What’s Cooking in the Commission ? Update on the Advisory Commission on A ccessible I nstructional M aterials for Postsecondary Students with Disabilities

K-12 & Higher Ed Comparison  K – 12  Statute(s): IDEA 2004  Affirmative action  Section 504 secondary  Number of Publishers  App. 96  Market: Aggregate  LEAs purchase materials  Market: Volume  App new textbooks per year  Market: Cost per student  App. $65/year  Higher Ed  Statute(s): Section 504 & ADA  Equal Access  Number of Publishers  App  Market: Individual  Students purchase materials  Market: Volume  App. 250,000 active titles  Market: Cost per Title  App. $65/title

Commission Charge  (i) assess the barriers and systemic issues that may affect, and technical solutions available that may improve, the timely delivery and quality of accessible instructional materials for postsecondary students with print disabilities, as well as the effective use of such materials by faculty and staff; and  (ii) make recommendations related to the development of a comprehensive approach to improve the opportunities for postsecondary students with print disabilities to access instructional materials in specialized formats in a timeframe comparable to the availability of instructional materials for postsecondary nondisabled students.

Make Recommendations  (I) to inform Federal regulations and legislation;  (II) to support the model demonstration programs authorized under section 773;  (III) to identify best practices in systems for collecting, maintaining, processing, and disseminating materials in specialized formats to students with print disabilities at costs comparable to instructional materials for postsecondary nondisabled students;  (IV) to improve the effective use of such materials by faculty and staff, while complying with applicable copyright law; and  (V) to modify the definitions of instructional materials, authorized entities, and eligible students, as such terms are used in applicable Federal law, for the purpose of improving services to students with disabilities.

Commission Members  Gaeir Dietrich, CA ATPC  Jim Wendorf, NCLD  George Kerscher, IDPF/DAISY  Tuck Tinsley, APH  Jim Fruchterman, Bookshare  Andrew Friedman, LearningAlly  Mark Riccobono, NFB  Bruce Hildebrand, AAP  Glinda Hill, OSERS  Maria Pallante,LOC  Betsy Weigman, OCR  Peter Givler, AAUP  Lizanne DeStefano, U of IL  Chester Finn, NCD  Kurt Herzer, Student  Ashlee Kephart, Student  Stephan Hamlin-Smith, AHEAD  Linda Tessler, Psychologist  Dave Berthiaume, OSERS  Liz Shook, OSERS  Skip Stahl, CAST  Mary O’Malley, CAST  Scott Lapinski, CAST  Janet Gronneberg, CAST

Commission Timeline September 2010 OSEP Kickoff Meeting February 2011 Meeting at LDA Jacksonville 2011 Ohio State Meeting May 2011 CAST Background DRAFT due 2011 Editing Team Reviews May 2011 Task Force DRAFTS due June 201 Full Report DRAFT Due September 2011 Final Editing Meeting August 2017 Meeting at AHEAD Seattle Report to Congress OSU OSEP LDA AHEAD

Commission Task Forces: Key Points  Legal – Maria Pallante, Lead  Acknowledge that copyright exemptions are meant to be limited to a small, clearly identified class of beneficiaries where market options are not viable (or where market failure can be demonstrated)  Consideration for modifying existing regulations: Chafee  Support for the creation of licensing schemes between rights holders and 3 rd party Accessible Media Producers for the creation of accessible versions for the commercial marketplace  Primary emphasis on legacy print materials & small publishers  Sidestep existing collision between Copyright law & civil rights law

Commission Task Forces: Key Points  Market – George Kerscher, Lead  Proposal to statutorily require all content producers to produce accessible versions  Difficult to achieve consensus on this since “materials used in postsecondary “ casts a wide net  Proposal to statutorily mandate all IHEs receiving Federal $ to use only accessible instructional materials & delivery systems  Similar emphasis as in NIMAS initiative – requirements on educational entities, not content producers  Recommendation to establish “Instructional Materials Access Board” to craft functional characteristics of accessible instructional materials & media

