Welcome to the Winnetka Rotary Literacy Projects Blog

Our literacy committee blog shares information about our Rotary literacy projects and events associated with sharing access to the many different ways in which people read. Some access reading the "traditional" way, some have computers read books, Internet pages, newspapers, and other print material. Our goal is to make the "written word" accessible to every person of every age and ability.

Please come back to find out about our past, present, and future projects.

What is the impact of illiteracy?

Illiteracy causes more harm than merely having a reduced ability to read and write. Illiteracy causes entire families to remain isolated from the everyday fabric of their local and global communities, to remain isolated from inspiration acquired by "enough education," and to remain isolated from a means to share history beyond the reaches of their spoken word.
----Dr. Jeanne Beckman

Monday, January 28, 2008

Reading Support for ESL

For those who are learning English as a second language, the accessibility software that is about to be installed in the Winnetka library can help. Both Kurzweil 3000 as well as Premier Assistive Technology's E-Text Reader IGT provide support for those who are trying to translate their reading material into a language they can easily understand. Here's the description of the E-Text Reader IGT
This is a easy to use reading tool that can read and translate documents to and from 8 different languages. Translate and entire document or highlight and extract a part of document and trans late just that part. The E-Text Reader is designed to help those who have trouble reading or comprehending the printed word. There are thousands of literature titles now available in electronic format, with more being released each day. We developed the E-Text Reader to read (using digital voices) the electronic version of books (“E-Books, or E-Text”) to you. The E-Text Reader can read any document in Standard Text, MS Word, RTF (“Rich Text Format”) and HTML formats. E-Text Reader contains bookmarking, text highlighting and extraction features that make it an ideal study aide. For more information, please go to http://www.readingmadeez.com/Home.php
Other libraries within the Rotary district are also examining whether their patrons could benefit from accessibility features of these universal design accessible reading products.
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