At present visually impaired children across Tigray province are not able to access education on a par with their sighted peers. SENEthiopia aims to help blind students access the curriculum by creating and distributing audio textbooks for all secondary students in Tigray.
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Although some secondary students In Tigray know braille, there are very few braille textbooks in schools and most often only in a scattered variety of subjects. Braille textbooks in Ethiopia are expensive to produce, bulky to use in class and cumbersome to carry home each day. It is possible to access textbooks on the computer using the software JAWS. This is being trailled by SENTigray in conjunction with the Regional Education Bureau. But there are very few computers available.
Audio textbooks on MP3 format using headphones with memory cards and/or radios with USB is a very accessible alternative for providing textbooks in all subjects for each visually impaired student, at very reasonable costs. Our trials of audio grade 9 biology, civics and geography textbooks in November 2014 and February 2015 demonstrated how accessible and appealing to students is the MP3 – headphone and/or radio package.