This month, we invited Janis Nostbakken, the Project Director for Accessible Books for Young Readers at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) to talk about their services.

(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)

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Transcript

Adaobi Nnaobi: Welcome to the BookNet Canada podcast. I’m Adaobi Nnaobi, the Marketing & Research Associate and the host of this month’s episode. This is National AccessAbility Week and I had the pleasure of interviewing Janis Nostbakken, the kids media specialist and head of Bibliovideo, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre's YouTube channel, as well as the Accessible Books for Young Readers project. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre, CCBC, is a not-for-profit that helps educators, librarians, parents, caregivers, and all readers discover great Canadian books for kids and teens.

Okay. Hello, Janis. Thank you for joining me. We wanted to start off by asking, what is the CCBC's Accessible Books for Young Readers project?

Janis Nostbakken: Sure, happy to talk about books for kids, and in this case, accessible books. As you said, the CCBC is all about making great books by Canadian authors available to young readers, and that includes kids with print disabilities. Now, that may mean readers with no or low vision, with maybe mobility issues that prevent them from holding a book or turning a page, kids who are neurodivergent, kids with dyslexia, attention deficits, and so on. All need books in accessible formats. And that includes things like braille, ebooks, audiobooks, decodable books, and more. So, that's the focus of our project, and the main purpose is really to raise awareness of the need for these books, who needs them, why do they need them, how do they use them, and so on. And it's an important sector of the population to respond to because it's growing.

I mean, the estimates are that between 10% and 20% of Canadians have a print disability of some kind and that two to four kids in every classroom have dyslexia. So, this is an important sector to respond to and to help meet their needs. And what we do in the project is to focus on ensuring that Canadian books in accessible formats are discoverable and help market them to readers across Canada and around the world. Now, how do we do that with this project? Well, we've been approaching it from a number of different angles. For example, we've started a monthly newsletter column in the CCBC's monthly newsletter, which has about 10,000 readers. And the column is written by accessibility experts or by writers with lived experience with print disabilities themselves. We've also started reviews of accessible books by reviewers with lived experience in Canadian Children's Book News.

We've built a library of videos on our Bibliovideo YouTube channel, all about accessible books. I think we're now over three dozen of those videos are available there. We just had a soft launch of our online accessible books bank where you can find these kinds of books. And, of course, we've been running a PR campaign on social, along with ads and features in publications and presenting at conferences and so on. So multi-platforms, multi-approaches, and by the way, this has all happened, thanks to funding from Canada Book Fund at Canadian Heritage and by working with like-minded organizations. That's really been helpful and important to us, people like CELA, the Centre for Equitable Library Access, eBOUND, Dyslexia Canada and NNELS, the National Network for Equitable Library Service, and many others. As I said, the population is growing with these needs, and the interest in meeting their needs is growing as well.

Adaobi: Great, thank you for that. So, you mentioned the accessible books bank and Bibliovideo accessible books playlist as part of the Accessible Books for Young Readers project. So can you tell me a little more about the accessible books bank? What is it?

Janis: Yeah. Well, it's exciting. It's an online catalogue, and it's the only one of its kind in Canada that's a kind of one-stop shop for locating Canadian titles for kids and teens in accessible formats. So, if you go to bookcentre.ca/books, you end up at the books bank and you can use search and filter options to find books by title, by author, by theme, grade level, format, and so on. And when you land on a title, you find their book descriptions, reviews, you can find a link to any related videos, more information about the authors or illustrators, and links to buying the books or borrowing them from libraries. So, at the moment, there are over 700 entries. We'll have over a thousand by September, and those entries include English, French, and some indigenous languages too.

Adaobi: Wow. So, who would you say is the accessible books bank for, and what kind of books are available there?

Janis: Well, it's for anyone and everyone. It's mainly, I would say, being used by teachers and librarians, by researchers, even retailers and families, readers who are looking for books in these alternate formats. So, you can find everything from board books and picture books to YA, non-fiction, graphic novels for all ages up to age 18. We've started with the most recent publications, and we’ll gradually be making our way to the backlists to try to capture every book that's out there in an accessible format from a Canadian author or illustrator.

Adaobi: And what are the requirements for getting a book included in the accessible books bank?

Janis: Well, they have to be in an accessible format, as discussed. They have to be for kids or teens, any genre, but they have to be from Canadian creators, Canadian authors, or illustrators. And we ask publishers to let us know when they produce an accessible book so that we can quickly add it to the books bank and people can find it there.

Adaobi: So, what accessible features can be found on the accessible books bank?

