[Blindmath] Students should know their legal rights!

Sun Jul 17 00:25:32 UTC 2011

Susan
This is true. The problem I have with the regulations and the "suing
process", if you will, is that it presupposes that special convertion
for disabled students is the norm, and does not leave publishers with
any responsibility whatsoever.
Students ask their DSS office to make the book available in an
accessible format.
DSS offices ask the publishers to provide an "accessible" or at least
"electronic" copy, which, most of the time, turns out to be a PDF
file, or, in the vast majority of cases, a file with math equations as
bitmap/picture elements in a file. Then the office staff will either
transcribe the book themselves, or outsource the work to someone else
who can do it for them. The end result is that the publishers may even
believe that PDF is acceptable accessible file format for math, and
certainly feel it is no responsibility of theirs to consider more
accessible alternatives.

The student never makes direct contact with the publisher, and if the
student is unhappy the DSS office/university is held responsible for
not transcribing the material into accessible format.
With Epub3/html5 advancements, there is no reason we should take it
for granted that a dedicated group of professionals is needed to
provide access to materials. What about work environments and
professional certifications? I personally gave up, at least for now,
on the CFA (Certified Financial Analyst) set of tests, because most of
the material is not very accessible, and they (the CFA organization
that administers the tests and publishes prepatory matreial) have
little to no idea or willingness to make it so when I contacted them
(about 2 years ago).
I know people have better luck with their PDF files and InftyReader
now, and I know I could, theoretically, sue them to estalibsh their
responsibility for making materials accessible (though, since they
receive no federal funding, this would have to be on grounds of
ADA)and possibly reap the benefits eventually, but it's just not worth
the pain of going through the process (especially, in my case, as I am
neither a perminent resident or citizen of the U.S. making all
proceedings more complicated). If, however, we can establish
accessibility as, at lesat partly, the responsibility of the
publisher, especially when it comes to eBooks, I may, in a few years,
be able to take said tests without major difficulties, law suits or
unpleasantries.

So, yes, this is a great point, and students should be more willing to
speak up and self advocate, but I want publishers to get the eventual
feedback. In the age of electronic books, it is only a matter of
technology to have basic accessibility built in (at least audio) to a
standard purchase, and we should, to the extent possible, eliminate
costly, slow and labor intensive manual transcribing of materials.
So I will certainly inform students of their rights, no doubt, but I
will advise them to personally contact publishers, both with positive
and negative things they experience, so that the publishers will get
some feedback, even if they are not necessarily responsible for
dealing with it.
Amanda, it is abslutely clear that if you require braille, audio is
not sufficient. I would need to dig through my documentation, but
there was a Department of Education law suit in this regard where a
student sued her DSS office for not making math available to her in
Braille and found audio insufficient. The case was decided in her
favor.

I do want to add though that I have looked at lot of DSS office
discussions and mailing lists, and I have to say these people are
hugely overburdened with all sorts of issues, and really do try to do
the best they can. So, yes, complain and make your needs clear, but
also remember that often they are trying to do the impossible, and the
publishers should be the ones hearing it from you as well, as they
can, without a doubt, do much better.
So, give feedback, demand your rights, but at least be cevil about it. :)

On 7/16/11, Amanda Lacy <lacy925 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Susan,
>
> I was told by the manager of the OSD at my current campus that audio was
> considered accessible and that providing Braille was going above and beyond
> the obligations of that office. Is that false? This discussion involved a
> math textbook. Is it the responsibility of the school or the publisher to
> provide accessible textbooks?
>
> Thanks,
> Amanda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Jolly" <easjolly at ix.netcom.com>
> To: <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2011 6:32 PM
> Subject: [Blindmath] Students should know their legal rights!
>
>
>> Birkir,
>>
>> Thanks for the great feedback; I agree with everything you've written.
>>
>> As far as your upcoming contact with the NFB students, I hope that someone
>>
>> at the SLAM is knowledgeable about the latest laws.  It is actually
>> illegal for universities and colleges in the United States to not provide
>> accessible materials in a student's desired medium in a timely fashion.
>> Moreover, if a student produces class work in a standard format, such as
>> braille, the university is obligated to pay the costs of converting that
>> format to whatever format is required by the professor.
>>
>> I can understand an individual student's reluctance to be viewed as a
>> troublemaker but I believe that if a few more braille-using students were
>> willing to actually sue their DSS offices when they don't meet their legal
>>
>> oblications, a lot of the current problems with lack of materials would go
>>
>> away a lot more quickly!
>>
>> Susan
>>
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>
>
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