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For an audio copy of this report on cassette tape, email the APH Advisory Services Department or call 1-502-895-2405.

Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax

For the 2000 tax year period beginning 10/01/00 and ending 09/30/01
Type of organization: Exempt under 501(c) 3
ID# 61-0444640

Part I, Revenue, Expenses, and Changes in Net Assets or Fund Balances

REVENUE

Part II, Statement of Functional Expenses

Part III, Statement of Program Service Accomplishments

Department of Educational and Advisory Services

The role of Advisory Services is:

1. To provide direct and in-the-field assistance and consultative support to Ex Officio Trustees and service providers.
2. To provide information regarding the process by which eligible students are registered to receive materials through the Federal Quota Program, the range and nature of materials available to eligible students, and the appropriate selection and use of these materials.
3. To provide catalogs and other informational literature about APH products, textbooks, and services.

Through Advisory Services, APH personnel are available to conduct training sessions, presentations, and workshops in availability, teaching methodology, and prescriptive use of the specially-designed materials.

APH also maintains and supports LOUIS, an international on-line database and reference service that furnishes information on the availability of books and materials in accessible media. Because of the wide demand for titles, especially textbooks, and the many volunteers and agencies producing these materials in braille, large type and recorded form, a central listing is essential. This comprehensive database directs its users to thousands of accessible books available from hundreds of agencies.

Advisory Services administers and maintains Babies Count: The National Registry of Children with Visual Impairment, Birth to Three. Through this project, data on the prevelance and incidence of blindness and visual impairment in children from birth to three years of age are collected and analyzed.

Educational and Technical Research

The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) conducts a comprehensive program of applied research directed toward the development of educational tools, media, and materials for blind and visually impaired students, infants, and preschoolers. Some basic research is also conducted as needed in order to answer general research questions that relate to the development of products and acquisition of needed information.

The Department of Educational Research at APH currently includes project leaders who direct efforts in the major areas of adult life needs, braille, low vision, tactile graphics, and technology. Additional project leaders direct work in the major areas of early childhood, multiple disabilities, and test assessment needs.

To supplement the time and talents of its home-based staff, the Department of Educational Research contracted with many experts in the field who help conduct valuable basic research or adapt and develop needed products for blind and visually impaired students. In order to satisfy the demands for relevant research and product development early in the next century, it is fully expected that this practice of partnering APH Research staff with experts and resources in the field will not only be continued, but will be enhanced.

Examples of projects which will be conducted include:

1. Assessment materials for visually impaired infants and preschoolers.
2. Learning materials for infants and young children who are visually impaired.
3. Materials for visually impaired students with additional handicapping conditions.
4. Materials and equipment to assist students with low vision.
5. Materials for learning braille, increasing braille literacy, or simply providing braille for reading/labeling.
6. Adapting/developing educational measures and materials, and providing guidelines and training that promote standardization of assessment of visually impaired students.
7. Classroom learning materials in math, science, and geography.
8. Tactile graphic learning and assessment materials.
9. Computer-based educational testing systems accessible to visually impaired students.
10. Educational software for visually impaired students.
11. Equipment and instructional materials to enable or improve access to microcomputers.
12. Computer-based educational testing systems accessible to blind students.
13. Materials for assessing literary braille skills.
14. Educational and recreational materials for students who are blind or visually impaired.
15. Vision and product-related research.
16. Adaptations of commercially available toys, games, and books.
17. Providing assessments in accessible formats, for determining the functional skills level of teenagers and adults.
18. Testing instrument to assess instructors' literary braille skills.
19. Adult life organizational braille products to enhance use of braille and braille literacy, and in areas of financial and personal management.
20. Products assessing functional/daily living skills and offering curricula for teaching such skills to persons from kindergarten through transition.
21. Updated/revising existing products.
22. Informational materials for caregivers and teachers of children with visual impairment.

Reader's Digest, Newsweek and Weekly Reader

Since 1858, the American Printing House for the Blind has been working to help visually impaired people achieve independence. The American Printing House for the Blind's mission is to promote independence of blind and visually impaired persons by providing special media, tools, and materials needed for education and life. Today, APH continues its proud tradition by producing thousands of books in braille and large-type, and by manufacturing and maintaining an extensive inventory of commercially unavailable aides, tools, and supplies.

The Reader's Digest ® in braille, the first popular magazine to be produced in special media, has been available FREE SINCE 1928. Recorded at 33 1/3 r.p.m. in 1939, today the Reader's Digest ® is available on one 4-track cassette FREE to eligible readers. The first weekly newsmagazine to be recorded was Newsweek® Talking Magazine. This began in 1959 and continues to be available FREE to blind and visually impaired readers who reside in the United States, or are U. S. citizens living abroad.

Every week, in schools all across America, children look forward to receiving their copies of the Weekly Reader. This is true for blind as well as sighted children, because thanks to the American Printing House for the Blind, the Weekly Reader has been published in braille and large type editions for the last 50 years.

Listed below is the expense associated with Program Service provided by the American Printing House for the Blind, Inc, in the fiscal year ending September 2001.

Other Expenses: Statement 5