Accessible Resource Centre - British Columbia

Providing BC Educators with Alternate Format Materials for their Students with Perceptual Disabilities

The Accessible Resource Centre – British Columbia is a BC Ministry of Education funded response to the increasing demand for digital or alternate format alternatives to print in BC classrooms. The goal of ARC-BC is to provide BC students with perceptual disabilities and the educators supporting them with high quality digital alternate format materials based on the BC K-12 curriculum.

ARC-BC is managed by PRCVI (Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired) and works in consultation and partnership with BC school districts, other alternate format producers, and publishers to provide recommended and requested materials in a timely manner.

Current News

Exciting Changes at ARC-BC!

January 15, 2012

We are pleased to announce that the updates to ARC-BC are almost complete, we are still ironing out a few bugs, but we are very happy with what has been achieved in Version 3.  The ARC-BC team would like to send a big thank you to all our users for their patience during this roll out, we understand that having to get used to a slightly different look can take a while. For instance, our frequently asked questions and our new training modules are now located within the ARC-BC website. We have also moved the ARC district contacts info to a new contact page. Should you need additional support or have questions, please look to the new information and training tabs.

We are also very pleased with the overwhelming support from users providing students PEN numbers.  This information is vital for us to report back to the Ministry of Education on the number of students with perceptual disabilities who are benefiting from ARC-BC resources.

In order to serve you better we have been working with SET-BC to provide accessible books using the Pictello file format from AssistiveWare on ARC-BC, they look great and can be viewed on an iPad (the user would have to purchase the App to view them).  Look out for Pictello files in the not too distant future. If you are interested learning more, check out the tutorial under Alternate Devices and ARC-BC Files on the training tab.  

Have you sent in your book requests? If not, we encourage you to verify the titles your students will require from ARC-BC for the second semester as soon as possible. Follow the steps below:

1. Search the ARC-BC repository for the title in the format you require
2. If the title is available but NOT in the format you require (kes, rtf, mp3) send an email request to arc@set-bc.org with the book title, ISBN, and format. (Please note that high school science and math texts are only produced in kes level 1 format due to time and production software constraints)
3. If the required title is in the ARC-BC repository but the notation indicates that it is [In Production] please contact arc@set-bc.org to have it added to the high priority production list.
4. If the title is not currently available in the repository send an email request to arc@set-bc.org with the book title, ISBN, and format. If ARC-BC has an available print copy we will initiate the production process.
5. We will notify you if we do not have a copy of the book. You will need to donate the book in order to initiate the production process. The book must be relatively new with crisp, clean pages and no markings, folds or tears. Your donated book will be catalogued, have the spine cut off and sent through a high speed scanner to capture the images necessary to produce the alternate format(s). The book will not be returned to you.
   Send the book(s) to:
   Attn: Susan Hannigan
   ARC-BC
   106-1750 West 75th Avenue
   Vancouver, BC V6P 6G2
6. Once the book is posted on the ARC-BC repository and ready for download, we will notify you by email that files are available to download
   

Finally, we are thrilled to have over 4000 registered users as part of the ARC-BC community with new members joining every week. As more educators join, more students with perceptual disabilities are being supported with alternate formats across the province and we couldn’t be more delighted!

The ARC-BC Provincial Team.