Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

INSIDE IOWA STATE
July 20, 2001

Not your typical bedtime reading

Linda Poore, an administrative specialist with the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, is volunteering to record parts of a psychology textbook this summer for use by a student this fall. Iowa State's Disability Resources program typically needs audio recordings of 150 to 200 textbooks per semester for blind or dyslexic students. On average, about 50 titles are available through a national leasing service; for the rest, the program relies on local readers. Twenty-one volunteers are reading 42 textbooks for fall semester; another 17 volunteers await their first assignment. Computer software that takes scanned text and converts it to an audio recording also helps the program's staff in 11th-hour situations. Photo by Bob Elbert.