A Proposal by Fuji Xerox

What Are Large-Font Textbooks?

“Large-font textbooks,” as the name suggests, are learning materials designed for students with low vision. In Japan, the term refers specifically to large-print versions of the textbooks authorized by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). These are created by enlarging the text, converting it to a heavier font weight, adapting the graphics to make them easier to see, and so on. It is not simply a matter of making enlarged photocopies. Adjustments must be made to such elements as the choice of font and background, font size, character and line spacing, and use of colors. Since there are limits to the format size, the number of pages increases, and a single textbook can run to several volumes.
Since 1994, Fuji Xerox and its domestic sales companies have provided a service to the nationwide volunteers who make large-font textbooks by offering them free use of our digital color copy machines and multifunction devices. Last December, this long-standing program was honored with the 2008 Prime Minister's Commendation Award, the highest of the Barrier-Free, Universal Design Contributors Awards sponsored by the Japanese Cabinet Office.
As a token of our appreciation, I would like to review the issues currently facing those who create large-font textbooks and to discuss Fuji Xerox's ideas on the subject. It is my hope that this article will help in some small way to make these resources more widely available.

Large-Font Textbooks and Children with Visual Impairments

Children with visual impairments rely on a range of vision aids to help them study. Depending on their degree of vision loss, the children may use textbooks in braille or in large print, low-vision lenses, or devices such as reading magnifiers.
In a 2006 paper titled “Toward a Stable Supply of Large-Font Textbooks,” Kazuhiro Uno, who teaches at the Tsukuba University School for the Blind, reported that at the elementary and junior high level 487 low-vision students attend schools for special-needs education (schools for the blind), another 267 attend special-needs classes for students with visual impairments, and 1,739 are enrolled in mainstream classes (MEXT data for 2005), while the number of low-vision students at all levels from elementary through senior high school is estimated at about 3,200. I tried to obtain more recent data from several organizations for this article, but was unable to locate exact figures.
Under Article 107 of the School Education Act, in place of the authorized textbooks in the main subjects, the government supplies equivalent large-font textbooks, free of charge, to elementary and junior high students at schools for the blind and in special-needs classes for students with visual impairments. This system was instituted as a result of efforts by government agencies and the schools for the blind. The books are produced both by specialist publishing firms (of which there are several, such as Queue's and Daikatsuji) and by general textbook publishers.
There is a separate system for children in mainstream classes who need large-font texts. If an authorized textbook selected by the child's school is available in a commercial large-font edition from a specialist or general publisher, it will be supplied free on application to the board of education. If there is no commercial edition, or if a child with very low vision cannot use what is available, a request is put in for a tailor-made large-font version, which volunteer workers create by hand.
Since only a very limited range of titles is available commercially from the specialist and general publishers, nearly all the large-font texts now in circulation in Japan were in fact handmade by volunteers around the country (Table 1). The process takes several months per book, as each is individually tailored to needs that vary depending on the student's residual vision. A breakdown of the FY2007 results shows that 604 children received free textbooks, 81 percent of which were produced by volunteer groups, 13 percent by specialist publishers, and 6 percent by general textbook publishers.

The Birth of the Barrier-Free Textbooks Act

The government-funded system described above was launched in 2004 in response to lobbying efforts. When large-font textbooks-including those produced by volunteers-thus became available free of charge, the latent demand instantly made itself felt, to the point where volunteers today are hard-pressed to keep up. “We can only fill half the orders,” says one. “We're reduced to using mass production methods,” laments another. A third adds, “Individuals are being stretched beyond their limit.” Meanwhile, some children are said to be making do with simple enlarged photocopies of the authorized texts, or with reprints of large-font texts designed for other individuals. MEXT's figures for FY2006 show that 634 children with visual impairments in mainstream classes at the elementary and junior high level received a total of approximately 11,300 free books (averaging 17.8 books each) at a cost of about 86 million yen. But when this is viewed against the total enrolment of 1,739 (MEXT data for 2005), it is clear that the system is not serving enough students.
The Act on Promotion of Distribution of Specified Books, etc. Used as Textbooks for Disabled Children and Students (commonly known as the “Barrier-Free Textbooks Act”) is an attempt to overcome this impasse. The new law, which came into effect in September 2008, calls on textbook publishers to take the following steps:

In response, most textbook publishers have not only furnished the required digital data, but have started or are preparing to start creating and publishing their own standardized large-font textbooks. However, as I will discuss later, there appear to be some significant obstacles to the wider diffusion of in-house production by textbook publishers.

