Timely Textbooks for Blind Kids

Timely Textbooks for Blind Kids

The Braille Monitor

July,

2002

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Timely Textbooks for

Blind Kids

An

Idea Whose Time Has Come

From

the Editor: On April 24, 2002, the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act

was introduced in Congress. Congressman Tom Petri's bill is H.R.4582, and Senator

Chris Dodd's bill is S.2246. More cosponsors are needed on both pieces of legislation,

but both are considered fairly noncontroversial because the American Association

of Publishers worked with us to write the language. The entire blindness field

agrees about the importance of getting this bill signed into law. Federationists

attending the Washington Seminar have been talking about this concept on Capitol

Hill for better than two years, and it finally looks as if we are making real

progress. A Senate hearing is scheduled for the end of June, which will give

the bill some much needed visibility, but it's still important for all of us

to encourage our Representatives and Senators to cosponsor the legislation and

urge that it come to the floor for a vote as quickly as possible.

Several

excellent stories have appeared in the weeks since the April 24 press conference

that was called to mark the introduction of the Instructional Materials Accessibility

Act. Here are a couple of samples. On April 29, the New Haven Register

published a fine one. Here it is:

Dodd

Bill Urges Availability of Learning Materials for Blind

by

Lolita C. Baldor

Jessie Kirchner had to tell her Guilford

High School teacher last week that she couldn't take her history quiz because

about fifty pages of her textbook turned out to be blank.

Kirchner's book is on tape. And because

she is one of more than 900 blind students in the state, she must rely on tapes

or Braille textbooks that can often be outdated or defective.

Last week the high school junior was

in Washington with Senator Christopher J. Dodd, D-Connecticut, to urge support

for federal legislation that would require states to have Braille and other

electronic learning materials available to visually impaired students at the

same time that regular textbooks are given to other students.

Dodd's bill also would create a uniform

electronic format for books to make it easier to convert them to Braille.

"By providing books for the visually

impaired, we can open up new opportunities and horizons for countless Americans,"

said Dodd, whose sister is blind and is a teacher in Connecticut. "This

measure ensures that disabled Americans have equal and fair access to better

educational materials."

According to the National Federation

of the Blind, blind students often must use old textbooks because newer versions

aren't converted to Braille.

Although the Americans with Disabilities

Act requires equal treatment for individuals with disabilities, the law does

not cover publishers, and there are no uniform procedures to convert printed

textbooks into Braille or synthetic speech formats.

"In the absence of a specific

law requiring publishers to support creation of textbooks in Braille, blind

students in community schools are being segregated from the general population,"

said NFB President Marc Maurer.

That

was the New Haven Register story. On May 13 the Boston Globe also

carried a fine piece about the need for this legislation. Here it is:

Lack

of Brailled Textbooks Leaves Blind Students in Bind

by Sandy Coleman

Close your eyes and envision a complex

math problem. Now, solve it, imagining the formulas and graphs‑-without

a book. That's what Newton North High student Tasha Chemel, who is blind, had

to do for three months in her junior math class because the Braille version

of her textbook didn't arrive until after the school year began. The sixteen‑year‑old,

who has been blind since birth, has to have all her textbooks converted to Braille.

Most years she doesn't get them on time.

"One year someone forgot to order

the ones I needed . . . Last year, my history book took forever to come. In

the interim I had to listen to it on tape, which doesn't work very well,"

said Chemel. "It's been a pain." Advocates for the blind say such

delays deny blind or visually impaired students equal access to education. They

are pushing for legislation recently introduced in Congress that would require

states to make sure that such students get their books on time. Publishers would

have to produce electronic copies of textbooks and furnish them to a national

access center for distribution to schools nationwide.

Eileen Curran, director of educational

services for the National Braille Press in Boston, compares the measure to laws

that require schools to build handicapped ramps. "The only thing preventing

a child in a wheelchair from getting a full education is being able to enter

a school. . . . The only piece that is lacking in [visually impaired students']

education is the access to their materials."

Converting printed textbooks into

Braille is so elaborate that it takes about three months. It means textbooks

have to be ordered far in advance of the school year, but officials often have

to wait until budgets are approved in the summer to order books. And sometimes

teachers haven't made their selections or change their minds at the last minute.

In Massachusetts regular textbooks

are converted at the National Braille Press. A transcriber must first turn the

printed material into an electronic format, usually by scanning the pages. However,

scanners often make errors, said Curran.

Advocates and publishers estimate

that there are 90,000 blind or visually impaired students in the country. In

Massachusetts there are about 2,000, 200 of whom are Braille readers.

The numbers may be small, but the

problem is not, said Peter Leofanti, assistant principal and Chemel's math teacher

at Newton North. "The big deal is the state tells us that [blind and visually

impaired students] have to be educated in a mainstream situation," he said.

"I agree with that. But they require a lot of support, and anything that

makes this easier and facilitates it should be considered."

Sometimes, when Brailled books don't

arrive on time, teachers such as Anne Spitz do the Braille themselves on home

machines. That's what she did last year when parts of a reading series didn't

arrive in time for her third‑grade students.

"Parents of sighted children

would be appalled if their children were sitting in class without materials,"

said Spitz, who teaches visually impaired students at Bridgewater Elementary

School. At a time when high standards and literacy are being pushed, no student

can afford to fall behind, she said.

Currently only twenty-six states require

publishers to provide electronic copies of textbooks for visually impaired and

blind students. Massachusetts is not one of them. The big problem for publishers

has been that electronic file format requirements vary from state to state,

making it time‑consuming to produce books in the appropriate format, said

Stephen Driesler, executive director of the school division of the American

Association of Publishers.

"The system has not worked well

for the blind kids. It takes sometimes six months or longer into the school

year to get their books," he said. The new legislation would require publishers

to create only one type of file, saving time and money, he added.

The Instructional Materials Accessibility

Act is currently awaiting committee hearings in Congress. It was introduced

last month by the National Federation of the Blind, along with Senator Christopher

Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Representative Thomas Petri, a Wisconsin

Republican. The American Association of Publishers worked two years with advocacy

groups and educators to draft legislation that all sides could support.

However, it will take up to three

years to set up an electronic access center and cost $1 million to run annually.

Another $5 million will be needed initially to train staff and provide technical

assistance to schools. Moreover, only books published after the legislation

is enacted would be available electronically.

Still advocates hope the legislation

will provide some relief.

At one point this year, when Chemel's

book hadn't arrived, Leofanti improvised, squeezing goo out of a tube to create

graphs that Chemel could feel and study. "We had to do a lot of things

orally, and I had to repeat and repeat," he said. "She's been a very

resilient and resourceful kid. She took it philosophically. She said we'll do

the best we can with what we have."

But Chemel is angry, particularly

as she heads toward college, where the workload will be increased and she may

be facing similar book problems.

"I

should have books as accessible as anyone else," she said. "I shouldn't

have to waste my time chasing down materials. I want to focus on academics."

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