Route 66 Literacy is a comprehensive set of literacy content and instructional tools and services for adolescent and adult learners delivered via the Internet.  It combines a balanced set of reading, writing and word study at the first and second grade level while incorporating two fundamental features:

• High-interest content – Because adolescent and adult students with and without disabilities learn most effectively when reading materials contain content relevant to their interests, Route 66 Literacy will incorporate high-interest, age-appropriate reading materials.
   
• Teacher Tutor – The real-time Teacher Tutor helps alleviate the instructor training problem described above by providing instructors with effective directions, supports and instructional feedback on a minute-by-minute basis.  This ensures that the instructor is gaining skills in reading instruction techniques while the student is learning to read.

Both of these features are unique to the Route 66 Literacy service, and both benefit significantly from Route 66 Literacy’s Internet delivery mechanism.  Because Route 66 Literacy is web-based — unlike most other educational software — content can be continuously updated to reflect changes in popular culture and current events.  In addition, the Teacher Tutor functionality can be upgraded any time new instructional techniques are developed by researchers at CLDS and other institutions.

The first product in the Route 66 Literacy line is designed for adolescents with developmental disabilities who read at beginning levels and the adults who teach them.  It is targeted at the first grade reading ability, is accessible by persons with the most severe physical and communication impairments and uses content that appeals to adolescents. 

A critical advantage of the core technology applied by Route 66 Literacy is its web delivery. 

• The Route 66 Platform provides all engineering services needed to operate the program in a variety of domains.  This platform provides customer registration, billing and payment; security, customer identification, and customer support via website and email. 
   
• Route 66 Literacy offers the competitive advantage of being truly universally accessible.  While standards of universal accessibility are commonly followed by any online educational tool, Route 66 Literacy goes beyond the standards to an ideal.  It can interface with existing screen reading tools, Braille translators, and alternative input devices.  It also has built in access features for persons with the most significant physical impairments so that no external hardware or software is required.  Persons with the most significant physical impairments will find that they can use their own micro-switches to select any hotspot on the screen, navigate up or down, and navigate throughout the site.  This server-side scanning access allows users with physical disabilities to access the site from any public or private computer without the need for costly, specialized software that is typically required for micro-switch access.
   
• Route 66 Literacy does not require packing and inventory.  This allows us to update content based upon current events (particularly important for adults) and to include references to popular characters and personalities (particularly important for children and adolescents).  It also allows us to offer the product at a price point that should minimize its time to adoption in schools, and make it affordable for the low literate adults who are much more likely to be unemployed than their peers with higher literacy skills.
   
• In the adult literacy community, it is likely that the web delivery will lead to earlier adoption rates than traditional software targeted at adult learners.  Because adult literacy programs currently face ongoing financial difficulties, they often cannot afford the computer hardware that is required to run multimedia-heavy traditional software products – not to mention the software licenses themselves.  Route 66 Literacy will allow these programs to purchase a subscription and take advantage of Internet-ready computers already in their communities without having to invest in additional hardware.  Additionally, the subscription model spreads the cost over time, removing the high one-time cost of purchasing equipment and software.  In the fall of 2000, 98% of public schools and 100% of public libraries in the U.S. reported that they had access to the Internet (Cattagni, Westat, 2001).  With no special software required, an adult with low literacy skills and his/her tutor could log on to an appropriate Route 66 Literacy product using one of these publicly accessible computers and experience success.

Learn more about the development of content for delivery through Route 66.