Using your Educator Access Program account to support students with print disabilities

Using your Educator Access Program account to support students with print disabilities

CELA offers a free Educator Access Account to help teachers and educational staff support their students with print disabilities.  Through CELA and our partner Bookshare, students and educators have access to nearly 1 million titles which can be downloaded onto one or multiple devices for your students.

This page will describe more about what is available, and how to access books and magazines on student devices. If this is all new to you, we recommend starting with our Accessible Formats page which outlines what each format does and how to use it. We also have tutorials, videos and recorded webinars to help and we have linked to them below and on our Help page.  

Teenage girl holding iphone sitting in front of books on a desk.

What is available in the CELA Collection 

CELA offers books and magazines in audio, e-book and braille formats which may be read on tablets, laptops, Chromebooks, DAISY players and on braille displays.  Our Compatible devices and formats page provides detailed information about which formats can be used on which devices and links to written and video tutorials. 

What is offered through Bookshare  

By completing Bookshare’s Terms of Use form educators will have free access to thousands of digital titles which can be added to student devices for educational use.  

Students can also access Bookshare titles through their personal CELA accounts directly by completing a Proof of Disability form. This allows them access to Bookshare’s full collection for educational and recreational reading.  

For schools that have a Bookshare Organizational account:  If you are accessing books through your school's paid Bookshare Organizational account, you may access Bookshare titles either directly from Bookshare.org, or through CELA's catalogue.  At this time, features on Bookshare's site such as the ability to create reading lists for students are not available through CELA.  

Accessing books and magazines on student devices

Finding titles and reading them on your device is a two-step process.  First, you need to search and select the title on celalibrary.ca, and then either open or download it onto your device.  Learn more about searching and selecting books by watching our Introduction to the CELA website (YouTube) video.

Steps for accessing reading materials for your students

Before you start, consider what reading formats your student prefers and the device or technology they will be using.

There are 3 ways to read our books:

  1. Using our Direct to Player service using the EasyReader app or DAISY player.
  2. Downloading and transferring books to other devices.
  3. Requesting physical materials such as printbraille books which is sent for free via Canada Post.

However your student reads, the first two steps to getting accessible books are the same:

  1. Log into CELA with your 6-digit Educator Access username and password. If a student has their own CELA account, they may prefer to log in using their own credentials.
  2. Search for titles and pick the format that works on your students’ devices.

For Direct to player:

Choose this for: audio and e-text books to read on a tablet, smart phone or configured DAISY player

This is the easiest way to read a book with your Educator Access account.  You will need to log into the EasyReader app where you’ll find the book or magazine on your Direct to Player bookshelf. 

For students who use DAISY players, they will need to contact CELA to learn how to configure their player to connect a CELA account through a wifi connection to their player. 

Need more help?  How to get a Direct to Player book (Youtube)

For downloading and transferring books or magazines:

Choose this for: audio, e-text and e-braille on a Chromebook, laptop, tablet, smart phone, braille display or to a DAISY player

Downloading a book or magazine gives you and your students more format and reading device options, although it does require the extra steps of “downloading” the book and “opening” it on a device. After selecting the format you need, go to My account and select the Download link. You will find the book you just chose and can then download the actual file and open or transfer it to your device.

The formats that must be downloaded include:

  • DAISY audio and e-text (zip)
  • Word (zip) 
  • EPUB (zip) 
  • Electronic braille (brf)

These files can be used on the following apps and devices:

For a complete list of our tutorials and videos visit our Help page.