RNIB’s Bookshare offers equal access to education

Jessica’s family has used several of RNIB’s services including the Advice Line. They’ve also contacted RNIB for legal advice and guidance when trying to secure funding for one-to-one learning support in her mainstream school.

Jessica’s Mum, Samantha, says that Jessica has adapted really well overall - trying her own techniques to navigate the world. When it comes to reading, Jessica needs to read large print. She’s accessed reading materials through RNIB’s various reading services; including the large print library, braille services and Talking Books.

Samantha explains that Bookshare makes getting a book so much easier and accessible, saving you a lot of unnecessary work.

“Bookshare just makes everything more accessible, because Jessica does need large print, we can't just go into a bookshop, buy a book and bring it home. She needs to have something accessible, which means something which we can enlarge.

“Instead of having to order the book through a company, getting it all printed off and sent, customised, we can just download textbooks straight away from Bookshare and have the text adapted into her font size, quickly and instantly.”

Samantha also explains that although there are other services out there like Kindle, you can always rely on Bookshare to have an extensive range of books, educational as well as fiction and it’s a free service.

“I don’t know if Kindle would have some of the educational books that you could get through RNIB Bookshare. When I’ve been looking for stuff for Jessica, I’ve noticed that they’ve got maths books and things like that. Whereas I don’t know if Kindle would do that.

With Bookshare, the books are free, which is fantastic. We’ve been using it for a few years now and would struggle without it.”