LIBRARY AND DOCUMENTATION DEPARTMENT

AGU Academic Audio Library Project

ABDULLAH GÜL UNIVERSITY

Academic Audio Library Project

Starting Point, Purpose and Objectives of the Project

Although basic needs of the students studying at the university are largely similar, students with disabilities are largely ignored. It is because the plans, programs, equipments, and accessibility of universities are more suitable for students who do not disabilities. This fact causes students with disabilities to encounter difficulties in their university life. In order to reduce the negative effects and problems of students with disabilities, it is necessary to develop their individual abilities and increase their level of knowledge by taking part in the education process like other individuals. That’s why, the most important thing is the adaptation of the necessary physical and academic environment that will make the education life of the disabled students easy after they become university students. It is guaranteed by the principle of equality in Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey that every citizen have the right to receive education in the educational institution of her choice in accordance with her/his own ability and competence.

According to the data shared by the Higher Education Institution at the end of 2020, 8,735 of the 51,647 disabled students studying in higher education are visually impaired individuals. 1% of all disabled students get online education, 3% evening education, 7% formal education and 89% open education. These percentages show that it becomes necessary to choose Open Education Faculties for visually impaired students in the absence of suitable conditions.

Nearly in all over the world the contents of the existing audio libraries are not qualified to meet their needs. An important part of the audio books are literature books. Academic books are not audio. Audio literature books can be accessed via internet. But most of the platforms give service with a paid membership. Platforms prepared by universities generally serve for their own university students. In addition, lecture notes and resources to be used by lecturers vary. Most of the visually impaired individuals, who are aware of this situation, abstain from university education, and this obstacle they face in accessing resources limits them. Therefore, instead of focusing on areas where they can use their capacities and talents, they either do not continue their education or they have to turn to limited universities where they think they can continue their education.

The purpose of the project is to ensure that academic course resources are converted into accessible formats for visually impaired students. The aim of this project, which will be carried out by Abdullah Gül University (AGU) Library and Documentation Department, AGU Youth Work Implementation and Research Center (AGU Youth Factory), AGU Dean of Students Department, and our university student clubs – AGU Society of Women Engineers Club (SWE), AGU Library Club and AGU Business Club -, is to establish a platform that will enable visually impaired students to access academic resources through open access and to provide the vocalization of academic publications in English and Turkish for this platform.

Objectives of the Project:

To establish a digital audio library for visually disabled students,
To set up necessary technical infrastructure in order to serve for access of visually disabled students,
To create a database and website for recorded Turkish and English academic resources in the field of natural and formal sciences.
To ensure vocalization of academic resources for access of visually impaired individuals,
To provide free access into website for visually disabled students.
To train young people for vocalization of resources according to the needs of visually disabled people.
To create a studio suitable for vocalization.
To create a database including the list of volunteers for vocalization.
To support visually disabled university student candidates in their social participation
To support volunteering activities and gaining new skills of participants.

Activities of Projects

The planning process of the project started in September 2021 in partnership between AGU Library and Documentation Department and AGU Youth Factory. In this process, the project was written and planned. Subsequently, the necessary forms and training materials for the project, such as vocalization rules, reader agreement, user agreement, were prepared.
In the first stage, the participation and support of SWE and Business Club students was ensured upon announcements to students clubs made by AGU Youth Factory of our University, by announcing the project to the student clubs. In this way, the working group expanded, and the first volunteer vocalization group consisted of the students of these clubs was formed. The Library Club, which was established afterwards, took its place among the stakeholders of the project.
Before starting, 21 students who wanted to voluntarily vocalize within the scope of the project were given diction training between December 15, 2021 and January 14, 2022 in order to contribute better to our visually impaired stakeholders by getting better quality outputs.
A diction training was organized for 20 volunteer readers and certification was completed.
A suitable area for vocalization activity was provided in the Creative Hub Social Incubation Center controlled by AGU Youth Factory and the necessary materials for vocalization activities were made available to the volunteer students.
Before the start of recordings, Library and Documentation Department gave training to volunteers, who had received diction training, on how to do book vocalization, which rules should be followed, and how to use the recording program.
Visually impaired students studying at universities located in Kayseri were reached by contacting the Barrier-Free University Coordinators of Erciyes University, Kayseri University and Nuh Naci Yazgan University. After they were informed about the project, requests from them for the first recordings were collected and vocalization process of the books was started. Since the aim of this project was to meet the academic information needs and to contribute to the university education of visually impaired young people, selections were made according to the needs.
The first introductory meeting of our project was held on 01.04.2022 in the conference AGU Rectorship Conference Hall with the participation of the project’s volunteer students of the Business Club and SWE Club, our visually impaired stakeholders whom voice-overs were made for, and AGU Youth Factory and Library amd Documentation Department staff.
The process for preparation of the My Academic Audio Library Project web page, called the Visually Impaired Web Project, has been begun. From AGU Computer Engineering Department, under the leadership of Assistant Prof. Gülay Yalçın, one student group consisted of 5 AGU students and one working group formed with the contribution of AGU Information Technologies Department started to work on web page design. The working group has met regularly since November 2022 and continued to work on issues such as division of labor, establishment and design of the web page. Our web page construction process continues and its address is https://seslikutuphanem.agu.edu.tr/. Our project's e-mail account has also been created as seslikutuphanem@agu.edu.tr .
Project stakeholders come together regularly to evaluate the project processes and try to make necessary arrangements in line with the difficulties encountered. In these meetings, AGU Library and Documentation Department staff, AGU Youth Factory staff, SWE Club, Management Club, Library Club students and our teacher Mr. Emek Çağatay, who is a visually impaired teacher representing the visually impaired individuals, participated.
As of January 2023, new volunteer members have been included in the project team. Although the diction training for new volunteer group has been planned, it has been postponed until we can return to face-to-face training due to the earthquake disaster in our country.
In line with the demands of our visually impaired stakeholders, it was decided to include more English written books vocalizations for 2022-2023 academic year. The criteria for how these books would be vocalized were determined in line with the guidance of our visually impaired project partner, Teacher Mr. Emek Çağatay, and our teachers who have contact with Mr. Çağatay and provide language training for the visually impaired. The sample records prepared in this process were shared with them, revisions were made with their feedback and a standard was reached. Currently, English books were distributed to our volunteer students.
As the audio recordings are completed by volunteer students, section by section, they are sent to the Library and Documentation Department, where they are checked and archived.