Janis: There are quite a range of them, and there's a drop-down menu that indicates what formats are available there. But alternate formats could include an audiobook, a large print book for kids with low vision, a braille book, a well-built ebook. And what I mean by that is something that has good structure, image descriptions, you can change the font, the line spacing that can be listened to with voiceover or text-to-speech, etc.

Adaobi: So let's move on over to the second thing, or one of the other things that you mentioned, which is the Bibliovideo accessible books playlist. So, what is that and who is that for?

Janis: Yeah. Well, this is where the project actually began back in 2021. We started with a playlist dedicated to exploring the topic of Canadian accessible books, again with funding from Canada Book Fund to do this. And it was a way of, on the one hand, encouraging more publishers to get into accessible book publishing and the videos on the playlist were kind of free advertising for the books that are out there, and also to help others understand, again, the importance of making accessible books available. So, we have, as I said, I think it's now three dozen videos, and some of them come from other sources, a couple from publishers. But most of them have been produced by us, by our team, with outside independent producers as well, with the purpose of making these books discoverable.

So we have a series, for example, called Access-A-Book, en français, Accessi-livre, and they're shorts usually between four or five minutes, six minutes that focus on a single title and author. And we talk about how great the book is, what its different attributes are, and how it has been produced in an accessible format, what makes it special, and what makes it work. So, again, it really is a series of lovely commercials for some terrific Canadian books that have been published in accessible formats. And we also have videos that deal with kind of an inside look at kids who use accessible formats. We've worked a lot with the WRMS School for the Blind in Brantford and have got to know the kids there and their wonderful librarian who's worked with us. And we also have webinars that we've recorded and added them to the playlist. So, it's for anybody who wants to learn more about accessible books for young readers and especially Canadian titles.

Adaobi: That's great. I'm hearing some very promising things about these projects. So, what can we expect for the future of the Accessible Books Bank and the Bibliovideo Accessible Books playlist?

Janis: Well, the future isn't entirely clear because funding is always an issue. The CCBC, of course, is a not-for-profit charity, and we have been happily funded by Canada Book Fund, that funding, which isn't a surprise to most of the publishing community has stopped as of March 31st of this year. So, we are looking for other sources of funding to expand what we're doing because we got lots of ideas. But the CCBC will continue to update both the Books Bank and the playlist and again continue our collaboration with publishers and with the organisations that I mentioned to promote these books. But we'd love to do more to expand our scope and our reach. Because right now, the CCBC is recognised as the leader in promoting accessible books for kids in Canada and beyond. We've heard from followers in the UK, the States, Italy, Japan, and so on.

And just recently, we got pretty excited about being invited to present at the IBBY International Congress in Italy in August. That gives us another chance to talk about what we're doing and to shine a light on some of the great Canadian titles out there. So, in the meantime, we're fine-tuning the Books Bank. We're continuing our PR campaign, which includes an animated public service announcement for broadcasters like AMI, the Accessible Media Television Channel, and others. We'll be also launching a comic strip about accessible books in an upcoming issue of "Chickadee Magazine" to introduce kids in their target age range up to the age of eight to this whole notion of accessible formats and test drive the concept with their readers. And we're hoping that that might lead to a video series for kids. So, again, lots of ideas we want to explore in the future.

Adaobi: That sounds very interesting. I'm looking forward to that. It can be tough to make children's books accessible. Do you have any tips for children's publishers or thoughts on what you would like to see more of from accessible children's books?

Janis: Well, in fact, we're holding a free webinar in two weeks. I think it's two weeks, June the 12th. It's 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. That's a virtual lesson on best practices in ebook production. And we're going to have a couple of terrific experts on hand to lead this lesson, and it includes an extensive Q&A. So, any publishers who have questions chime in and hopefully get responses from the experts on hand, and you can register via the CCBC website for that. And we'll be posting quite a bit about that too.

And in the meantime, there are lots of other resources out there. And a great place to start for publishers is the Accessible Publishing Learning Network, and that's at apln.ca. Last month, we actually held a webinar for publishers, again, on metadata, because getting the metadata right so that readers can find your accessible books and know about them, and so on, is so important. It's so key to success. So, that has been made into a video that, again, is available on our accessible books playlist at Bibliovideo, which is found at youtube.com/bibliovideo. So, we hope publishers will reach out to us and let us know how we can help. That's what we're here for.

Adaobi: Wonderful. We'll put in the link for the webinar on the show notes of this podcast episode, so hopefully people can go and register for that. While making books accessible for young readers is important, it's also important for young readers with disabilities to see themselves represented in books. What do you think about the representation of disabilities in children's books today?

