[Gabs] Textbooks for the Disabled

[Isaiah Wilcox]

> 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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