our resources to digital talking books (DTBs) quickly and easily. Most of our students have either a DAISY player, or an MP3 CD Walkman, and they are able to use these to access their DTB work books. For those students who do not have DAISY or MP3 devices, we have found that it is relatively easy to convert the DTBs to standard audio so they can be played on a standard CD Walkman. However, this doesn't give the more sophisticated levels of navigation provided in the DTBs. It is, however, far easier for the students to use than audio tapes. We have found that we can make navigation easier for these students by setting regular headings within our documents and then saving the sections between headings as separate tracks. It does mean a bit more work for us, creating a separate version of the document, but it is still a relatively quick and easy process! The real advantage that this offers students is independence. No longer do they have to rely on a tutor or support worker to read instructions or exercises to them. Instead, our visually impaired learners have the same opportunities as sighted students at the college - the ability to work or revise at home or at college, at their own pace, completely independently.

This independence is something that most sighted people take for granted, but for some of our VIP's this is the first taste of independent learning for many years. All our workbooks are created for our students to work in conjunction with Dolphin's Supernova software. Some of our students are using a combination of speech and magnification, some just speech and some just magnification. We find Supernova an ideal piece of software for us to use under these circumstances. All our students are now really confident using the access software. Using Dolphin Producer is very simple! The program is really easy to install - just follow the on-screen instructions. EaseReader software will also be installed. Once fully installed, Producer becomes available in Microsoft Word as an extra item on the Menu Bar. We have both sighted and blind tutors and both can use Producer equally easily. The drop-down menu has all the required commands and is easily accessed by the short cut ALT plus P. To create a DTB, simply produce the required document in Microsoft Word. Then go to the Producer menu and select SAVE AS DTB.

To check the pronunciation you can PLAY DTB and the document will be read as it will be saved. To change any pronunciation, simply go to the SETTINGS option and make the required changes. There is also a choice of several different reading voices and speeds. These can all be accessed from the SETTINGS dialogue box. We have found that 'Scansoft Daniel, Full 22KHz' is the most popular with our students! Replay the DTB to check and then burn it to CD. Burning the DTB to CD is very quick and easy. Simply go to the BURN DTB option and select the DTB you want to save to the CD. Follow the on-screen instructions and the DTB will be burnt very quickly - obviously, depending on the size of the document! Once a DTB has been created, it is possible to play it back using the included EaseReader software.

This software is really useful for those who are partially sighted as there is the option to read the text at the same time as listening to the audio. The font sizes and colours, as well as the highlighting options can all be altered to suit the individual. It is fully synchronized to make this easier. As well as partially sighted students, this software is extremely useful for those with dyslexia and other similar difficulties. A very versatile tool indeed!" Viv and Sue from Modern Eyes.

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