Online Training Enables Accessible Learning at Cairo University
Meet Helary, Menna, and Nourhan: students at Cairo University’s Foreign Languages and Translation program, Spanish department. Together this group, united by a shared passion for making education more accessible and inclusive, created their first accessible EPUB book. Through the DAISY Consortium’s Online training, they enabled accessible learning at Cairo University.
Their story began with Nourhan, a student with visual impairment who understands the needs and challenges of other students with disabilities. In their words: “We all share a strong drive to help others. Together, we found a common goal: to support our fellow students by making their educational experience more inclusive and enjoyable”.
To achieve this goal, they chose for their graduation project to convert one of their course textbooks into accessible EPUB format. This idea was inspired by Nourhan, who heard about the DAISY Consortium and EPUB format from her professor. He explained the benefits of accessible books and how they can tremendously enhance the learning experience for persons with print disabilities.
It was a turning point when they came across the DAISY Consortium’s online learning system, offering a range of free courses, including accessible document creation and conversion. Reflecting on this experience, they shared, “Our journey took a transformative turn when we found the DAISY Consortium’s online courses. This was a game changer for us. Through this learning journey, we were able to complete the conversion of one of our textbooks into an accessible version.”
Despite the initial challenges—being their first exposure to the EPUB format and the complexity of converting a textbook—they remained dedicated to reach their goal. Through their determination, extensive research, many attempts at trial and error, and support from regional experts, they successfully created their first accessible book.
One of the most significant challenges was adapting the visual content of the book. Like many language learning textbooks, the book was quite visual. The most difficult part was describing pictures essential to answering exercises because sometimes, the image description was the answer to the exercise.
In the end, they managed to convert the textbook into a version accessible to students with visual impairments, dyslexia, and other print disabilities, ensuring an inclusive learning environment for all students.
After finalizing the book, they conducted a reading session with one of their colleagues with visual impairment to get her feedback as a user and student of foreign languages. She was very happy with the result, adding: “it’s a great reading experience, I could understand the visual content I have always struggled with. It’s easily navigable in comparison to other formats I have used and is helping greatly with developing my language skills.”
Their project won the Award for Best Impact on Inclusive Education at Cairo University. They received great feedback from the project’s jury and many requests to deliver workshops to share what they had learnt.
Since they were committed to ensuring the sustainability of their project and continuing the work they had begun, they conducted a couple of workshops hosted by Cairo University. And through these workshops they are recruiting volunteers to support their initiative to convert the remaining textbooks of the department into an accessible format.
Their course textbook is now available to all students at the university, who signed up for this course, and they are now exploring ways to make it available more broadly.
Helary, Nourhan and Menna are committed to their goal to support their fellow students to have a more inclusive learning experience. They shared, “We hope our story inspires organizations and individuals, especially in the educational field, to work collaboratively to make education more inclusive and take advantage of the DAISY Consortium’s invaluable resources.”
The DAISY Learning System is available for free offering an increasing range of self-study courses related to accessible publishing and reading. In addition, trainer led sessions are also coordinated for anyone requiring in-depth tuition.