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<P class=time>June 11, 2010, <SPAN>02:00 PM ET</SPAN> </P>
<H1 class=title>Blind Students Get Free Access to Cambridge U. Press Books</H1>
<P class=byline>By <A
href="http://chronicle.com/blogAuthor/Wired-Campus/5/Josh-Fischman/42/">Josh
Fischman</A></P>
<DIV class=abstract>
<P>Texts for visually impaired college students are hard to come by. But a new
agreement between <A href="http://www.cambridge.org/about/">Cambridge University
Press</A> and <A
href="http://www.bookshare.org/_/aboutUs/howBookshareWorks">Bookshare</A>, a
non-profit organization that converts books and journals into formats that blind
people can read, may enlarge this library.</P>
<P>And in the U.S., it won't cost students a cent.</P>
<P>Bookshare, which already has digital-copy sharing agreements with 11 colleges
and universities as well as the open-access textbook publisher Flatworld
Knowledge, gets digital files from the publishers and converts them to files
that can be read using text-to-speech software or Braille embossers.</P>
<P>The group operates under an exemption to U.S. copyright law known as the
Chafee Amendment. "That allows any U.S. student with a disability that affects
their ability to read standard print to join Bookshare and get a free copy of a
book," says Valerie Chernek, a spokesperson for Bookshare. A college can also
sign up for an institutional membership to acquire free book copies for its
disabled students. The cost of converting the digital files and providing
students with appropriate software is subsidized by a $32-million dollar grant
that Bookshare received from the U.S. Department of Education to provide free
access to all U.S. students with a print reading disability.</P>
<P>Cambridge is giving Bookshare its entire backlist, consisting of more than
10,000 titles, says Ms. Chernek, and in the future the press will contribute new
titles, on the order of about 3000 each year.</P>
<P><SPAN class=718293102-12062010>This article can be found at:
</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=718293102-12062010><FONT color=#000080 size=5 face=Tahoma><A
href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Blind-Students-Get-Free-Access/24722/">http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Blind-Students-Get-Free-Access/24722/</A></FONT></SPAN></P></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>