[blindlaw] West Publishing

Mon Aug 30 16:49:43 UTC 2010

Hello James,

As a law school student, it isn't true that I have the option of not buying 
a particular publisher's text.  Professors dictate which texts are required- 
period.  As for an incentive on the publisher's part, there are plenty of 
things that aren't financially advantageous to companies but are necessary 
for consumers: take safety laws for example.

Jay
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marc Workman" <mworkman.lists at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:34 AM
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] West Publishing

> James said,
> You don't have to buy their book, you can use other sources.  They are not 
> providing a necessary service.
>
> Marc says,
> You don't have to come into my restaurant.  There are other restaurants 
> with ramps.  I am not providing a necessary service, so I have no 
> obligation to make my restaurant accessible.  Would you accept this 
> argument?
>
> James said,
> What is a reasonable accessibility?  That is not defined.
>
> Marc says,
> My guess is you meant reasonable accommodation, but the fact that it is 
> not defined does not mean service providers are absolved of all 
> obligations. This is why courts, human rights tribunals, legislators, and 
> so on exist, to define and clarify concepts like reasonable accommodation, 
> undo hardship, discrimination, etc.
>
> James said,
> Why should anyone help you if they are not going to be paid to help you. 
> People have other things to do than to work on making content free to the 
> blind.
>
> Marc says,
> Why should I build a ramp so you can get in my restaurant? I have other 
> things to do than to build free ramps for wheelchair users.
>
> James said,
> This is an extremely time consuming effort, it is not easy and you want it 
> for free.  If there is no incentive to help you other than the sense of 
> trying to do something good for people and when people like you are 
> demanding that they do this stuff with no reward then you get what you 
> have today, nothing complete, content that is partially accessible deemed 
> to be accessible.
>
> Marc says,
> Building ramps is an extremely time-consuming effort.  It is not easy, and 
> you want it for free.  Therefore, I have no obligation to make my 
> restaurant accessible.  Do you think this is an acceptable argument?
>
> There is, of course, an incentive.  It's a negative one: if you don't take 
> reasonable steps to make your product accessible, in accordance with the 
> law, then you will be penalized, and you will no longer be able to sell 
> your product.  Sounds like a pretty good incentive to me.  If I'm a 
> racist, what is my incentive to sell my product to people of different 
> races? It is certainly not to be nice.  My incentive is the same as that 
> noted above: if I choose to discriminate, then I can't sell my product in 
> America, period.
>
> You can argue that making printed books accessible costs *too* much, that 
> it *does* constitute an undo hardship.  I doubt that, but for all I know 
> it could be the case.  What you can't do, at least not if you want to 
> consistently maintain that unjustifiable discrimination in the market 
> place is wrong, is say that, because it's expensive, or because it's not 
> easy, or because I'm insisting on equal access at an equal price, there 
> are no obligations to take reasonable steps to make products and services 
> accessible to all consumers.
>
> Best,
>
> Marc
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "James Pepper" <b75205 at gmail.com>
> To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 8:32 AM
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] West Publishing
>
>
>> You don't have to buy their book, you can use other sources.  They are 
>> not
>> providing a necessary service.  What is a reasonable accessibility?  That
>> is not defined. Oh sure we have section 508 which makes documents legally
>> accessible but not actually accessible. The conditions right now is to 
>> make
>> some content accessible to the blind, it does not matter to the law that 
>> all
>> of the content is not accessible only parts of it.  And so you have this
>> horrible situation we have today where content is half accessible, there 
>> are
>> gaps and there is no incentive to fix this gap. Why should anyone help 
>> you
>> if they are not going to be paid to help you.  People have other things 
>> to
>> do than to work on making content free to the blind. This is an extremely
>> time consuming effort, it is not easy and you want it for free.  If there 
>> is
>> no incentive to help you other than the sense of trying to do something 
>> good
>> for people and when people like you are demanding that they do this stuff
>> with no reward then you get what you have today, nothing complete, 
>> content
>> that is partially accessible deemed to be accessible.  You have to rely 
>> on
>> organizations that are overeloaded with work to get out the content. 
>> That
>> is the state of things today.
>>
>> James
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Marc Workman 
>> <mworkman.lists at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> James said,
>>>
>>> West publishing owns their book.  Unless you want to seize people's
>>> property, then if they want to sell the product then that is up to them!
>>>
>>> Marc says,
>>> Is it up to them if they don't want to sell their books to black people? 
>>> If
>>> you decide to sell your goods to the public, their are constraints 
>>> placed on
>>> you.  Someone may own a restaurant, but ownership does not mean that she 
>>> has
>>> no obligation to make the restaurant wheelchair accessible.  I think 
>>> it's a
>>> legitimate argument to say that publishers who sell their books to the
>>> public have obligations to take reasonable steps to make their products
>>> accessible to people with print disabilities.  If taking these steps
>>> constitutes an undo hardship, which you seem to imply, then that's 
>>> another
>>> question, but insisting on reasonable accommodations is not the same as
>>> seizing property.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Marc
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Pepper" <b75205 at gmail.com>
>>> To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
>>> Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 2:00 PM
>>>
>>> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] West Publishing
>>>
>>>
>>>   What?  the costs of making a book accessible are excessive.  That is 
>>> the
>>>> problem here.  Where do you get the idea that it is easy? Ah you hear
>>>> things
>>>> like you can make DAISY books in Microsoft Word well pal until you
>>>> actually
>>>> do it, you do not realize how much content goes missing.  All of this 
>>>> free
>>>> software that is designed for accessibility misses the mark.  Just look 
>>>> at
>>>> what we have now.  Are you happy with accessibility now.  Are we all 
>>>> done,
>>>> don't need to do any more work on this, everything is accessible now.
>>>>
>>>> If it were easy everyone would do it.  The problem here is that there 
>>>> are
>>>> half a dozen different formats for electronic books, not to mention all 
>>>> of
>>>> the free services that create books and each one of them, I repeat each
>>>> one
>>>> of them has to be laid out individually and that means the editors are
>>>> editing editions over and over again.  Until this gets standardized 
>>>> onto
>>>> one
>>>> format then publishers can challenge these laws telling them they have 
>>>> to
>>>> do
>>>> it for free.
>>>>
>>>> West publishing owns their book.  Unless you want to seize people's
>>>> property, then if they want to sell the product then that is up to 
>>>> them!
>>>>
>>>> James
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
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>
>
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