Digilife Media Turns a New Leaf for Schools Looking for Accessible Options
With an abundance of experience and creative new techniques, Digilife Media, LLC comes out with a range of accessible formats to help schools provide for their students with disabilities.
Daniel Berkowitz, co-founder of Digilife Media, knows the troubles and headaches people go through trying to provide access to students with disabilities for basic classroom materials such as textbooks, course syllabi, and testing materials. Having directed the efforts of a university disability service office for many years, Berkowitz is adamant that "every student should have access to the materials that they need to learn. And more than that, they need materials in a format that's appropriate for their needs in a time frame that makes sense." Berkowitz has also consulted directly with K-12 school systems tackling the issues of providing services for their students with print disabilities under IDEA.
Berkowitz and his partner Adam Randazzo have been frustrated at the long turnaround times for materials in the academic environment, and even more often, the lack of schools being able to provide accessible materials at all. Both have seen students stranded academically because they didn't have an option for their books to be converted into accessible digital formats and E-Text. As educators and innovators they have created processes that condense the turn around time for digital materials that greatly improve upon the quality of the materials. Digilife Media provides a wide range pf formats to fit the needs of students with a wide range of disabilities. Digilife has produced materials for people with visual, cognitive, and mobility impairments, and they seem to be especially important for the growing number of students with diagnosed learning disabilities.
E-text, electronic text, is a general term for printed material in an electronic format, most commonly a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. However, students with disabilities (and even those without) can find great benefit in other E-text such as digital large print, Braille, and especially DAISY Talking Books. Randazzo explains, "DAISY Talking Books can be everything a student wants and needs in a book - text with audio reading the words, highlighting, and especially navigation. You can quickly jump between chapters and page numbers, and even make notes within the book with create bookmarks for easy reference."
Digilife Media also has the knowledge and experience to assist individual schools and entire school systems with the formation of their own in-house production of E-Text and to support such processes in terms of training and technology. For those looking to improve or expand currently operating systems, Berkowitz and Randazzo have the knowledge, skills, experience (and temperament) necessary to work directly with educators and administrators.
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