THE ALTERNATIVE FORMATS CAMPAIGN

Date: 15 January 2007

You may have spotted Steve on TV recently lending his support to a campaign particularly close to his heart.

As a dyslexic, Steve knows the importance of making text accessible to students of all ages, especially when the provision of new materials transforms the education of visually impaired and dyslexic students. Altformat (Alternative format) refers to the transcription of books or other content into a format other than standard print thus making books, newspapers and magazines more accessible for everyone.

"I believe in reading. The evidence supporting the synthetic phonics teaching method is highly compelling." Steve commented. "It would be great if every child in this country had an advanced reading age, well, at least a reading age as high as their actual age. In fact if they had, I wouldn't really need to be standing on this soap box. Unfortunately that is literacy utopia and is some distance from the truth. We have a literacy problem in the UK that affects about 20% of the population. Much of this statistic is underpinned by people with dyslexia who have long term, fundamental difficulties with printed text. I'm one of them."

Click here to visit the Altformat web site and read Steve's full comment

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