Why do colleges make it tough on blind ?

By Gene Rodgers
December 12, 2006

Ever since I can recall, people with visual impairments have been getting the short end of the stick in college. This is a huge surprise to me given that the blind have such a strong lobbying presence.

When someone who is blind, or has a visual impairment, wants to buy a textbook for college, they don’t just buy a book, they embark on a quest. The reason – university officials are the biggest wimps on the planet. Now stay with me here – if a student with a print impairment needs a textbook in Braille or on tape or in digital format, he has to request it weeks, sometimes months in advance of the course. Why – because publishers don’t want to be bothered putting their materials in accessible format. They get away with it because university officials allow it. If university officials just told publishers they wouldn’t use their textbooks unless they were available in accessible format at the same time as hardbound textbooks were available, then we would have a different story. Publishers will say they have copyright restrictions. Oh PLEASE! We have gone through this with music, videos and other books many times before. Publishers have to provide books in accessible format so why delay the inevitable?

When the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was enacted and publishers didn’t provide accessible books on demand I cut the publishers some slack because the personal computer had not yet been invented (it was invented in 1976 by Apple) and accessible technology was somewhat primitive. When IDEA was enacted publishers still languished. When the American Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, I thought we finally would remove the albatross from around the neck of the visually impaired. But noooooooooo! Textbook publishers till refused to accommodate the blind.

We started going backward with the passage of the Chaffee Amendment in 1997. That amendment created a number of disability-specific repositories by educational or non-profit organizations. One of them, the Texas Text Exchange offers a collection of over 400 digital postsecondary textbooks to authorized users. OK but they miss the point. The Chaffee Amendment promotes segragation. People with print impairments should be able to buy accessible textbooks at the same time hardbound textbooks become available. Publishers are basically lazy and greedy and won’t do anything beyond normal business unless someone holds their feet to the fire.

Nowadays how difficult could it be to put a book on tape or Braille? I talked to Doug Powels at the BookCrafter(tm) Publishing Suite, from Colligo Corporation. They have a product that enables users to convert printed books to accessible digital books as fast as pages can be fed through the system's scanner. The Accessible Books read themselves out loud, become large type books, books in Braille, Audio Books, DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) format and more. The BookCrafter's scanner and software automatically scan and convert both sides of a page, up to hundreds an hour.

Not only does it slash book production costs to pennies a page, but the system retains and converts everything on a printed page into an exact rendition of the original-pictures, colors, graphs, reversed type and more. Graphically intensive magazines, picture books, text columns, worksheets, drawings, handwritten and illuminated manuscripts or elaborate manuals are converted as readily as a black and white article like this one you are now reading. And yet it is remarkably easy to use, whether converting a single page or a whole library to a digital format that complies with many accessibility and accessible text book laws. For more info on this miracle machine, go to http://www.colligo.us/ or contact Doug Powels at 509-239-9815 or dougp@colligo.us

With Federal laws and available technology, one would think we could now have accessible texts but noooooooo! Why is it 26 states were compelled to enact their own accessible textbook laws? Why does it take an act of congress to provide accessibility? Well, it’s because greedy publishers want to pass the buck. They sell the books to the university and say, “You make it accessible.” It’s because university officials are too wimpy to demand it from publishers. It’s because people with disabilities aren’t sueing textbook publishers.

On March 14th, 2006, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) posted its’ legislation Agenda. Their priorities for the 109th Congress, Second Session include, among other things, Congress should require publishers of textbooks used in higher education to produce electronic editions for blind students in a standard, non-visual format by supporting the Higher Education Textbook Access Act (yet to be enacted). What’s wrong with this picture? We don’t need more laws, we just need access to books like everyone else.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?” To textbook publishers I say quit being so greedy and so lazy. To university officials, I say grow a backbone and stand up to publishers. To my fellow persons with disabilities that are in college, I say sue the b@#&s (meaning the publishers).