Workbook final

003 - RoboBraille Smart Alternate Media, Hilfsgemeinschaft, Austria

ONTACT

Austrian Association supporting the blind and visually impaired

Mr. Klaus Hoeckner

Austria

+43 133 035 45 24

VERALL GOAL

MISSION

The overall goal of this project is to explore new smarter and easier methods to prepare and produce educational

material in alternate formats (e.g. digital Braille, audio-books, e-books and other accessible documents) using

RoboBraille, which is a free web-based service able to automatically translate electronic documents into alternate

formats, like e.g. Daisy Braille, mp-3 files, audio books or e-books, and other free ICT-Tools. Moreover teachers, parents

and professional alternate media producers shall be educated to use such methods and tools to support visually and

hearing impaired people. Throughout the project a training course will be developed, that will be ready to implement

throughout Europe, to improve the quality of education for visually and hearing impaired students by providing

appropriate tools and methods to prepare and create educational material in alternate forms that can be used by the

students.

HE SOLUTION THAT HAS BEEN DEVELOPED

The creation of educational material in alternate formats, that can be used by visually and hearing impaired people, is

often difficult, expensive and time-consuming for teachers, parents and professional alternate media producers, but

crucial if we want to be able to fully include people with visual, hearing and reading impairments in mainstream

education and on the labor market. Therefore partners from six European countries have explored how RoboBraille can

be used as a learning tool in a variety of educational settings and discovered the need to develop a training course to

improve the skills of teachers, parents and alternate media producers to support people with visual and reading

impairments, especially because the development and spread of new digital platforms and formats, like e.g. tablet

computers and smartphones, is moving rapidly forward. Hence, the developed training course shall educate teachers,

parents and alternate media producers how to use these new technologies and formats to promote inclusion and high

quality education.