[blindlaw] Accessible textbook legislation

[T. Joseph Carter]

My layman's understanding (supported by the BookShare website) is 
that 17 USC § 121 makes the requirement that you obtain permission 
for each work a moot point--it provides blanket permission, at the 
expense of the specialized format requirement (a concession demanded 
by publishers at the time this was being legislated).

Universities to require that you purchase the book they chop up and 
scan, which should remove any question of the legality of a scan for 
the purpose of creating an accessibly formatted textbook.

That DSOs retain a copy of the scanned book after they give it back 
to you might run into questionable legal ground.  That's their 
problem though.  It make sense as a time and cost-cutting measure if 
they have future students who need that particular textbook edition, 
but the law does not permit them to make a copy for their own 
convenience.  I doubt that publishers are going to press that issue 
as long as their profits are not in danger, but they might have 
standing to do so.

It appears I may be a layman longer than I hoped.  Most schools' 
application deadline was last week, and I haven't taken the LSAT yet 
even.  As God wills, I suppose.  This much at least, this I can do.  
Oregon's going to get another run at accessible textbook legislation.

Joseph

On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 03:41:42AM +0000, b75205 at gmail.com wrote:
> California law has it that textbooks have to be accessible to the blind 
> and that the publisher must provide this for free. Since they are doing 
> it for california this means the books exist. Also I beleive there is 
> anational law on this subject, the problem is one of enforcement not 
> access.
>
> If you take a book and chop it up and make an accessible book without the 
> publishers consent, you are violating their rights. Its just like when a  
> gbroup of authors tried to claim that paperback editions of books were  
> different than har covers in famous Garrard publsihing case in the 1970s. 
> If you chop up a book there is no guarantee that it will be done 
> properly. They have a right to present the material even if it is going 
> to be given away to the blind. The people who are in charge of the book 
> are the ones who have to make it accessible to the blind, it is their 
> work, it is not yours.
>
> Since most publishers want to sell textbooks to california, you just need 
> to find out which ones have done this work and which ones have not.
>
> james
>
> On Feb 3, 2009 5:42pm, "EJ Zufelt" <everett at zufelt.ca> wrote:
>> Good evening,
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>> I support the concept of requiring textbook publishers to make 
>> accessible 
> copies of their texts available to students with disabilities. There 
> really just is no reason that they can't / shouldn't do this.
>>
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>> However, practically speaking, in my first year of law school there was 
>> 
> only one textbook that was not available from the publisher in a digital  
> format. So, perhaps this is already being done by some publishers more 
> than people are aware. Normally contacting the publisher directly, or 
> through your educational institutions department for disabled students, 
> these texts can be obtained quite quickly.
>>
>>
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>> As for forcing a blind student to scan books themself, as a character 
> building exercise, I really don't understand this at all. As a blind  
> student I want the opportunity to be as lazy as my class mates (smile). 
> But seriously, I have spent many the hour scanning texts and could have 
> spent that time in more productive ways, like studying, socializing with 
> peers, participating in extra curricular activities, etc.
>>
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>> Everett
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>> On 3-Feb-09, at 6:43 PM, chatter8712 at gmail.com wrote:
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>> And Bookshare does it on a vollunteer effort. What we need to do is
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>> get something like bookshare for textbooks in general. Those with the
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>> skills can scan textbooks and the rest of us can use them under the
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>> same copyright clauses that make them available to Blind individuals
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>> under Bookshare. For your information, this law is 17 USC § 121,
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>> and reads partially as follows:
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>> "… it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to
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>> reproduce or to distribute copies of a previously published,
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>> nondramatic literary work if such copies are reproduced or distributed
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>> in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons
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>> with disabilities."
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>> More information available at http://bookshare.org/about/legalInformation.
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>> On 2/3/09, ckrugman at sbcglobal.net ckrugman at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
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>> Good points. Bookshare.org has converted thousands of books to daisy 
> format.
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>>
>> Chuck
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>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
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>> From: b75205 at gmail.com>
>>
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>> To: "Russell J. Thomas; Jr." rjtlawfirm at yahoo.com>; blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>
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>> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 12:19 PM
>>
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>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Accessible textbook legislation
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>> Hold your horses, this is already done. Books are made today for the
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>> California market, they are made to be converted to daisy format. Even
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>> trade publishers are required to do this work. The books exist. By the way
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>> you are probably stealing copyrights by cutting up books like that.
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>> The main problem with accessibility is that everyone thinks they have to
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>> reinvent the solution, when the problem is that your state IT people do
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>> not know what is out there, do not care and have no incentive to find out
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>> what is out there in the market. The re-inventing accessibility is a
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>> serious time waster and waster of resources. Forms designed by the state
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>> are extremely expensive and there really is no reason to waste this
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>> money.
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>> Choose publishers who have converted the books to daisy format.
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>> Most of them do this now. It is required under the law. Also there are
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>> organizations that are converting books to daisy format there is on in
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>> Lousiana that is converting text books. By the way, these books are free.
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>> The major problem with text books are tests. Questions and answers. That's
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>> where you will find your problems. The solutions to tests are a bit more
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>> complex and way beyond the abilities of your state IT people who are
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>> cutting up books.
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>> By the way you can make daisy formated documents using Word or InDesign.
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>>