Commission Task Forces: Key Points  Market/Legal Overlap  “Instructional Materials Access Board” might be Federal or voluntary  Voluntary stakeholder Board could achieve quicker results, but in the absence of provisions for enforcement  “Instructional Materials Access Board” could promulgate function accessibility requirements to clarify expectations for content producers  Content producers favor using Section 508/WCAG guidelines as the standard or foundation  IHEs could be offered safe harbor by requiring materials that met the functional guidelines established by the “Instructional Materials Access Board”

Commission Task Forces: Key Points  Technology Task Force – Jim Fruchterman, Lead  The establishment of a standard file format solution (a la NIMAS) not viable in Higher Education  Broad consensus on this  Feasibility of establishing a clearinghouse, repository or file sharing network  Consensus on no single repository – solutions for legacy print materials (Bookshare, ATN, LearningAlly, etc.) already exist  Establishment of functional accessibility standards/guidelines (including metadata)  Instructional Materials Access Board  Focus on both content & delivery mechanisms

Commission Task Forces: Key Points  Best Practices Task Force – Tuck Tinsley, Lead  Definitions  Instructional Materials – Communication  Print Disability - a print disability means, with respect to an individual, a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits the individual in seeing or reading.”  Timely Manner – At the same time… (Section 133 HEOA)  High Cost/Low Incidence - ? 10x cost of “standard” version?.01% of population?  Focus on challenges associated with braille, tactile graphics  Consensus on support for emerging technologies (.brf output from iPad via Bluetooth, for example  Persisting challenges with math braille (Nemeth)

The Challenges & Promises of Digital Content & Delivery

Digital Textbooks on the Rise…

Digital Content Developer’s Accessibility Scorecard VendorAccessibility DynamicBooks (Macmillan)VitalSource Bookshelf (Section 508/WCAG AA) CourseSmartOn request Iinkling (iPad only)VitalSource Bookshelf (Section 508/WCAG AA) Nook StudyTTS permissioned only; Keyboard control AptaraVitalSource Bookshelf (Section 508/WCAG AA) XplanaNone Apparent Cengage Learning(Section 508/WCAG AA) CafeScribeNone Apparent Open Educational ResourcesNone Apparent

Born Digital  Nearly all DSS Offices in higher education are equipped to acquire or retrofit legacy print materials into accessible alternate formats  Few, if any, can retrofit digital material for accessibility

Born Digital  CourseSmart  Publisher files lack structural tagging and image tagging and may have reading order issues  CourseSmart has engaged PDF engineers to devise methods to improve the accessibility of the source files through addition of tagging for reading order, structure and images  The tagging process is both automated and manual and designed to maximize the number of titles we can prepare  While not “artisan tagging,” this process can scale to thousands of titles

Born Digital  CourseSmart  CourseSmart has funded the tagging of hundreds of its best selling titles  CourseSmart partnered with the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) to obtain a DOE grant to fund 1,000 more, as well as research and development and faculty and student outreach  CourseSmart selects titles for tagging based on sales trends, and history of requests from campus disability services  CourseSmart tags additional titles upon request from students and instructors  Currently it takes approximately 4 weeks to tag a book for a student request; we are working to reduce this to 2 weeks.

Born Digital  CourseSmart  Currently CourseSmart is not currently tagging STEM titles  Ultimately, CourseSmart feels that ePub 3.0 with MathML will provide the best STEM solution

Born Digital  VitalSource  All “ Major ” higher ed publishers use our platform  Direct agreements with 80+ publishers  As part of Ingram, access to 52,000 imprints

Born Digital  VitalSource Bookshelf

Born Digital  VitalSource Bookshelf – The Challenges

Born Digital  VitalSource Bookshelf – The Challenges

Born Digital  VitalSource Bookshelf – The Challenges

Inkling

Next Steps  Identify points of consensus/points of tension  One more Face-to-Face Meeting (AHEAD; Seattle, July)  Working on report draft  Submit to Congress September, 2011