[blindlaw] Accessible textbook legislation

Tue Feb 3 07:02:29 UTC 2009

Chuck,

I'm not looking to debate the responsibility of blind people to find 
a solution no matter what.  I will find whatever solution I have to.  
I am very resourceful, but that's not the issue here.

Other states have legislation to require publishers to provide 
electronic books, and California at least is supposed to require that 
higher education institutions use ONLY books for which the electronic 
version is available.  This is the correct approach.

This needs to national law, just as we have IDEA now for K-12.  We 
have not managed to convince lawmakers at the national level, 
however, and the only thing that we can do is work at the state 
level.  Now's the time in Oregon.

Joseph

On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 09:28:50PM -0800, ckrugman at sbcglobal.net wrote:
> While it sounds like there are problems, some times when the student is  
> given the option to solve these problems, such as doing their own 
> scanning, sending books to be recorded or transcribed, purchasing the 
> books on their own etc. may solve the problem. While their definitely 
> needs to be options for students to obtain books early as a student on a 
> campus I would not want to be bound by a uniform policy set forth by a 
> disabled student office or any other body to determine what works for me. 
> I have attained two advanced degrees and for one I did most of my own 
> scanning when it was not convenient to have books already recorded. My 
> bachelor's and master's degrees were attained at a time scanning books 
> was not a reality and not only did I have to the necessary studying, I 
> had to schedule live readers make sure that appropriate forms were turned 
> in so they would be paid as well as to recruit and hire readers that I 
> found acceptable. Granted this was lots of work It provided me the 
> opportunity to learn many valuable skills that have lasted through many 
> years of employee supervision and management. Students choosing to 
> develop and utilize such skills gives necessary preparation for the real  
> world that some times is taken away by having all of these administrative 
> services provided. I have seen too many cases where blind and other 
> disabled students finish college or graduate school and because of 
> everything being done for them are not prepared for the real world where 
> if successfully employed they are on their own. I realize that this may 
> be somewhat of an unpopular position but I believe that this is a serious 
> issue that merits discussion although perhaps off topic for this list.
> Chuck
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "T. Joseph Carter" 
> <carter.tjoseph at gmail.com>
> To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:26 PM
> Subject: [blindlaw] Accessible textbook legislation
>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> We're getting ready for our state legislative seminar here in Oregon 
>> and I suggested to my state president that the problem of accessible 
>> textbooks here in Oregon is abysmal at best.  He thinks he knows who I 
>> should talk to here in Oregon about that, if I can get a good example 
>> of textbook legislation to work from.  This is, I realize, a national 
>> problem.  Some universities solve it well enough, but the closest to 
>> that at an Oregon university is the direct result of my intervention.
>>
>> I'd like to push my state to adopt accessible textbook standards.  Is  
>> there a good template out there from which I can work?  I am told  
>> California does not allow its universities to use textbooks that cannot 
>> be obtained in an accessible electronic format.  That might be a good  
>> starting place.  *grin*
>>
>> While I am sure readers on this list and over on nabs-l (Cc'd) are 
>> aware of what I mean by abysmal, I'll describe the standard process 
>> used here in Oregon anyway:
>>
>> 1. Students buy the books at retail price (hundreds of dollars).  Books 
>> cannot be purchased early, and must be carried several blocks to the 
>> DSO.
>> 2. Students deliver their books to their university's DSO.
>> 3. The DSO sends the book to the university print shop to cut up the book.
>> 4. The cut book is returned to the DSO.
>> 5. The DSO scans the book using a B&W xerox machine at about 150 dpi.
>> 6. These scans are fed into an antiquated version of OCR software such 
>> as ABBYY FineReader.
>> 7. ODS sends the book out to be "rebound" with a plastic comb.
>> 8. The poorly OCR'd text is edited by hand at least a little bit, in  
>> theory.
>> 9. These lightly edited poor OCRs of textbooks are read using a 
>> "natural" voice into mp3 files.
>> 10. The student must come to the DSO to collect their mangled textbooks 
>> and mp3 CDs, usually about the third week of an 11 week quarter.
>>
>> The process often _begins_ the first day of the term, because books are 
>> not available any sooner than that.
>>
>> The mp3 CDs are next to useless since they are computer-read versions 
>> of badly scanned text, full of errors and lacking anything resembling  
>> interpretations of diagrams.  The printed books come back with pages  
>> missing, out of order, torn, and otherwise destroyed.  I am told that 
>> my DSO spends an average of four hours editing a moderately sized 
>> textbook once scanned, and the new person who spends the four hours 
>> produces significantly better output in that time frame than her 
>> predecessor, but it's still pretty bad no matter how you look at it.
>>
>> The cost to the university is more than a day's pay for someone per 
>> book. The student's cost is several hundred dollars in destroyed books, 
>> and this is standard policy at five higher educational institutions I 
>> am aware of in my state.
>>
>> One of these is developing better policies based on my efforts, but the 
>> better policies are meeting with lukewarm reactions by students because 
>> as bad as the current system is, it doesn't involve waiting a month for 
>> the publishers to finally respond that they don't have or won't provide 
>> the textbook in question.
>>
>> And while some might argue that a blind student should be responsible 
>> for scanning their own books, a more-than-full-time student does not 
>> often have that luxury.  When you consider the reading volume required 
>> for graduate studies, that's just not feasible.  Publishers will not 
>> provide electronic copies to students, only to DSOs, only when a 
>> student who needs it has registered for the class and purchased a book 
>> and not always even then.
>>
>> This must stop.  The publishers should be routinely providing 
>> electronic copies to DSOs as soon as they receive book orders so that 
>> the electronic books are available to the DSO immediately to begin 
>> doing whatever they need to in order to adapt the book from a clean, 
>> correct, digital source.
>>
>> With the right pointers, I intend to do all that I can to make sure it  
>> stops here in Oregon.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Joseph
>>
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>
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