Don Johnston Incorporated, a U.S. developer of assistive technologies for students with special needs announced today it will distribute EasyConverter by Dolphin Computer Access. EasyConverter enables educators to make required curriculum and instruction materials accessible for students with disabilities.
"Getting accessible instructional materials (AIM) into the hands of more students is one of our foremost goals," said Kevin Johnston, Director of Development for Don Johnston, Incorporated. "Today, schools are plagued with materials that are not digital or are in proprietary formats and cannot easily be read with assistive technologies. Educators who choose the EasyConverter with Read:OutLoud 6 will make inaccessible materials a part of the past and can look to a future that provides students with disabilities more opportunities to study grade level curriculum."
U.S. K-12 schools are required to provide timely access to print materials in accessible formats for students with IEPs (Individual Education Plans) who are blind, visually impaired, have a physical disability such as cerebral palsy or a reading disability, such as dyslexia. This provision is a requirement of the 2004 IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) law.
EasyConverter will quickly convert eBook files and printed text to DAISY 3, MP3, Braille and large print by using step-by-step wizards to simplify the conversion process. A new optical character recognition (OCR) engine improves the accuracy of scanning PDF and paper-based documents. With EasyConverter, educators can create accessible versions of paper or digital files, including these electronic and proprietary formats:
