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RNIB College Loughborough: Visually-impaired learners benefit from audio and synchronised text on their mobile phones

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An Excellence Gateway case study

An Excellence Gateway case study

Published: 8 September 2009

This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) East Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.

Sector relevance: Specialist schools/colleges

Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness to learners, mobile phones, planning and resources, inclusive learning, personalisation of learning, independent learning, support for learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, accessibility, assistive technologies

Summary

Using DAISY Player software on a mobile has allowed visually-impaired learners to copy e-books to their mobile phones and to listen at their convenience.

About RNIB College Loughborough

The RNIB College in Loughborough supports people who are blind, partially sighted and/or have learning difficulties, autism, Asperger's, mobility difficulties, chronic illness. The College aims to develop the skills and personal qualities that learners need to progress in life.

The challenge

Mobile phones have become part of everyday life influenced, to a degree, by increases in their technical sophistication. Being able to communicate while on the move has many benefits. For the young, communicating on their own device away from parents or teachers is very appealing.

Educational establishments have an increasing number of learners with a wider range of experiences, expectations and disabilities. There is greater emphasis on individual learning, online courses, accessible materials and an always-on availability of resources. All these factors have encouraged the use of mobile devices, and in particular the mobile phone, in teaching and learning.

There are question marks when it comes to disabled learners. Do they use mobile phones in a similar way to their peers? Are there other benefits or costs for this particular group? Are there barriers to using this technology?

The challenge at the College was, therefore, to see whether mobile phones could be used to access learning resources in a way that was suitable to visually-impaired learners.

The activity

Smartphones are a mixture of phone, personal assistant and computer. They have operating systems, can download software, use GPS navigation and allow speech software to be installed.

A learner at RNIB College Loughborough using her Smartphone.The College decided to purchase this type of device for a group of learners through funding from Becta as part of the RNIB Learners Get Smart – Becta Mobile Phone Project 2009.

The software chosen was Code Factory's Mobile DAISY Player. This is software that plays books in DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) format, which is a leading standard championed within the accessibility community.

The Mobile DAISY Player works on Symbian mobile phones and, with other essential criteria that had to be met, the Nokia n95 became the only Smartphone that was appropriate for the College to purchase.

DAISY format has several types, but one type is a format that is audio and synchronised text. In other words, as you listen to the text, you can also see the text on the screen. It is useful for learners with a wide range of disabilities, including dyslexia and the visually impaired.

The Mobile DAISY Player software includes the standard features of DAISY players such as changeable audio and text playback speed; ability to play audio only, text-only, and mixed-mode books; configurable colours and size for the text to help partially-sighted users; and bookmark support, with the ability to create voice annotations.

Using DAISY Player software on a mobile allows the user to copy books to their mobile phones and to listen at their convenience.

A trial version was first piloted and then a full version purchased. Mini workshops were run with two groups of learners to demonstrate the features and then the College let them practice on their own for a few days at a time before the learners came together as a group to discuss their findings.

The outcomes

All the learners who tried this new method responded positively. They could fast-forward, rewind and make bookmarks. They felt that it was not suitable for instruction manuals, such as those used to teach IT, as switching between listening to the book on the mobile phone and listening to the speech on the PC as they used Microsoft Office was too difficult.

The group felt that the mobile phone version was best for books that the user is simply listening to – not trying to use a computer at the same time. Suitable materials would be fiction, revision material, anything they just need to listen to.

Image of learner listening to his mobile phone: The Mobile DAISY Player has helped visually-impaired learners benefit from audio and synchronised text on their mobile phones.Shorter pieces of texts, such as notes or prompts, would be better as simple MP3 audio files since they would not be worth converting to DAISY. Instead DAISY files are more important where something is lengthy enough that the user may wish to search the text or make bookmarks.

The most rated feature was the portability. With this software, users do not need to carry a mobile phone and a separate DAISY Player with them while travelling. Many disabled learners have to use public transport rather than a car and portability is important.

One of the learners commented:

"I found this very helpful when travelling very long distances as I did not have to take my Victor Stream machine along as well. The features were very easy to use and the sound quality was very good."

Another benefit, noted by two users, over using a separate DAISY Player was that phone calls or text alerts were less likely to be missed. They commented on how easy it was to simply pause the player, take the call, and then continue reading from the point they left off.

Whereas when using a separate DAISY player, even if they did hear the phone, they would have to stop the DAISY Player, search for their mobile phone and press a key to take the call or read the text.

During the project a software upgrade was made available to the Talks speech software which added a free of charge DAISY player, called DAISY 2 Go, to the phone system. This is not as sophisticated as Mobile DAISY but is another choice that is worth considering.

The impact

The main impact for the learners is when they are on the move or going on holiday. Instead of carrying around huge Braille books, which often were posted in advance since they are so big, or carrying tapes or a separate hardware player, one device lets them carry their reading material and their phone in one unit. This has benefits for leisure or work where learners need to travel to see clients or for meetings.

In the future the College hope to include regular demonstrations of the software for new learners each term as part of regular awareness sessions on current technology.

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