Teresa Lacy, Director
lacy.teresa@aidb.state.al.us
705 South Street (P. O. Box 698), Talladega, AL 35161
1 800 848 4722 or (256) 761 3237
(256) 761 3561 fax
The Alabama Instructional Resource Center for the Blind (AIRCB) is located on the campus of the Alabama School for the Blind. The AIRCB provides textbooks in braille and large print and other educational supplies and materials for over 1,700 students who are blind or have low vision in Alabama’s public and private schools, as well as students and clients served by the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB) and Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services. The center operates under an interagency agreement between the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind and the Division of Special Education Services of the Alabama State Department of Education.
The AIRCB is a full production facility with specialized equipment to produce braille, enlarge textbooks and produce/duplicate recorded textbooks. The center maintains an equipment inventory of specialized educational aids for the visually disabled such as braillewriters, light boxes, audio book players and tactile graphic aids. All materials are available on loan, free of charge, to eligible students and clients who are registered with the Center.
Special Education Coordinators or their designees may register students with the AIRCB at
www.aircb.org/forms/registration.php
and order textbooks, supplies, aids and equipment at
www.aircb.org/forms/orderstudent.php
A student is eligible to receive services if their visual disability adversely affects their educational performance. For a complete listing of the AIRCB’s holdings, go to the online public access catalog at
http://asfb.booksys.net/opac/asfb/#menuHome
The AIRCB Director serves as the Ex-Officio Trustee of the American Printing House for the Blind and is responsible for administering the federal quota program and conducting an annual census of legally blind students enrolled in public and private schools and agencies. The AIRCB distributes adaptive education materials purchased with federal quota funds to legally blind students registered with the Center. To learn more about the federal quota program and how it benefits legally blind students, go to
www.aph.org
The AIRCB operates a full Braille production facility and employs five Library of Congress, National Library Service for the Blind certified Literary and Nemeth Code Braille transcribers, whose primary responsibility includes transcribing print textbooks into Braille for 164 braille readers registered with the Center.
Also housed in the AIRCB, is the Subregional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped part of a national network of libraries administered by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS). The Subregional Library serves eligible patrons in Talladega, St. Clair and Calhoun counties and circulates audio and Braille books via “free matter for the blind” postage free mail. Novels, nonfiction, magazines, and other recreational reading materials are produced on digital cartridges by NLS and patrons are issued a digital audio book player to play their audio books. In addition to Braille and audio books, the Subregional Library has over 700 descriptive home videos and DVDs for loan such as Fatal Attraction, Tooth Fairy, Toy Story and The Bounty Hunter. Descriptive videos are regular, commercial films which have been adapted with special narration which describes the action for people who visual impairments. As a descriptive video plays, it describes the visual elements of action, characters, locations, costumes and sets to the viewer without interfering with the movie’s dialogue or sound effects.
Patrons of the Subregional Library may also download digital audio books and magazines through the NLS Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) service. To learn more about this free network of library programs available to persons who are unable to use standard printed materials because of a visual or physical disability, go to
www.loc.gov/nls
or call the Subregional Library’s Reader Advisor, Carol Fowler at 1-800-848-4722.