Young girl with reading a teacher-created print/braille book with her hands on the braille.
Strategy

Book Library

The Book Library contains accessible digital resources created by educators, family members, groups/individuals and students.

The Book Library contains digital resources created by educators, family members, groups, individuals and students. These free resources can be downloaded and used in the classroom and at home and are also wonderful resources for remote instruction. 21st century students access “books” in various formats; books are now available in digital formats, enabling users to choose settings and features to make these books fully accessible. Note: In addition to traditional “paper books”, this page includes other types of educational materials that can be used with students.

The current materials include ePub, iBooks, PDFs, PowerPoint Presentations, and Audio/YouTube books and some books have accompanying digital images created to be used with a tactile graphics machine such as a PIAF or Swell machine. ePub books can be interactive and can include pictures, videos, audio clips, and accessible questions. Educators can use these materials to teach and support literacy skills, to build concepts and to increase technology skills. The majority of these materials can be used with any device and with any available accessibility feature, and these books can be accessed visually, tactually or auditorily. Students can access the digital material on a device using a screen reader, built in magnification settings/third-party software or paired with a braille display. Do you want traditional paper books in print or braille? No problem – these resources can be printed in the desired size or embossed! How you choose to use the materials is up to you!

The type of each resource (PDF, ePub, PowerPoint, etc.) is listed after each resource along with information about the accessibility features of that resource, such as compatibility with a screen reader, braille display and if there are sound clips. Audio clips may be embedded into books for students who use the sounds as an illustration hint and/or as prompts to help an emerging reader “read” the text on the page. Some books are created with sound hints that automatically begin playing when the page opens while other sound hints have buttons that must be selected. 

Resources

Share Your Books!

Are you creating digital books or resources? Please help us grow this Book Library by sharing your favorite books and resources to [email protected]. Note: Some of the book resources do not have accessible images, as the books was originally created for a students with functional vision. If you are creating a book, please include alt text descriptions or image descriptions so that the books are accessible for everyone!

These book resources are loosely organized by the amount of text on each page; many of these books overlap reading abilities and/or can be used in different ways for different reading levels. Remember, a non-reader can enjoy listening to a more complex book using the read aloud feature or a screen reader.

Note: A huge THANK YOU! to University of North Carolina students in Dr. Bishops’ class for creating the first group of Pre-Reader iBooks and a special thanks to R. Saladino for creating numerous Early Reader books!

Book Library Categories

Pre-Reader or Emerging Reader

Early Reader

Cover of At the Zoo epub with a yak and text, "At the Zoo".

CVI books

Screenshot of Video book with black background, yellow duck and blue water with bubbled text, "duckling"

CVI-Friendly YouTube Videos 

Note: Many of the PreReader/Emerging Reader books have uncluttered backgrounds and are also appropriate for CVI students!

Easy Reader

Book Cover of Why the Easter Bunny Brings Eggs with a nest of colorful eggs.

Easy Reader Books for Older Students

Other (Educational Content)

O&M lesson epub book with story about Taco Bell trip and multiple choice question.

Note: There are numerous books listed in various sections above that are used for O&M purposes and educational purposes.

Creating and Using Accessible Digital Books

Guidelines for Creating Resources Shared on Paths to Technology

Disclaimer

These resources are created and shared by individuals. Some of the resources in this section of Paths to Technology may feature images and sounds that are protected by copyright. Where possible, permission to use the images and sounds has been sought; however, if you are the copyright owner of any sound or image and would rather they were not used in these teaching activities for students with visual impairments and blindness, please contact [email protected] and the resource containing the copyrighted material will be removed.

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EPIQ (Experience Programming in Quorum) 2024