Tar+Heel+Reader+Description

Developed at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, this tool allows creation of a captioned slide show for beginning readers, with features designed for to meet accessibility needs (text to speech, reader selected font and background colors). It can be used with standard hardware used for accessible access (touch screen, Intellikeys, and switches-- see more about the accessibility features) Pictures can either be uploaded from your computer or selected from a keyword search in flickr,. The tool automatically tracks the photo credits and saves it as a link when a story is published (see example).

Tar Heel Reader was built on top of the Wordpress platform, but has been highly customized.Readers can also downloads of storie in PowerPoint, Flash, and Impress Format.

At the time of this writing, there are over 16,000 published stories on the site. There is also a version of the site in German.