[blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College Students

Michael O. Hanson mhanson at winternet.com
Mon Sep 7 23:23:33 UTC 2009


I agree.  Students with disabilities should have identical access to 
whatever their sighted peers or peers without disabilities have.  I thought 
this was the intent of laws like the Americans With Disabilities act and 
other laws covering education of students with disabilities.


Mike
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Angie Matney" <angie.matney at gmail.com>
To: "'NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List'" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College 
Students


> Hello Chhuck,
>
> Actually, ,sighted students *do* have people who obtain their books for
> them. All they have to do is go to the book store and pay the proper fee.
> They don't have to convince publishers or authors that they deserve a
> "special" copy of the book. The university obtains them as a matter of
> course. Shouldn't it be the same for me? Shouldn't I be able to go to the
> book store, buy a book, and then read it?
>
> It's not acceptable for a student to wait weeks and weeks to get books 
> when
> the technology exists that would enable the student to create her own 
> books
> in a matter of hours. But it's impractical to ask students to deal with
> publishers in most situations, simply because publishers are not going to
> deal directly with students. They want assurances that their files are not
> going to be distributed indiscriminantly.
>
> To be clear, I'm a strong proponent of OCR technology. I don't know how I
> would have gotten through law school without the ability to scan my own
> books in a brief amount of time. But when I could get electronic copies 
> from
> the publishers, I did so. If the university could have produced an etext
> copy of every book as soon as I bought it (or nearly so), I would have
> gladly let them do it. I don't think that would have made me less
> independent. The problem is, the system is broken. I refused to be weeks
> behind in my reading because of the inability of the school and the
> publishers to meet my needs for etexts.
>
> My ability to have nearly instant access to any book is liberating. I also
> like having some control over the process by which I obtain the books.
> During school, I knew that if I wanted to read a supplemental text, I 
> could
> do so without depending on overworked DSS staff and slow publishers. But I
> still believe, on some level, that this shouldn't be the way it is.
>
> Angie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of ckrugman at sbcglobal.net
> Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 5:32 PM
> To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College
> Students
>
> Actually, you further illustrate my point in that it really doesn't make 
> any
>
> difference whether the student learns to take responsibility working with
> the publishers electronically or otherwise. The colleges shouldn't be 
> doing
> this for students as it fosters dependence and enables them. Sighted
> students don't have anyone obtaining their materials for them and neither
> should blind students. Officially, I would hope that NFB doesn't support
> these processes.
> Chuck
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "WB" <mruniverse08 at gmail.com>
> To: "'NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List'" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 10:59 AM
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College
> Students
>
>
>>I can see your point to an extent, Chuck.  While I agree for the need to
>> lead an independent life through education into the workforce, the fact 
>> of
>> the matter is that we are in a different time.  So many things are
>> electronically based, whether it be for the disabled or not.  As we all
>> know
>> in the legal field, in the past few years there has been a considerable
>> push
>> to go paperless in the court system and firms.
>>
>> I don't believe that making this service available will necessarily make
>> an
>> individual less independent.  I think this service is catching up to the
>> way
>> society as a whole has gone...electronic.  When I studied to become a
>> paralegal, I learned to shepherdize with books.  That is now really 
>> almost
>> non-existent.  I'm thankful for being able to do that electronically now
>> because of my loss of sight.
>>
>> Sometimes I think I may think a bit differently than those who have had
>> vision impairments for most of their lives because I still view things
>> predominately from a sighted person's perspective.
>>
>> But where you are correct is that individuals, disabled or not, should be
>> able to also use the old way in case the electronic way is unavailable.
>> But, as we know, we all adapt to what is necessary.
>>
>> It was great reading your comments on this.
>>
>> William
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of ckrugman at sbcglobal.net
>> Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 12:43 PM
>> To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College
>> Students
>>
>> While this sounds good on the surface a drawback to this is that disabled
>> students are losing their choices to be independent by having to register
>> as
>>
>> being disabled and allowing the college to assume responsibility for
>> producing and locating textbooks. I realize I'm dating myself here but I
>> learned many valuable skills by having to procure and arrangement for use
>> of
>>
>> text materials in an available format. These skills included the
>> supervision
>>
>> of personnel (readers) a valuable skill transferable to the real work of
>> employment where supervision of staff is necessary, procuring materials 
>> in
>
>> a
>>
>> timely manner a transferable skill of meeting deadlines and insuring that
>> materials would be available. and an ability to be self-reliant learning
>> to
>> find and create available resources and development of increased problem
>> solving skills. Unfortunately, too many disabled students blind or
>> otherwise
>>
>> lack these skills today and as a result are ill equipped to adequately
>> compete in the real world of employment when programs such disabled
>> services
>>
>> do not exist in the real world. In many cases the development and use of
