Assistive Technology (AT) in the Elementary Library

Mary Pope Osborne's popular Magic Tree House series shown in a Wonderbook format.

 Assistive Technology (AT) in the library can be a difficult topic, as I learned this week, as what is available varies within each district and library budget. What I have learned through my classwork is that if we make just one small change in our libraries, it can make a big difference to our students. This is what I have learned this week about AT in the library and how to apply it to elementary.

• Speech-to-text: One of the most common ATs used in schools are speech-to-text which can be found on any Chromebook. Speech-to-text can be helpful with those who have trouble organizing their thoughts on paper, or even writing. On one hand it can be helpful to those who are struggling to read, but can also be difficult for those same students. The verison of speech-to-text on Chromebooks can also have difficulty in picking up speech patterns. Librarians can use speech-to-text on research projects, or even choose to use a slide deck for research projects.
• PlayAway Wonderbook or Vox books: One of my favorite ATs in the library are PlayAway Wonderbooks or Vox books. These are physical books that have an electronic device on them that reads the book to you. (Depending on your age, these are the new book on cassette tape or CD.) I love that these books are physical products so there is not any technology barrier to using them, students just borrow them as they would any other book. The downside is the cost. One book is twice the price of a library bound book. Since they come in both picture book and chapter book formats of popular titles, they can be useful for struggling readers or English Language Learners. It is worth putting aside some of our budgets each year to slowly build up a collection of these books.
• Epic!: If technology use is not an issue in your library, sign up for a teacher Epic! account. Epic! provides read-to-me books and read-with-me books that highlight the words as the book is read. Epic! teacher accounts are free for use during school hours 7am - 3pm only. If you have Scholastic Book Fairs so have Scholastic Dollars available to use, Scholastic has a version of electronic books call BookFlix that can be used either in school or at home. 
• Smartboards: Last week I did a blog article on ways we can use our Smartboards or Prometheon boards. One great idea that was shared in my librarian group was to use a video book read aloud on mute. That way everyone can see the pages in a large format while you read the book. My only concern on this is that timing your reading to someone else's reading pace might be hard, but with some practice this is a great way to use our Smartboards as AT.
• Close-Captioning TV: Along with the above suggestion, we can also turn on close-captioning (CCTV) for our videos for those who may have hearing difficulties. The only downside in the elementary library is that this would only work for students who can read or do not have reading difficulties. In older elementary grades, this might highlight those that cannot read well, but along with the coordinating sound could be helpful in identifying new words as well.
• Physical Access: One of the most important parts of making our libraries accessible is to ensure our libraries are physically accessible to all of our students. Our readings this week talk about walking around our libraries to be sure everything is accessible. Can we comfortably walk through our libraries? What if we were in a wheelchair? Is furniture too close together? Can shorter students get books off of high shelves? Is the checkout desk near main areas of the library? Are our spaces distracting?
• CAST - Center for Applied Special Technologies: One of the resources I loved this week was the CAST page. The CAST organization has a lot of information about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and resources to help our students with special needs. I did find the website a little overwhelming but am linking the digital tools page which I found the most helpful. 
• Project ENABLE: Project ENABLE mainly focuses on training librarians on how to make their libraries more accessible and inclusive. They also have a resources page that contains a database of information on many special needs. You can search by disability, or if you find that too overwhelming, you can search by grade level to find what you are looking for. What I loved about this page is they have a lot of listings for books on a particular topic and as an elementary library I found this a helpful tool.