Standardized Editions and Personal Services

Low vision in children generally involves difficulties in the perception of planes, colors, lines, and movement, as well as light adaptation. As each child's deficits are different, ideally, learning materials should be exactly matched to the individual's vision. In reality, however, there are constraints of both cost and logistics. The Barrier-Free Textbooks Act has mapped out a process whereby textbook publishers will supply standardized large-font textbooks that meet the greatest common denominator of low-vision students' needs. This is a start, but now we need to consider how to guarantee textbooks to those children who cannot use the standardized versions, due to extreme low vision or other reasons. In an ideal world, “personal services” (services designed for the individual child) would also be a responsibility of government, but the sad reality is that, at this time, no clear policy has been indicated in this area, and the issue remains to be addressed.
At present, for personal services of this kind, I can see no alternative to relying on the goodwill and hard work of the volunteer textbook producers. But as a result of their being made part of the official supply chain when the free system was introduced in 2004, these days one often hears volunteers complain, “We can't do the work we really want to do,” and “Some school officials are mistaking us for professional suppliers.” Lately, the media have also carried a growing number of comments that it is not right to rely on volunteers to provide textbooks for the compulsory curriculum. In my view, the government should move quickly to institutionalize the delivery of both standardized textbooks and personal services, thereby creating an environment that lets the textbook volunteers get on with the work they originally set out to do.

Identifying Needs and Target Populations

Strictly speaking, every child with a visual impairment has unique educational and training needs. Thus, it is hardly surprising that opinions diverge as to the best choices. For example, while the goals of education and training for the youngest children and for students with severely low vision are separate questions, if we look just at junior and senior high school students with moderate low vision and consider the goal to be empowering them to make their way independently in society, then some people might say that, rather than giving them specialized learning aids, the first priority should be to help them acquire ways of accessing the information resources in mainstream print formats and on the Internet.
Opinions also currently diverge over large-font textbooks. Some people define the problem as a failure to distribute large-font texts to all children with visual impairments. Those of us involved with Fuji Xerox's program initially thought this way too, but what we have learned from experts in the field, as discussed above, led us to think again. The real problem, as we now see it, is that those children with visual impairments who want large-font textbooks do not have a guaranteed supply.
Further, while we basically support the idea of storing electronic data for textbooks and other learning materials and then developing study tools using whatever technology is currently state-of-the-art, we believe that such devices should be introduced with caution as platforms for childhood education, given that there are still many unknowns such as the potentially harmful physical and mental effects of using digital technologies for long periods of time.
For these reasons, I would suggest that, even as we work to make standardized texts and personal services more widely available, there is a pressing need for in-depth discussion of the priorities in low-vision education-in particular, the goals appropriate to each developmental stage, the textbooks and aids suited to those goals, how textbooks should be employed in the classroom, and the scope of digital technology-in order to build a broad consensus about what educational methods and resources are effective for specific types of disability.
That said, identifying the needs and target populations for large-font textbooks is essentially a matter of deciding what criteria to apply in allocating either standardized textbooks or personal services. According to the expert opinions collected by a member of my staff, one possible approach to differentiating the target populations is that shown in Fig. 1, where the scales consist of age on one axis and severity of vision loss on the other. Criteria of this type should be based for the most part on empirical research in educational and developmental psychology, as well as in relevant medical fields, and they should be determined with the students' best interests firmly in mind. I sincerely hope that they are not influenced by factors like governmental budget constraints or what works for the textbook publishers.

Effective Utilization of Digital Data

In connection with item 2 of the steps required of publishers by the new law, we often hear from volunteer producers around the country who have questions about utilizing digital data effectively or requests for improvements to help them do so. Access to the publishers' electronic files has the potential to make their work vastly more efficient, if all the conditions fall into place. Those conditions are the right data format, the right operating environment, and IT skills.
As it happens, many of the volunteer producers are older persons, and they also have limited funding at their disposal; this means that, in quite a few cases, using digital data feels to them like a high hurdle. I think there is an undeniable risk that pressing ahead too hastily with across-the-board digitalization would eventually cause many of them to give up their activities. Whatever we do, we must avoid putting the cart before the horse in this way.
The methods that the volunteers themselves have invented and refined over the years, based on handwritten manuscripts and cut-and-paste, are useful for younger children and for students with severe low vision, and they lend the kind of warmth and subtlety that one sees only in something created by hand. Thus, I regard this style of service as an important future resource that Japanese society must not lose. It will always be in the children's best interests to be able to call on both digital and manual techniques.
There will likely be a growing effort to promote digital data utilization by reviewing data formats, offering workshops, and so on, but I would urge anyone considering such moves to keep a clear directional focus: first, establish the status of digital data as one option for efficiently producing large-font textbooks, and then address the actual needs of those volunteer producers who want to use them.

