More Schools Giving Every Student iPads

More and more schools are giving iPads to every student. Just 15 months after its debut the iPad is becoming a popular tool in K-12 education. Lake Minneola High School in central Florida is one of the most recent schools to announce an iPad for every student program. Some schools that offer the iPad to their students load the tablet with textbooks, novels, PowerPoints and more. Students can also write papers and surf the web on their iPads.

The iPad has great accessibility features that make it great for any student. When students have the iPad in class they can use the accessibility features to have the textbooks and other material read aloud. Also, blind students can use the iPad with an external Bluetooth Braille Display. One of benefits of every student having an iPad is that all students are using the same devices and students with disabilities do not stand out. Click here to read about Minneola High School's program. Click here to read about Monroe School District. Many schools with iPad programs are trying to replace textbooks with iPads. When textbooks are in a digital format on the iPad students can use the built-in VoiceOver feature to have the textbooks read allowed. To learn more about VoiceOver click here. Because iPads have great built-in accessibly students that struggle to read or blind students can benefit from iPads as can non-disabled classmates.   

CK-12 Provides Free Electronic Textbooks

CK-12 is a way to access text books in an accessible format. CK-12 are available to download in ePub, PDF and Kindle optimized format. CK-12 has a library of 88 downloadable textbooks. With ck-12 you can also make a Flexbook. A Flexbook is parts of many different books put together into one new book. To access CK-12 you must be a member but membership is free. CK-12 also allows you to embed Youtube videos and other multimedia content to enhance your Flexbook. CK-12 currently has a limited selection of textsbook and only has textbooks about science, technology, engineering and mathematics. To see a video and pictures of CK-12 textbooks click read more below.

AccessText Helps Students Get Accessible Textbooks

AccessText is a way that higher education students with print disabilities can get accessible books. AccessText provides textbooks to higher education students free of charge to the student. But the institution must pay $500 membership fee. AccessText is similar to Bookshare but Bookshare also has novels and periodicals. Also Bookshare has a free text-to-speech software but with AccessText you must use your own text-to-speech software. Eight major publishers have teamed up to provide books through AccessText. AccessText is another great tool for getting accessible material for higher education students with a print disability. 

Inkling Text Book Reader on iPad with VoiceOver

The Inkling app is a full featured textbook reader for iPad. The textbooks are compatible whit iOS's VoiceOver so they can be read aloud. Inkling has a great interface with intuitive navigation. The textbooks include images. The textbooks are costly but individual chapters are sold for under $5. So if your class will only use a few chapters you only need to buy a couple chapters. The selection is not very good but is improving. The note taking feature is very simple to use. There is also an option to share your notes with friends with the same book. The books can have multimedia such as videos and audio notes. The app is free but books are not. The app's strong point is its multimedia and user interface.