When COVID-19 rocked the education system, we knew we couldn’t sit back and do nothing. We had to respond.
As a result, we developed a program designed to help teachers like you, educators of print disabled students.
The program is called Scribe for Education.
Scribe for Education lets you provide print disabled students with study materials and assignments in an accessible format.
You can provide students study materials and assignments in eight different file formats ranging from digital print, to Braille, to text-to-speech audio.
And, you’re on-demand access is almost instant, using only a simple web browser.
Scribe for Education was originally free for a limited time.
After development, we quickly released it to qualified educators as a free tool through the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The outpouring of response, number of applications to the program, and gratitude coming from K-12 educators has been amazing.
The positive impact on the educational system quickly became evident.
We soon recognized the unique position we were in to help educators, students, and parents of print disabled students.
Scribe for Education was reducing stress of how educational goals will continue in a changed world.
So, we’ve decided to release Scribe for Education free of charge permanently.
The world we currently live in is a bit unstable. The dynamics and lasting affects for the classroom are unknown.
And we want to provide you with stability you can count on.
We’ll always be here for you with Scribe for Education as a service for your educational toolkit. It will always be a free resource for you.
If you’re asking yourself what is the catch behind this permanently free service.
There is no catch.
Our reason is simple.
We are in the position to do it, and it is the right thing to do.
As we said in the beginning, we couldn’t just sit by and do nothing.
But there’s something you can do too.
The best way you can help change the pandemic’s effects on education is to apply for the program, and start using it to provide your students with accessible study materials they need.
Be sure to let your colleagues know about it too.
Because when you do, you help make your colleagues job easier and less stressful as well.
We encourage you to post notices to your social media with #ScribeForEducation, let colleagues know about it on school messaging systems, e-mail lists, Facebook groups, and by word of mouth.
There are things surrounding COVID-19 we can’t control. But, continuing to provide stability for your students with class materials in an accessible format is something you can control.
We would appreciate your feedback.
We invite you to give us your feedback on your Scribe for Education user experience. We love to hear how it has helped you. We also want to hear of any suggestions you feel would be helpful.
The work of teaching the leaders of tomorrow is an important one. It has it’s challenges in a normal teaching environment. We want to do our part to make it easier and less stressful for you during this time and beyond with this free tool.
John Whitacre says
Mike Calvo,
From John Whitacre, a voice from your past promotional trip to Detroit around 2005. We talked about your and my near death experience and your System Access screen reader which we subscribed to. I am requesting free access to scribe for what was the Optometric Institute of Detroit which was down-sized and is now called iChallenged – our web site is iChallenged.org . We still teach and mentor one on one blind students through k thru 12 and college as a service and for the state of Michigan. The college students I work with often get class books in pdf that exceed 700-800 pages. I often convert them to MS Word where the students read the with JAWS – the state recommended screen reader. COVID has had a major impact on teaching with most of our services being provided remotely. Annual blind clients served by iChallenged has decreased from about 50 to 80 per year to 10-20. Right now we are reorganizing to serve our blind clients with a revised business model (no current students) working with retinal specialists in the area to catch their patients that are print blind and introduce them to technologies that will empower them and enhance their lives. You can reach me at emails jwhitacr@msn.com or john.whitacre@ichallenged.org