[nabs-l] Where Do Textooks Come From?

[Teal Bloodworth]

well elizabeth

i have had some problems with DSO offices and for an independant book 
finding you are going to have some problems. Does your school have a 
tutorinng program? you could always check and see what your DSS has 
available.

When orddering a book from the publisher in a different format they send it 
to you via email. Then you open the link and download  and right click, 
arrow down to properties and clich then change ABC to ZIP and it will then 
be accessible electronically  or if you have a stream it can read it to you 
audibly. Pretty handy but alittle delayed and may take a while. These are 
directions from my A/t person an di havent tried it yet but maybe she knows?

        Good Luck
                -teal
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "T. Joseph Carter" <carter.tjoseph at gmail.com>
To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Where Do Textooks Come From?


> Elizabeth,
>
> Unfortunately, you cannot.  The publishers basically flatly refuse to deal 
> with individual blind students.
>
> Every single higher education publisher has a publishing rights office to 
> sell permission to copy and reprint their property.  Almost all have a 
> disability accommodations contact person or request form for a DSO to fill 
> out on your behalf.
>
> If your DSO is not contacting the publishers, they should be, and I can 
> attempt to secure an updated database of publisher contacts for you to 
> discuss with your university.
>
> The problem is the next step:  You have to buy the book before most of the 
> request forms will be accepted.  As it turns out, that's not quite true. 
> MOST publishers, even though they say that, will accept an agreement from 
> the publisher to require you to provide them with proof of purchase before 
> releasing the book to you as sufficient for that requirement.
>
> There's a sort of workaround for the remaining publishers:  The DSO can 
> purchase the book and use those details for the request, then have you 
> purchase the book from them (or return it to the bookstore when you 
> purchase yours), or something like that.  Whatever is needed.
>
> Of course, even in California, publishers do not always have an electronic 
> copy of the text to provide, leading to the chop and scan solution.  Of 
> course, if you have a quality scanner and a good OCR package with a 
> well-trained operator, I'm learning you can get reasonably good results 
> from chop and scan for many books.  I've yet to see a DSO with a quality 
> scanner, however.  Often student workers wind up doing the editing, and 
> often they haven't got much training.
>
> We're nowhere near an efficient enough process that I can actually 
> recommend that you do it yourself, especially at the graduate level where 
> your time is not so free as it once may have been.  The one thing I know 
> for certain is that there are several doctoral degrees waiting for those 
> working to solve various aspects of this problem.
>
> Joseph
>
> -- 
> How many children in America are not taught how to read?
> If they are blind, the answer is 90%.
> Find out how you can help: http://www.braille.org/
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:51:40PM -0400, Elizabeth wrote:
>>
>>Hello List,
>> I have been working with my disabilities office to receive my textbooks 
>> in an alternative format, however this has proven to be a rather 
>> frustrating and unreliable process for obtaining my textbooks. Does 
>> anyone know of a way that I could somehow bypass the disabilities office 
>> to obtain my textbooks in an electronic format? I’ve already tried 
>> looking for them on bookshare, but I did not have any luck in finding 
>> them there. I know that RFBD is a great resource, but I’ve noticed that 
>> they don’t typically spell out words that might be important when taking 
>> tests or exams. Since I’ve never been really good at spelling, I would 
>> prefer to have access to an electronic file rather than recorded audio. 
>> Does anyone know how I could go about obtaining digital versions of my 
>> textbooks without going through my disabilities office?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>Elizabeth
>
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