>> James Pepper
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>> On Feb 3, 2009 10:21am, "Russell J. Thomas, Jr." rjtlawfirm at yahoo.com>
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>> wrote:
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>> You might find the following URL helpful, although it appears that the
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>> site
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>> www.tsbvi.edu/textbooks/
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>> -----Original Message-----
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>> From: blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
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>> Behalf Of T. Joseph Carter
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>> Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:27 PM
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>> To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
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>> Cc: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
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>> Subject: [blindlaw] Accessible textbook legislation
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>> Hi all,
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>> We're getting ready for our state legislative seminar here in Oregon
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>> and I suggested to my state president that the problem of accessible
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>> textbooks here in Oregon is abysmal at best. He thinks he knows who
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>> I should talk to here in Oregon about that, if I can get a good
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>> example of textbook legislation to work from. This is, I realize, a
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>> national problem. Some universities solve it well enough, but the
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>> closest to that at an Oregon university is the direct result of my
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>> intervention.
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>> I'd like to push my state to adopt accessible textbook standards. Is
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>> there a good template out there from which I can work? I am told
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>> California does not allow its universities to use textbooks that
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>> cannot be obtained in an accessible electronic format. That might be
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>> a good starting place. *grin*
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>> While I am sure readers on this list and over on nabs-l (Cc'd) are
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>> aware of what I mean by abysmal, I'll describe the standard process
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>> used here in Oregon anyway:
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>> 1. Students buy the books at retail price (hundreds of dollars).
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>> Books cannot be purchased early, and must be carried several blocks
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>> to the DSO.
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>> 2. Students deliver their books to their university's DSO.
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>> 3. The DSO sends the book to the university print shop to cut up the
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>> book.
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>> 4. The cut book is returned to the DSO.
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>> 5. The DSO scans the book using a B&W xerox machine at about 150 dpi.
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>> 6. These scans are fed into an antiquated version of OCR software
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>> such as ABBYY FineReader.
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>> 7. ODS sends the book out to be "rebound" with a plastic comb.
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>> 8. The poorly OCR'd text is edited by hand at least a little bit, in
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>> theory.
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>> 9. These lightly edited poor OCRs of textbooks are read using a
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>> "natural" voice into mp3 files.
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>> 10. The student must come to the DSO to collect their mangled
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>> textbooks and mp3 CDs, usually about the third week of an 11 week
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>> The process often _begins_ the first day of the term, because books
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>> The mp3 CDs are next to useless since they are computer-read versions
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>> of badly scanned text, full of errors and lacking anything resembling
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>> interpretations of diagrams. The printed books come back with pages
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>> missing, out of order, torn, and otherwise destroyed. I am told that
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>> my DSO spends an average of four hours editing a moderately sized
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>> textbook once scanned, and the new person who spends the four hours
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>> produces significantly better output in that time frame than her
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>> predecessor, but it's still pretty bad no matter how you look at it.
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>> The cost to the university is more than a day's pay for someone per
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>> book. The student's cost is several hundred dollars in destroyed
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>> books, and this is standard policy at five higher educational
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>> institutions I am aware of in my state.
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>> One of these is developing better policies based on my efforts, but
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>> the better policies are meeting with lukewarm reactions by students
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>> because as bad as the current system is, it doesn't involve waiting a
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>> month for the publishers to finally respond that they don't have or
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>> won't provide the textbook in question.
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>> And while some might argue that a blind student should be responsible
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>> for scanning their own books, a more-than-full-time student does not
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>> often have that luxury. When you consider the reading volume
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>> required for graduate studies, that's just not feasible. Publishers
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>> will not provide electronic copies to students, only to DSOs, only
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>> when a student who needs it has registered for the class and
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>> purchased a book and not always even then.
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>> This must stop. The publishers should be routinely providing
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>> electronic copies to DSOs as soon as they receive book orders so that
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>> the electronic books are available to the DSO immediately to begin
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>> doing whatever they need to in order to adapt the book from a clean,
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>> correct, digital source.
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>> With the right pointers, I intend to do all that I can to make sure
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>> it stops here in Oregon. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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>> Thanks,
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>> Joseph
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