[nfbwatlk] New Text Book Agreement

[Maurice Mines]

hi it is a small start. I am somwhat conserned about the money part of  
it. we will jest hafto see. maurice ham call sine kd0iko.
On Sep 5, 2009, at 5:17 PM, Mike Freeman wrote:

> It's a start!
>
> Mke
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alco Canfield" <amcanfield at comcast.net>
> To: <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 3:12 PM
> Subject: [nfbwatlk] New Text Book Agreement
>
>
> Start of body
> Thought you would find this interesting.
> httpcc//wwwddinsidehigheredddcom/news/blebjji/jh/bh/access
>
> 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 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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