On the DOJ Testimony: E-Books
Last week (April 22, 2010) Samuel R. Bagenstos, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on technology accessibility, civil rights, and federal law. It is a long piece of testimony, so I decided to break it into parts to make it easier to digest.
I am choosing to look at the the issue of “electronic books,” (i.e., e-books) first since it comes up that way in the chronology of testimony.
First, let me say that I think the testimony is very articulate and accurate in summing up the topic and providing both a historic reference and a clear and precise justification for why we need to focus on the topic. Mr. Bagenstos begins by speaking in general terms discussing the importance and the ubiquity of this technology and how it has the potential for greatly leveling the playing field for persons with disabilities. He then describes the controversy over the Kindle DX and how the Department of Justice (DoJ) took action when it realized the devices were not completely accessible to students with disabilities.
Here is the excerpt from his testimony:
Accessibility issues arise outside of the Internet as well. Most significantly, as schools increasingly use electronic texts, the inaccessibility of many electronic book readers has become more and more salient. At the same time, however, the use of electronic texts holds great promise for people with disabilities. Students who are blind or have low vision have long used a form of electronic text as an accommodation that enables them to access the course materials their classmates use. These electronic texts, which are converted from standard print texts, are read on a computer, using a screen reader or a refreshable Braille display. In order for these electronic texts to be truly usable by someone who is blind or who has low vision, however, the texts must be coded with structural data so that the assistive technology can properly identify where to begin reading or where a sentence or paragraph begins and ends.
This system disadvantages blind students in colleges and universities as compared with sighted students, because it can take considerable time for a university to locate texts from publishers, and convert the text to a format usable by a screen reader or similar assistive technology. As a result, all too often course materials are not available to blind students until well after classes have begun. If you ask just about any disability student services center at a major university, you will learn how significant this problem really is. Imagine as a student being unable – on a routine basis – to obtain your course materials for the first four months of the semester. As an alternative to obtaining converted texts from the publisher, universities may scan printed texts in order to provide them in electronic form. But this method can result in a “text dump,” which lacks structural data to ensure proper reading by assistive technologies. Conversion errors, too, are common. So, the choice available to blind students prior to use of the new, electronic book readers was to receive accurate materials months into the semester or inaccurate materials in a more timely manner.
The emergence of dedicated electronic book readers thus holds great potential to place students with disabilities on equal footing with other students. But that happy result will occur only if the electronic book reader is equipped with text-to-speech capabilities, so that it may read the electronic text aloud. In a few moments, I will discuss the Department of Justice’s settlements in investigations of colleges and universities that used the Kindle DX, an inaccessible electronic book reader, as part of a pilot project. At the time the Kindle DX was used in this pilot project, it contained text-to-speech capabilities B meaning that it could read the electronic text aloud, rendering the text audible and therefore accessible to blind persons. Unfortunately, the device did not include a similar audio option for the menus or navigational controls. Without text-to-speech for the menu or navigational controls, blind students could not operate the electronic book reader independently, because they had no way of knowing which book they selected or how to access the search, note taking or bookmark functions of the device. Electronic book readers developed by companies other than Amazon also pose barriers to use by individuals who are blind or have low vision, typically because they entirely lack a text-to-speech function.
But a dedicated electronic book reader can be made accessible. From the user perspective, an accessible electronic book reader might speak each option on a menu aloud, as the cursor moves over it, and then speak the selected choice aloud once made by the user. Special key strokes might be programmed specifically for blind users. For example, the user would press the alt-A key any time something related to accessibility is needed, at which point a menu with additional choices would come up allowing the user to scroll over the menu as described above. Appropriate coding would mean that the text, even mathematical formulas, or poetry in which line lengths vary, would be read aloud coherently. In this way, the user with the disability would gain access to all the information on the printed page.
Apart from the issue of the accessibility of e-books, Mr. Bagenstos’ testimony also, more briefly, details the issue of general web accessibility. In this section, to be described in a separate blog entry, he notes that there have been some inconsistent responses on the part of the DoJ over the years.
The testimony ends with more details about the specifics regarding the Kindle DX case and the settlement with the several universities who had employed these devices.
My impression is that the testimony doesn’t really do much in terms of changing any position that the DoJ has held, but rather reaffirms the position and perhaps sets some baselines. It may also provide us with a sense of where the DoJ will be focusing their attention when it comes to investigations regarding the rights of people with disabilities and “emerging technologies.”
