[nabs-l] Accessible textbook legislation

Tue Feb 3 11:53:48 UTC 2009

That is incredible that textbooks would be that bad, and here i
thought that the DSO office at my university was bad. I know this
doesn't help, but reguarding the publishers, and because i'm a fan of
IChapters now, i think all publishers should use IChapters. they still
get their money for the book; it's only useable up to a certain number
of days, it's accessible, and everyone wins. :)

On 2/3/09, T. Joseph Carter <carter.tjoseph at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nicole,
>
> Of course it is ridiculous.  That's the point, essentially.  If the
> publishers cannot or will not provide an accessible version of the
> text to the local DSO, the book should not be used.
>
> Providing the electronic book should be a prerequisite to ordering,
> not thing they can be asked for just prior to (or just after) the
> beginning of the term for a student who needs it.
>
> The publishers may not be able to meet that request with every book
> they circulate today--but they could sure enough do it for all future
> books if a few states start adopting such laws if they want to sell
> their textbooks to universities!
>
> Joseph
>
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 09:39:27PM -0800, Nicole B. Torcolini wrote:
>>Excuse my language, but that is ridiculous. In my opinion, publishers of
>>textbooks should be required to provide colleges with an electronic copy of
>>
>>the book that can be embossed or easily converted into either text or word
>>for those of us who read our books on our notetakers. At Stanford, I still
>>have to purchase my books, but the OAE usually either has their own to
>>destroy or has a file from the publisher. In one case, when the OAE could
>>not get the book in time, and I had mine before they did, I let them have
>> my
>>book. However, I have never heard of this .mp3 process.
>>
>>----- 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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