Comments of Readers and Beneficiaries Project

Beyza Gül ÖZDEMİR - Volunteer

I feel lucky to be involved in ‘Academic Audio Library Project’, which aims to vocalize the academic/numerical books that visually impaired individuals, one of the disadvantaged groups in the society and have difficulty in reaching. I feel sad as they are excluded from the society because of their differences or they have to focus only on verbal fields and departments. I believe we can touch someone's heart through this project. In addition, I am excited to be a part of such a beautiful project to support them. In this way their differences do not prevent their careers and lives.

Aybüke YILDIZ - Volunteer

When I first heard about ‘Academic Audio Library Project’, I was very excited. The opportunity to record in front of a microphone, which I had dreamed of since childhood, stood before me. In addition, with this project, it would be ensured that our visually impaired friends could access the audio books they have been missing for years by vocalization of academic and English books. I immediately applied to this project, which includes this very valuable purpose. After our diction education, we started to vocalize the books we chose in the studio created by our university for this project. I was nervous when I first entered the studio, but when I started to record and heard about my own recording, my anxiety was gone and the happiness and excitement of volunteering for our visually impaired friends in this project took its place. I'm just like one of friends who are currently volunteering on this project and I'm very happy to be able to be on this project and contribute to society to some extent."

Betül AKARSU - Volunteer

‘Academic Audio Library Project’ has increased my awareness of visually impaired individuals' access to academic resources, which I have not taken into consideration before and I am not aware of the lack of. Visually impaired university students, who can be considered as my peers, have relatively easier access to foreign sources for works written in their native language. However, audio access to digital, English resources do not almost exist. Thanks to this project, I have increased my belief that this shortcoming, which I was not aware of before, can be covered to a large extent.

Emek Çağatay AKSÖZ - Physics Teacher and Master Student

I'm Emek Çağatay AKSÖZ. I am a visually impaired individual. In addition to being a physics teacher, I am a master student in primary school mathematics teaching field. Within the scope of this project, I provide external support on behalf of the visually impaired individuals.

Visually impaired individuals cannot access many written documents due to their special needs. With the developing technological materials, although the written documents of the verbal courses (Turkish, history, sociology…) can be accessed to a certain extent, the accessibility to the written documents of the numerical courses (physics, mathematics, chemistry) is very limited. The documents we talk about here are the resources used in primary and secondary education of visually impaired individuals. This situation poses an even greater problem for visually impaired individuals to access academic resources. In addition, it is extremely important to support visually impaired individuals with accessible resources in foreign language learning, which is necessary the academic world.

We believe that this project will make an important contribution to the availability of accessible documents that can be used by the visually impaired in the process of reducing the limitations we have tried to mention above. In this context, we are actively taking the initiative in the execution of this project, both institutionally as Abdullah Gül University and visually impaired individuals. The sustainability of this project will contribute significantly to the education processes of visually impaired individuals who want to work in the academic field, and it is also important in terms of being a reference source for the next steps to be taken for the education processes of visually impaired individuals.

"AGU Academic Audio Library Project" Meeting Event

A more livable world is everyone's dream, and at this point, all segments of society should make an effort to turn the dream into reality. Based on this idea, we, as AGU Library, set out with a dream in order to eliminate the obstacles faced by visually impaired university students in accessing academic information resources. Over time, we also partnered with volunteer students from our University's Youth Factory, Business Club and Society of Women Engineers clubs. And with their contribution, this dream grew and turned into a project "My AGU Academic Audio Library". Unlike other audio libraries, we held the meeting event of this project, in which only academic resources will be vocalized, in this meaningful week, accompanied by volunteer students from the AGU Library Team, Youth Factory Team, Business Club and Society of Women Engineers clubs, and visually impaired participants from different professions and institutions. In this event, where information about the project was shared, voice recordings made by our volunteer students, which were our first concrete outputs, were also shared.