[Blindmath] Students Should Know Their Legal Rights

[Birkir R. Gunnarsson]

Susan

Good points.
I guess an interesting piece of work is to figure out how students
should best notify people of their accessibility difficulties, who and
how.
It's important that the publishers know about the issues students are
having, mostly for future considerations when Epub3 standard for
eBooks emerges. I talked to a few publisher representatives at a large
conference in New York in February, and they're all interested in
MathML technology for displaying math and science content, but their
issue has been the lack of support from different browsers and other
hardware such as eReaders.
So we have to deal with a lot of chicken and egg problems in the business.
Do we go after the iBooks app, the Kindle, the Nook, the publishers
for these books or after the universities. Within the universities, do
we just talk to our DSS contact, should we make the professors of our
courses aware, should we go to the dean, or whoever is in charge of
funding the DSS office, should we even go up to the Department of
Education to explain our case.
The reason I really want publishers to stay aware of our needs is the
transition to the world of eBooks. I fear that if we're left behind in
this transition, we won't see marked improvements for years to come.
It is a huge overhead to prepare materials especially for us, one
which a commercial enterprise in stiff competition, dealing with
copyright issues, piracy, shrinking demand etc, is not likely to put
much priority on, even if they wanted to. But if our needs can be
factorred in as an additional weight to one of the choices they have
about their future developments, standardization and foray into the
eBooks market. If they are aware of what MathML (which can be viewed
as LaTeX, for instance through MathType), may help open access to as
much as 15% of the consumers (people with print disabilities), I want
that message to be sent out loud and clear.
If anyone has good ideas about a reasonable strategy that a student
can use to make complaints (or to give crdit where credit's due), who
to talk to, and in what order, I'd be very interested to throw that
into my presentation.
Thanks guys, tremendous discussions all round.
I'll give some thought ot the student rights issue. I have seen
tid-bits here and there, and I have a lot of web resources. I'll dig.
If I can't find anything, may be this is something we can add to A2S
going forward.
Thanks
-B

On 7/17/11, Amanda Lacy <lacy925 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Susan, Susan, and Birkir,
>
> Thank you all for affirming that I have more than just the right to remain
> silent. Is there an online resource where blind students can learn about
> their rights and the steps they should take to get the OSD to do what it is
> supposed to do? I would like to stop fighting, avoid suing anybody, and
> focus all my efforts on getting a good education. Thanks again.
>
> Amanda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Jolly" <easjolly at ix.netcom.com>
> To: <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2011 8:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Students Should Know Their Legal Rights
>
>
>> Amanda,
>>
>> Susan M. is right (and a cyber kiss back at her).  You get to choose your
>> desired accessible medium, not anyone else.  The only restriction is that
>> you must choose a medium that is generally recognized as an accessible
>> medium, not sure of the exact legal terminology.  All that restriction
>> means is that you can't use Klingon or something you've invented yourself,
>>
>> not that some official decides what's best for you.
>>
>> Birkir,
>>
>> Most US colleges and universities, even private ones, get a large amount
>> of public funding.  For example, it is typical for them to take 50% off
>> the top of  any federal research grant for their own purposes.  And they
>> benefit from students' getting loans, and so forth. Plus they get various
>> tax breaks.
>>
>> Meanwhile, most publishers are commercial enterprises.  So that is why the
>>
>> government places the legal responsibility on the colleges and
>> universities here in the US.  However, US textbook publishers are
>> definitely becoming more aware because of their obligations because of the
>>
>> US Department of Education's  National Instructional Materials
>> Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) for textbooks.
>> http://tinyurl.com/6l6xud
>>
>> I understand your larger point and agree with you that anything we can do
>> to make publishers more aware is good but we can't really blame them for
>> considering the bottom line.
>>
>> I also agree that all the DSS people that I know personally or have had
>> some contact with are extremely hard-working and well-intentioned.
>> However, I'd think that if students complained to the proper persons, it
>> could help their DSS offices to get more funding.
>>
>> This might be a good place to point out that some DSS offices are between
>> a rock and a hard place because if they get known as providing good
>> service, their institution may end up getting more students who need their
>>
>> services while they don't get a proportional increase in resources.
>>
>> Susan
>>
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