[nabs-l] Accessible textbook legislation

[Justin Ekis]

I think I've found a perfect list of examples for you. I found the 
California bill, and just for kicks did a site specific Google search for 
that bill number on nfbnet.org and struck gold. This 2005 post on blindlaw 
has a great list of state laws, with direct links.

http://www.nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindlaw_nfbnet.org/2005-October/002063.html

That should help plenty.

Best regards,

Justin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "T. Joseph Carter" <carter.tjoseph at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Cc: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 8:26 PM
Subject: [nabs-l] Accessible textbook legislation


> Hi all,
>
> We're getting ready for our state legislative seminar here in Oregon and I 
> suggested to my state president that the problem of accessible textbooks 
> here in Oregon is abysmal at best.  He thinks he knows who I should talk 
> to here in Oregon about that, if I can get a good example of textbook 
> legislation to work from.  This is, I realize, a national problem.  Some 
> universities solve it well enough, but the closest to that at an Oregon 
> university is the direct result of my intervention.
>
> I'd like to push my state to adopt accessible textbook standards.  Is 
> there a good template out there from which I can work?  I am told 
> California does not allow its universities to use textbooks that cannot be 
> obtained in an accessible electronic format.  That might be a good 
> starting place.  *grin*
>
> While I am sure readers on this list and over on nabs-l (Cc'd) are aware 
> of what I mean by abysmal, I'll describe the standard process used here in 
> Oregon anyway:
>
> 1. Students buy the books at retail price (hundreds of dollars).  Books 
> cannot be purchased early, and must be carried several blocks to the DSO.
> 2. Students deliver their books to their university's DSO.
> 3. The DSO sends the book to the university print shop to cut up the book.
> 4. The cut book is returned to the DSO.
> 5. The DSO scans the book using a B&W xerox machine at about 150 dpi.
> 6. These scans are fed into an antiquated version of OCR software such as 
> ABBYY FineReader.
> 7. ODS sends the book out to be "rebound" with a plastic comb.
> 8. The poorly OCR'd text is edited by hand at least a little bit, in 
> theory.
> 9. These lightly edited poor OCRs of textbooks are read using a "natural" 
> voice into mp3 files.
> 10. The student must come to the DSO to collect their mangled textbooks 
> and mp3 CDs, usually about the third week of an 11 week quarter.
>
> The process often _begins_ the first day of the term, because books are 
> not available any sooner than that.
>
> The mp3 CDs are next to useless since they are computer-read versions of 
> badly scanned text, full of errors and lacking anything resembling 
> interpretations of diagrams.  The printed books come back with pages 
> missing, out of order, torn, and otherwise destroyed.  I am told that my 
> DSO spends an average of four hours editing a moderately sized textbook 
> once scanned, and the new person who spends the four hours produces 
> significantly better output in that time frame than her predecessor, but 
> it's still pretty bad no matter how you look at it.
>
> The cost to the university is more than a day's pay for someone per book. 
> The student's cost is several hundred dollars in destroyed books, and this 
> is standard policy at five higher educational institutions I am aware of 
> in my state.
>
> One of these is developing better policies based on my efforts, but the 
> better policies are meeting with lukewarm reactions by students because as 
> bad as the current system is, it doesn't involve waiting a month for the 
> publishers to finally respond that they don't have or won't provide the 
> textbook in question.
>
> And while some might argue that a blind student should be responsible for 
> scanning their own books, a more-than-full-time student does not often 
> have that luxury.  When you consider the reading volume required for 
> graduate studies, that's just not feasible.  Publishers will not provide 
> electronic copies to students, only to DSOs, only when a student who needs 
> it has registered for the class and purchased a book and not always even 
> then.
>
> This must stop.  The publishers should be routinely providing electronic 
> copies to DSOs as soon as they receive book orders so that the electronic 
> books are available to the DSO immediately to begin doing whatever they 
> need to in order to adapt the book from a clean, correct, digital source.
>
> With the right pointers, I intend to do all that I can to make sure it 
> stops here in Oregon.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Joseph
>
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