FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR MORE INFO: Martin Cohn 617.962.3136
Tina Raimo 617-577-1111 ext. 11

Recorded Textbooks Go Digital and Offer Unprecedented Access to Information for Massachusetts Students with Visual Impairments, Learning Disabilities

December 9, 2003 (Cambridge, Mass.) — Massachusetts students who are blind, visually impaired or who have learning disabilities will have unprecedented access to the contents of textbooks and other educational materials with the nationwide release of digitally recorded textbooks on CD from Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic® (RFB&D®). An inaugural collection of 6,000 digitally recorded educational titles, ranging from Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter to Systems of Psychotherapy: a Transtheoretical Analysis on the graduate level, will be added to RFB&D’s unique collection of 91,000 accessible textbooks — the largest collection of its kind in the world.

For more than 50 years, RFB&D, a nonprofit organization, has been the nation’s largest educational library for students who are blind, visually impaired or who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Here in Massachusetts, RFB&D serves 7,182 students and more than 300 schools with its library of accessible textbooks.

Two local colleges are using digital audio technology — Curry College in Milton and Boston College in Chestnut Hill.

RFB&D’s AudioPlus™ digitally recorded textbooks are a long-awaited innovation in reading technology for people with disabilities who cannot read standard print effectively.

"RFB&D’s AudioPlus books level the playing field for students with disabilities because they offer functionalities that significantly enhance the ability to study and research," says Christina Raimo, Executive Director of RFB&D’s Boston Unit. "Students with disabilities trying to keep pace with their peers in the classroom will now have the same ability to jump immediately across pages and chapters and to bookmark key sections for easy reference later. This is especially helpful to students who are studying for tests, researching subjects, or who have reading assignments that don't require cover-to-cover reading."

To listen to RFB&D’s AudioPlus textbooks, students need a portable CD player equipped to play RFB&D’s books or a standard multimedia computer equipped with a CD-ROM drive and specialized software. Playback hardware and software will be available through RFB&D for nonprofit sale.

RFB&D’s AudioPlus books are different from other accessible reading materials because they are recorded in human voice by volunteers who are experts in the subject areas they read — not scanned digitally to be played back in synthetic speech, which can often distort or mispronounce scientific, foreign and complex terms.

With RFB&D’s AudioPlus textbooks, students will experience:

• Instant access — Digitally recorded textbooks allow instant access to any page, chapter or subheading in a book with the touch of a button — there is no need to fast-forward through and count embedded beep tones as is done with books recorded on analog cassette tape.
• Convenience — Digitally recorded textbooks are stored on CDs, which hold more than 40 hours of recorded material. Therefore, the contents of a standard textbook, which requires eight to 12 RFB&D cassettes, will now fit onto a single CD. Portability, ease of navigation and bookmarking capabilities make digitally recorded textbooks from RFB&D more effective study tools for students with print disabilities.
• Better audio quality — Digital audio technology produces recordings with significantly less noise ("tape hiss") than analog recording.

Over the course of its history, RFB&D has transitioned its technology to keep pace with the needs of its members and evolving technologies. RFB&D updated its library from vinylite disks, to reel-to-reel tapes, then to the analog cassette tapes and electronic text that now comprise its complete collection. These recorded books are available to RFB&D’s 117,000 members in kindergarten through graduate school, and to any other student with a certified disability that makes reading difficult or impossible.

RFB&D’s AudioPlus textbooks have already been used in 89 schools nationwide, including local schools in Boston, Arlington, Chelmsford and Franklin, that took part in a pre-release pilot program. The students and educators participating in RFB&D’s pre-release product placement program provided important feedback about the use of RFB&D’s AudioPlus textbooks, and their input has been used to continue to refine and enhance this technology.

RFB&D’s Boston studio(s) is among the organization's 32 studios nationwide outfitted with new digital recording facilities. As the transition continues, and as new educational titles are being recorded, RFB&D is converting the most frequently requested recorded textbooks in its Princeton, NJ, headquarters to a digital format. RFB&D’s Classic Cassettes™ will also remain available as long as there is a demand for them. Offering RFB&D’s AudioPlus digitally recorded textbooks is just another way for RFB&D to serve its members by providing a wider choice of formats to meet their needs.

In addition to developing state-of-the-art reading technologies that make educational materials more accessible to students with disabilities, RFB&D has also expanded its mission to offer effective strategies to help maximize the benefits of auditory learning.

RFB&D’s local Educational Outreach Program targets students with print disabilities, their teachers and parents to make RFB&D’s products and educational strategies more widely known and available. While RFB&D historically has offered individual memberships to students, RFB&D’s Learning Through Listening™ Institutional Memberships provide accessible textbooks and teacher training to schools and districts to help educators integrate recorded textbooks into daily curricula. More than 300 Massachusetts schools have partnered with RFB&D through this program.

For more information about RFB&D’s AudioPlus textbooks, call RFB&D at 617-577-1111, ext. 12 or 18, or visit RFB&D’s award-winning accessible website at www.rfbd.org. Interviews with students, parents, teachers, RFB&D staff and volunteers, and other experts in the fields of education and disabilities who are familiar with RFB&D’s AudioPlus books, can be arranged by calling Christina Raimo at 617-577-1111, ext. 11.
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Campus contact info:
Curry College
Program for Advancement of Learning
1071 Blue Hill Avenue
Milton, MA 02186
Marie Saulnier, M.Ed.
Assistant Coordinator for Technology and Accommodations
Phone: 617-333-2262
E-mail: msaulnie@curry.edu

Boston College
Academic Development Center
O'Neill Library 200
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Dr. Kathy Duggan
Phone: 617-552-8093