[nabs-l] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College Students
Serena
serenacucco at verizon.net
Sat Sep 12 22:45:24 UTC 2009
This is really awesome!
Serena
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: <david.andrews at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 10:42 PM
Subject: [nabs-l] Textbooks for disabled, Particularly College Students
>
>>
>>
>> From
>> <http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/28/access>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/28/access
>>
>>
>>
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>>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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