[NABS-L] Disability Office Problems

[Isaac McBurney]

Hey NABS Students, I hope you are all doing well.

For my Children’s Literature class, we have to read some PDFs from various journals through our library’s website. Some of these have worked well with VoiceOver on my iPad, but the two most recent ones didn’t work so well. It decided to read all three columns of text at the same time which isn’t very helpful when you’re trying to listen for complete sentences. I sent them to the disability office last Tuesday, and heard nothing back, so I decided to call them on Friday. They said they would work on it, and then sent me back a PDF that was somehow worse than before. I explained that this wouldn’t work with my screen reader, sending a screen recording along with it to show what it was doing, and they have yet to respond. The entire team changed last semester, so this is part of the issue as everyone is still learning stuff, but this shouldn’t be an excuse to not provide accessible materials to me and another blind student who I know is having a lot of issues with them too. They also weren’t very helpful with providing accessible book information, and wouldn’t convert another student’s textbooks to an accessible format, so it was done by another professor.

So my questions are: what is the best path forward for this? What should I do to help them resolve this, because it really isn’t working. Is there anyone you would suggest I talk to at the college or otherwise, and has anyone had a similar experience? I thank you for your guidance, as this is only my second semester in college. I hope you have a great day!

Thank you,
Isaac McBurney  (He/Him/His) | Special Education, UMKC 2027
Board Member, Missouri Association of Blind Students

(isaacmcburney35 at gmail.com | 816-398-9541 | Linktree <https://linktr.ee/IsaacMcBurney?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=6b804ce5-9e1f-49ce-b10e-933ab21379f6>)