Hi.

I attempted to scan the Extra Class Study materials, and frankly I found
that going at it with a copy of Open Book and an HP ScanJet 6300 was an
exercise in futility.  Most of the formulas would not scan, and there was
enough clean up on the text itself to significantly increase the work of
studying for the exam.  I ended up going back to the old fashioned method
of getting a reader and typing up notes on all of the formulas in my Type
'n Speak.

I have to take exception to the remarks that anyone can take a scanner and
scan these materials because it simply isn't true.  While one can ignore
the figures for the most part (although there was a schematic on my exam
that I had to deal with), being able to read and understand the formulas is
not only critical, but it is also an equal access issue.  Even if they
would excuse me from doing those questions that involve complex math, it is
no longer about accommodating my visual condition, because I am as capable
of doing advanced mathematics as the next guy--it is just about getting the
preparation materials in a format that I can digest with a similar level of
effort as my sighted peers.

So, I reject the scanner argument, out of hand.

It seems to me that if someone like the League were going to put this in an
accessible format, that it would require some additional effort/rewriting
to be able to handle the formulas--just cranking it through a Braille
translator isn't going to cut it.  The only way I could find to express
formulas like calculating inductive and capacitive reactance, for example
was to say it with words when I typed it into my Type 'n Speak.

I was fortunate that the guys in RARA were a great bunch of guys and really
went the extra mile to read materials to me and try to bridge the
accessibility gap, and primarily for that reason, I got through the exam
with minimal difficulty.

I guess I just think that if this problem is going to be solved, someone is
going to have to take a very deliberate effort to do so, and looking at the
lay of the land, I suspect that the League has enough fish to fry that they
aren't going to do it--that's where organizations like Handi-hams come
in.  While I don't particularly like the bureaucracy, and feeling like a
client of another agency, I've come full circle in my thinking, and come to
the conclusion that it is probably a necessary evil.  Now, I do like the
suggestion about Bookshare.org, and think that the idea actually has a lot
of merit.  It side-steps a lot of the copyright issues that arise from just
releasing a CD of computer text materials that could be copied ad
nauseum.  But such an effort will only succeed if someone takes the care to
comb through the materials and put critical things like mathematical
formulas into a format that will be readable with access technology.

73, de Lou K2LKK



Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
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