>> such systems prevent students from addressing individual needs with
>> faculty
>> members as they would have to do when they are on their own in an
>> employment
>>
>> setting.
>> Chuck
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
>> To: <david.andrews at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 7:42 PM
>> Subject: [blindlaw] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College Students
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From
>>>>
>>
> <http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/28/access>http://www.insidehighe
>> red.com/news/2009/08/28/access
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Textbooks for the Disabled
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>August 28, 2009
>>>>
>>>>The Association of American Publishers and the University of Georgia 
>>>>this
>>>>week unveiled an electronic database aimed at making it easier for 
>>>>blind,
>>>>dyslexic and otherwise impaired college students to get specialized
>>>>textbooks in time for classes.
>>>>
>>>>The database, called <http://www.accesstext.org/>AccessText, is designed
>>>>to centralize the process by which electronic versions of textbooks are
>>>>requested by colleges and supplied by publishers. Experts say it will
>>>>allow disabled students to get their textbooks more efficiently, help
>>>>colleges save money and avoid lawsuits, and protect publishers'
>>>>copyrights.
>>>>
>>>>For students whose disabilities prevent them from using traditional
>>>>texts,
>>
>>>>the normally straightforward task of acquiring books for their courses
>>>>can
>>
>>>>be tedious and frustrating. Federal law requires that colleges and
>>>>universities provide disabled students equal access to educational
>>>>materials, but this is often easier said than done. College officials
>>>>have
>>
>>>>to track down and contact the publisher of every textbook that each of
>>>>its
>>
>>>>disabled students buys and request an electronic copy. If such a copy
>>>>exists -- the likelihood shrinks the older the book and the smaller the
>>>>publisher -- college officials still have to convert the file to a 
>>>>format
>>>>that can be read by whatever reading aid the student uses. If not, the
>>>>college has to wait, sometimes weeks, to obtain permission to scan the
>>>>book and create its own electronic version.
>>>>
>>>>Once a college has an electronic copy, converting to a readable format
>>>>can
>>
>>>>be another complex process, says Sean Keegan, associate director of
>>>>assistive technology at Stanford University. Math and science texts 
>>>>often
>>>>arrive as scanned pages, and cannot always be easily read by the
>>>>character-recognition software the university uses to turn them into
>>>>standard electronic files, Keegan says. "That can take a longer amount 
>>>>of
>>>>time to process that material internally and turn it around and give 
>>>>that
>>>>to the student efficiently," he says.
>>>>
>>>>Meanwhile, delays in the process can make it impossible for disabled
>>>>students to prepare for and participate in classes. "Students need to
>>>>have
>>
>>>>a book in time so they can do the assigned reading and study for tests
>>>>and
>>
>>>>papers," says Gaeir Dietrich, interim director of high-tech training for
>>>>the California Community Colleges system. "So if the book doesn't come
>>>>until the term has been in session for three or four weeks, that puts
>>>>that
>>
>>>>student very far behind." Some students have sued colleges over such
>>>>delays, she says.
>>>>
>>>>AccessText aims to mitigate these woes by streamlining the request and
>>>>delivery process, says Ed McCoyd, executive director for accessibility
>>>>affairs at AAP.
>>>>
>>>>"There's a lot of transactional friction taking place currently," says
>>>>McCoyd. "What AccessText is trying to do is take some of that out of the
>>>>transaction by having parties agree to streamlined rules up front."
>>>>
>>>>Having colleges submit requests using the AccessText portal should
>>>>eliminate the need for the publishers to require endless paperwork with
>>>>each request to protect its copyrights, McCoyd says. Under the system,
>>>>the
>>
>>>>copyright protection agreements can be handled once, during 
>>>>registration,
>>>>and the requester's bona fides can be verified by a log-in.
>>>>
>>>>Currently, colleges that get tired of waiting for publishers to process
>>>>the paperwork and procure an electronic copy of a text sometimes just
>>>>scan
>>
>>>>a text themselves to try to satisfy the needs of disabled students in a
>>>>timely fashion, says Dietrich.
>>>>
>>>>AccessText is also set up to eliminate the need for different colleges 
>>>>to
>>>>convert the same text to a readable format once it is acquired. 
>>>>Currently
>>>>"numerous schools could be doing the exact same thing, converting the
>>>>same
>>
>>>>text," says Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at
>>>>the publishers' association. Under the new system, "if one school has
>>>>already spent the time and the money to convert a file to a format, they
>>>>could advise the AccessText network, which could then make the info
>>>>available that it was still available in that format, and that school
>>>>could share it with another school" -- thereby sparing those colleges 
>>>>the
>>>>time and resources it would have used to convert the file themselves, he
>>>>says.
>>>>
>>>>Eight major publishing houses paid a total of just under $1 million to
>>>>develop the AccessText network and maintain it through its beta phase,
>>>>which will end next July. From then on, it will sustain itself by 
>>>>billing
>>>>member colleges between $375 and $500 annually, depending on size.
>>>>
>>>>Dietrich notes that community colleges might not benefit from the
>>>>AccessText network as much as other institutions, since "we have a lot
>>>>more vocational classes and basic-skills classes, and a lot of those
>>>>books
>>
>>>>don't come through those big publishers, they come through specialized
>>>>publishers," she says. "It doesn't solve that part of the problem for
>>>>us."
>>>>
>>>>The network includes 92 percent of all college textbook publishers and 
>>>>is
>>>>recruiting even more, according to AAP officials.
>>>
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