Janis: Well, thankfully, today there are more and more books to choose from that do represent the many different forms of disability, both accurately and positively. In fact, again, we've just posted this week a short video about this and about the IBBY, IBBY being the International Board of Books for Young People, their collection of books that feature outstanding disability representation for kids that's available at the Toronto Public Library. I think it's the North York branch. And, of course, it includes Canadian titles. They're books from all over the world in that collection of something like 4,000 titles. But it includes Canadian books, and you can find those books in our accessible books bank. It is very important that kids see themselves in the pages of the books that they read and hear their own voices reflected back to them. So, we're big supporters of disability representation in Canadian kids' books.

Adaobi: And what, to you, is the impact of having accessible children's books in the classroom and library?

Janis: Well, the impact can be huge. Teachers and librarians tell us over and over, particularly classroom teachers, that opening the door to accessible formats is essential for obviously kids with print disabilities. But it's also making a difference for all kids. We've got a couple of pretty wonderful videos about, for example, audiobooks and using those in the classroom. One deals with kids in the middle grades and how this teacher, who happened to be a teacher librarian started out using audiobooks to kind of ignite interest or reignite interest in reading books in her middle-grade kids where reading generally for pleasure, getting joy out of reading tends to drop off a bit. And she thought, well, maybe we'll try audiobooks and give it a shot and see what happens. And she was trying to entice reluctant readers or kids who were having some problems, perhaps with reading, or were just not interested in reading seemingly, to get them on board. But instead, it turned out to be an equity and inclusion issue.

Another teacher we've spoken with has said, you know, when you ask ... when he asked kids in his high school class who would like to read the book using an audiobook, now these are kids who know how to read, but again perhaps have lost some interest, overwhelmingly every kid wanted to listen to the audiobook. It doesn't mean that they're not reading the print version. They are usually reading the print version along with the audiobook, but you never know what problems or challenges kids in the classroom may have. And when you open up to alternate formats, you may find yourself being an equitable and inclusive classroom that helps everybody.

It reminds me of a story when we were talking about this whole issue that, you know, some kids can't find a book that they've heard about because they can't see the print or they can't hold the book. And so they're challenged in terms of reading a book that they want or they need. And a 7-year-old piped up and said, “that's not fair”. So, this project from the CCBC is all about addressing that kind of injustice and making sure that publishers see the need and respond to it. So it can have a hugely positive impact in classrooms and in libraries, but it's also important for publishers to know that this is a sizeable audience, if you will, that shouldn't be ignored. And the way things are going with legislation, particularly in Europe, where there is going to be requirement to have accessible formats in place, it makes good business sense to be producing books in these alternate formats.

Adaobi: Yeah, I think it's important that you mentioned also how having accessible books is beneficial for everyone, for all children. And I think that can be something that publishers and booksellers and librarians and everyone can take from that as well. There are different ways to help children to get more into reading books. That's what we all want, essentially, right?

Janis: It certainly is. And I think it was, if I'm remembering correctly, Anita Brooks Kirkland from Canadian School Libraries said about alternative formats and accessible formats that “necessary for some, good for everyone”. And it really is broadening horizons in more ways than one.

Adaobi: What ways can people or organizations in the book industry support this work?

Janis: So many ways. We would welcome more collaborators to get on board with us. Again, our wonderful partners have been NNELS, CELA and eBOUND. We've had support from Canadian School Libraries, from TEACH Magazine, who've given us in kind, services and so on. More recently, we've had some funding come from the Chawkers Foundation, really welcome funding there. The CCBC is a charity, and so we welcome donations to help us continue the project and to expand and keep our team of passionate workers working. I mean, we really are excited about the possibilities.

Along the way, we have faced some challenges, overcome them. We learn a lot. One of our team members has been blind since birth, and we learn something new from him every week. We didn't know when we started this project how much we didn't know. And it's not an exaggeration, I would say, that working on this project has changed our outlooks on so many things. It's really been a game-changer. And once you get into this world, you realise how important it is. It's essential service that we have to be providing. And we need to do that. We need to get more people on board, and we need to do it now because it's urgent.

Adaobi: Thank you Janis for joining me to talk about CCBC and all the wonderful services you provide.

I’d like to acknowledge that BookNet Canada's operations are remote and our colleagues contribute their work from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wyandot, the Mi’kmaq, the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation, the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations (which includes the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie), and the Métis, the original nations and peoples of the lands we now call Beeton, Brampton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vaughan, and Windsor. We encourage you to visit the native-land.ca website to learn more about the peoples whose land you are listening from today. Moreover, BookNet Canada endorses the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to spacemaking in the book industry.

We'd also like to acknowledge the Government of Canada for their financial support through the Canada Book Fund. And thanks to you for listening.