California law requires textbook publishers to provide access
Sacramento -- On Sept. 15, just as colleges across the nation were beginning their fall semester, California Governor Gray Davis signed the first law in the nation to require textbook publishers to provide a digital version of their books to state-supported institutions of higher learning for the accessibility of students who can't use conventional ink-print. The electronic version of the textbook, says the law, must be in a format that's compatible with "commonly used Braille translation and speech synthesis software."
The Americans with Disabilities Act itself has not required textbook publishers to provide their products in accessible formats -- responsibility for providing access to course materials at the university level has been on the institution itself. This kind of thinking began decades ago, when rules implementing the first law dealing with access in university settings -- Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act -- required the institution to provide "program accessibility."
Sources say one of the reasons California enacted this law was due to the "increasing sophistication and political awareness" of young people with disabilities, who have been coming up through the nation's school systems expecting to receive accommodations if they're unable to access conventional ink print, and believe they should have a legal right to be able to access textbooks. Disability services offices have reportedly been "swamped" in recent years with requests from increasing numbers of students with print-access needs for texts in alternative formats -- Braille, large print or on tape or disk. Under the ADA, the university is obliged to provide the accessible formats.
Why should the universities scan in printed texts, using OCR software "the best of which will certainly result in several typos per page,: said one source -- when the solution is available from publishers? "Books begin their lives as word processing documents in ASCII text -- that's how they're handled by book printers who change the ASCII text into typeset and printed books."
Advocates say it's less expensive for publishers to provide texts in digital format than in traditional bound and printed volumes on paper since the expensive printing process eliminated.
"The solutions should be provided at the producer level," said one blind activist. "Products and services should build in accessibility from the onset, rather than expecting others to make it accessible later."
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