OpenAI and UNICEF Accelerate Digital Textbook Access
OpenAI and UNICEF are collaborating to reinvent textbooks for digital learning, making them accessible for all children, including students with disabilities.
OpenAI and UNICEF are working together to reinvent textbooks for the digital age by leveraging Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to convert learning materials quickly and efficiently, making them accessible for children with disabilities. The collaboration focuses on a two-year pilot program in Uruguay, that aims to create an AI tool that will support governments, Organisations of Persons with Disabilities, and curriculum developers to accelerate production of cost-effective, accessible, high-quality digital learning content.
Accessible Digital Learning Materials Key for Quality Education
Access to a quality education can transform a child’s life and enable them to reach their full potential. For the 240 million children with disabilities – half of whom lack regular schooling or are not in school at all – accessing high-quality learning materials can pose a significant challenge. As a result, they are 49 percent more likely to have never attended school and 20 percent less likely to expect a better life when compared to their peers without disabilities.
In 2016, UNICEF created the Accessible Digital Textbooks (ADT) initiative, housed in the UNICEF Global Learning Innovation Hub in Helsinki, to help address the fact that millions of children around the world have little or no access to textbooks in a language they can understand. This deficiency limits their basic human right to literacy and education. ADTs – curriculum-based digital textbooks that follow the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework – offer customization, including narration, sign language, interactivity, audio descriptions and simple language to promote equal educational opportunities for all students, including students with disabilities.
Most countries lack the technical resources, capacity and funding to develop ADTs. They have a time-intensive and costly production process, which typically requires 6 to 9 months and between $20,000 to $50,000 to produce a single accessible textbook. Overcoming these barriers ensures that all children can access quality digital learning materials for the opportunity to learn and thrive, especially those with disabilities who are often among the most marginalized and disadvantaged.
Leveraging AI For More Equitable Learning For Every Child
Together, OpenAI and UNICEF are leveraging GenAI’s potential to develop and pilot an open-source solution that could significantly cut the amount of time and resources required to create ADTs. The initiative could transform learning for children, particularly for children with disabilities in the hardest to reach places, helping to provide tailored support for every child.
The partnership focuses on a two-year pilot in Uruguay, aiming to create a scalable open-source model that can quickly and efficiently convert learning materials, making them more accessible to more children. Uruguay was selected for its unique education technology ecosystem, strong skilled technical multi-disciplinary team, and the government’s commitment to ensure the successful implementation of UNICEF’s ADT initiative.
OpenAI models can help expedite ADT creation by automating aspects of the development process. The ADTs powered with AI will be designed according to UDL principles and will include the following features: screen reader navigation, easy-read, image descriptions, translation, interactive exercises and Eli5 (Explain like I'm 5). For example, OpenAI models can convert materials from PDFs or traditional textbooks, adapt them to different reading levels, and generate captions and image descriptions for the visually impaired. Once verified by the UNICEF-supported teams, these AI-adapted materials could dramatically reduce ADT development costs and production time, potentially from months to days.
In partnership with UNICEF’s Innocenti (Global Office of Research and Foresight), monitoring, evaluation, and learning will be critical to testing GenAI’s effectiveness in overcoming the main barriers of ADT development. The project takes an iterative approach to implementing course corrections and monitoring deployment to identify roadblocks, challenges, successes and lessons learned. Continuous evaluation will also contribute to the global evidence base on effective technology solutions that support learners with and without disabilities and can inform broader implementation globally.
Together, OpenAI and UNICEF are laying important groundwork for digital resources that will help accelerate accessible education for every learner, everywhere.
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