Parents and students in elementary and secondary school should make sure that special educators in their boards know about Alternate Education Resources Ontario (AERO) at the W. Ross MacDonald Provincial School.  AERO loans alternate format materials such as Braille, large print, e-text, tape or daisy digital audio to school boards in Ontario, for the use of students who are print impaired. This includes students who have reading difficulties because of their learning disabilities.

Each student and advisor (school contact) must be registered with AERO prior to using the services.  Materials are loaned free of charge for the school year. Materials required for students must be ordered by and sent to the school contact. Loaned books are the responsibility of the school concerned and materials must be returned by end of the school year for which they have been borrowed.

AERO has an on-site collection of alternate format materials. If the material is not available on site, AERO will search outside their database and arrange to loan the material from other provincial libraries. For students attending provincially funded schools in Ontario AERO may purchase material from producers in Canada and the United States or have the book transcribed into an alternate format.

AERO maintains a website which contains a searchable catalogue of the books that have already been transcribed into alternate formats. The catalogue is accessible to parents, but the registering of a student and the ordering must be done through the school:

http://alternativeresources.ca/Aero/Public/WelcomePage.aspx