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Publishing for Special Needs
Beverley Mathias
There has long been an awareness of the need for specialised reading materials for
children who have difficulty in learning to read and then maintaining a reasonable
reading ability. Some attempts, successful and unsuccessful, have been made to
produce series and individual titles which would appeal to these children: one of the
difficulties has always been their wide-ranging ages, abilities and interests.
What was not addressed until recently was the fact that for some children print is not
the means by which they will be able to enjoy reading, and for others, reading is
complicated by some intellectual, sensory or physical problem. Some children find it
extremely difficult or even impossible to use print at all, and therefore no matter how
many series are made available, some of these children will never aspire to be ‘readers’
in the commonly accepted sense.
When the National Library for the Handicapped Child (NLHC) was established in
Britain in 1985, one of the problems addressed was the lack of understanding of the
reading needs of the child who has special needs in other areas. It is in the areas of reading
for children with hearing and visual loss, emotionally and behaviourally disturbed
children, children with intellectual handicaps, children with physical difficulties, and
children who simply fail to learn to read that the major advances have been made since
then.
To understand these needs it is important to first understand some of the difficulties
which the child must overcome. All parents and educationalists know that children find
it easier to learn to read when offered material which is interesting, stimulating and
arouses enough curiosity in the child for that child to want to read (Bennett 1991). In
addition, children will have difficulty learning to read unless they have enough
internalised language to have an understanding of the meaning and use of
communication and language. Similarly, to read a child must be able to communicate
with reasonable fluency with those around her and understand the language in which
she is being taught. It is accepted that children learn language by watching and
listening then imitating sound, and by learning that communicating can result in an
approving response. However, this is not so with all children. Approximately 37 per cent
of infant and junior school aged children will at some time have a reading or language
difficulty serious enough to need supporting help. These children include those who
have a learning problem related to reading, a sight or hearing difficulty, or who use a
language other than speech for communicating. They may not be print users and will