The Need for Cooperation and Partnering to Facilitate Publication of Standardized Texts

With regard to item 3, many textbook publishers have taken up the challenge of producing their own standardized large-font texts. Here, let us look for a moment at the state of the textbook industry in general. According to the MEXT website, as of April 2009 the following numbers of authorized texts were in print: for elementary schools, 293 titles in 51 textbook series; for junior high schools, 135 titles in 73 series; for senior high schools, 873 titles in 849 series. As many as 51 Japanese publishing houses issue authorized texts, and they must be facing a very tough business environment as the nation's birthrate declines and its population grays.
How many of these titles, then, are standardized large-font editions? For the academic year that commenced in April 2009, 85 elementary and junior high school texts debuted in their standardized large-font versions. This brings to 154 the total available from textbook publishers, out of 428 authorized textbooks at the compulsory education levels (elementary and junior high school). It should be noted, though, that even in the five basic subjects-Japanese, social studies, math, science, and English-some textbooks still lack a standardized large-font edition. Also, at the time of writing, no publisher had announced any forthcoming titles in subjects like art, or drawing and crafts. As for the 873 authorized senior high school texts, not one has appeared in standardized large-font form.
It reportedly takes as much time and trouble to create and publish a standardized large-font edition as it does to publish a new textbook; the cost of producing the page layout alone runs to millions-or even tens of millions-of yen. Further, as far as we have been able to ascertain, publishers seem to have considerable latitude in interpreting and applying the standard specifications announced by the Minister of Education. For example, it is up to the publisher to choose whether to substitute black-and-white for color and whether to use the kyokashotai font (which resembles handwriting) for lessons on stroke order in writing Chinese characters-decisions which are fundamental to the whole enterprise.
Because children with visual impairments dislike being teased by classmates for using a different textbook from the others, the volunteer workers take care to faithfully reproduce the content of the authorized texts, but it seems that in the commercial editions content is sometimes cut for convenience in editing and layout. Apparently, too, some publishers have gone to all the trouble of producing a standardized large-font edition, only to find that nobody orders it.
According to some observers, issuing standardized large-font textbooks is an integral part of the textbook publishing business and the firms should therefore solve these problems on their own or through collaboration within the industry. This will take time, however, and meanwhile kids with low vision are the ones who will suffer. I believe that society as a whole should share the task of raising the next generation. Putting the students' interests first, surely we should not leave publishers alone to wrestle with making standardized large-font textbooks more widely available. Instead, we should move ahead on the basis of rational, government-supported spending, and, using the same common resources, we should unify standards, achieve consistent quality, and make production more efficient. To that end, we at Fuji Xerox see the “social business” model as a realistic and effective approach. It should be possible to reduce the obstacles for publishers and continually improve both user-friendliness and turnaround time, if we act quickly to secure partial government funding, together with corporate and individual donations, and to organize common standards and work intensification on a private-sector basis. Naturally, Fuji Xerox intends to do its share.

Where to Go from Here: Large-Font Textbooks and Children's Horizons

We at Fuji Xerox want to see mutually supportive societies in every part of the world, societies where everyone, no matter the circumstances of their birth, can enjoy life's possibilities equally.
In committees of both Houses of the Japanese Diet and at MEXT, debate is now under way on how to make large-font textbooks widely available at the senior high level.
Moreover, the Barrier-Free Textbooks Act calls for the research necessary to provide textbooks and learning materials not only for children with low vision but also for those with developmental disabilities. In response, in FY2009 MEXT launched research projects in partnership with four organizations to study the following main areas: the use of computers and other assistive technologies to produce electronic learning materials; exploring the relevance of these materials to school curricula; pilot studies at participating schools; and the features to be included in electronic learning materials, with a focus on the multimedia DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) format.
Nothing would delight me more than to see the experience and know-how that Fuji Xerox has built up in our core business-digital document solutions-contribute toward providing large-font textbooks and future learning materials for special-needs students.
You have our commitment that we will work together with MEXT, the National Institute of Special Needs Education, textbook publishers, and the volunteer textbook makers in an ongoing, all-out effort to help fulfill the right of every child to receive an education.