[nabs-l] Knowing your Books in Advance

[Jewel S.]

In contrast, I know of only two of my four books for class. I know
them because I talked directly to the professors for the classes.
However, the professor for the third never replied to my inquiries,
and the fourth is either a new or temporary professor or from another
university, and so no one knows his/her information. I don't even know
if the professor is male or female! The others are all female, and I
do better with female professors, so I hope the fourth is female also.
Anyway, it's two weeks until school starts and we still don't have the
book information for two of the classes. The disability office needs
at least two weeks to scan the books to make them Word documents to be
accessible and add the alt tags for pictures. So, two of my books
probably won't be available in accessible format until a week after
classes start minimum. One is available from RFBD, though, and the
Spanish book has been scanned up (was scanned by DSS before I even
knew which book...the professor actually went to DSS and presented
them with a copy that they could scan before I bought my own
copy...now that's a nice professor!

So, this new law will be helpful for me so I'm not struggling to get
my books in time for classes. Thanks for the information!

~Jewel

On 8/1/10, Anita Adkins <aadkins7 at verizon.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Thanks for the info.  I do happen to know the titles/authors, etc. to most
> of my textbooks for the upcoming semester.  I have been researching online
> to see if the books are available in an ebook format, and I discovered that
> at least one of them is.  My concern is that the book, even if I obtain the
> online version, will not be accessible to me.  Acording to the website I
> explored, it claims that books may not be accessible and to contact the
> publisher, but that it was working toward making the books accessible.
> Also, it did not mention that the books would be inaccessible to any
> specific disability group, such as blindness.  I am emailing to see if
> anyone on this list has experience with ebooks that are textbooks, and if
> so, were you able to access or obtain JAWS scripts to allow you to access
> the book.  Thank you.  Just FYI, the link I discovered is:
> "Find your college textbook at low prices | CourseSmart"
> http://www.coursesmart.com/search
> Anita Adkins
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "J.J. Meddaugh" <jj at bestmidi.com>
> To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list"
> <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 7:03 PM
> Subject: [nabs-l] Knowing your Books in Advance
>
>
>> There's a new law that may help out blind people who want to ensure they
>> can get their books in an accessible format. This from Consumerist.
>>
>> Finding the best textbooks prices just got a whole lot easier now that
>> colleges are
>> required to provide students with a list of required textbooks when they
>> register
>> for classes. The requirement was mandated back in the 2008 as part of the
>> Higher
>> Education Opportunity Act, but only took effect this year.
>> "
>> Proponents say the law will give students more time to take advantage of
>> textbook
>> buy-back programs, book rentals and prices that are often lower online
>> than in college
>> bookstores. They expect it will also force professors to pay more
>> attention to the
>> cost of books they assign.
>> "Until this year, many schools didn't give the book list until the week
>> before classes,
>> and you really had no choice but to head to the college bookstore," says
>> Christine
>> Frietchen, editor in chief of ConsumerSearch.com.
>> J.J. Meddaugh - ATGuys.com
>> A premier Code Factory, KNFB Reader, and Sendero distributor
>> _______________________________________________
>> nabs-l mailing list
>> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> nabs-l:
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/aadkins7%40verizon.net
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> nabs-l:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/herekittykat2%40gmail.com
>


-- 
~Jewel
Check out my blog about accessibility for the blind!
Treasure Chest for the Blind: http://blindtreasurechest.blogspot.com