[nabs-l] Accessible textbook legislation

Tue Feb 3 21:23:10 UTC 2009

I have been told that about 4 years ago oregon tryed to pass legistlation
similar to this and it was blocked by the publishers.
Bill

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Robert Spangler
<spangler.robert at gmail.com>wrote:

> What is this NIMAS thing that they are using for secondary schools? Can't
> we work on the ability to use that?
>
>
> 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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