The following article is forwarded to you by the Great Lakes ADA Center
for
your information:
ED pushes for national digital file format for textbooks
By Cara Branigan, Associate Editor, eSchool News
December 16, 2002
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is spending nearly $200,000 to
create
a
single "national file format" that will be used to make textbooks
accessible
to blind or disabled students.
Adopting the standard will be voluntary, which is contrary to
legislation
introduced last spring that would have required textbook publishers to
submit
electronic files of all textbooks sold to schools nationwide according
to a
universal standard.
That bill, dubbed the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act of 2002
(H.R.
4582 and S. 2246), has been held up in committee. In the meantime, ED is
taking the initiative to create a voluntary standard to coordinate the
efforts
of publishers and educators.
"Since there is not yet agreement regarding the optimal file format
standard
for all students, a national voluntary standard would provide a baseline
for
future development and enhancements," said Robert H. Pasternack, ED's
assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.
The National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum at the Center
for
Applied Special Technology (CAST) in Wakefield, Mass., is charged with
forming
an advisory panel that will develop, implement, and measure the
standard's
success.
With current practices, students who need alternatives to traditional
textbooks often wait months before receiving their books.
"If you've purchased a new textbook that isn't available in Braille, you
may
have to wait six months," said Chuck Hitchcock, chief educational
technology
officer for CAST. "What [the national file format] will do is ensure
that
kids
get their textbooks and materials at the beginning of the year, at the
same
time as other kids.
When publishers make a textbook, it is assumed that shortly thereafter
they
will create a digital file that educators can use to convert the
textbook
into
an accessible format for disabled students, such as refreshable Braille,
print
Braille, or accessible hypertext markup language (HTML).
"The problem for the publishers is that every state requires something
different," Hitchcock said. Kentucky, for example, requires documents in
HTML
format, while Texas requires American Standard Code for Information
Interchange (ASCII) format.
In fact, half of the states have passed legislation in the past few
years
that
stipulate what digital format publishers must provide, whether it's
Microsoft
Word, ASCII, HTML, or another format.
Publishers also favor creating a single format because it will reduce
the
burden and costs associated with providing multiple formats of the same
file.
But uniformity won't happen with a voluntary standard, they say.
"We are working with CAST, trying to come up with a workable file format
and
hoping for the best. But, in all honesty, it's not going to address the
needs
that are there," said Stephen Driesler, executive director of the
Association
of American Publishers.
"If all 26 states [that have adopted their own standards] go out and
have an
epiphany ... and say, `We need to change and adopt this national file
format,'
then I'll eat my words," Driesler said.
Hitchcock said it's pretty likely that states will adopt the standard,
but
Driesler remains skeptical that 26 states would change their
laws-especially
not in the near future.
"The practical reality is nothing is going to happen [in 2002]. It would
be
[2003] before state legislatures could do anything," Driesler said.
"Having
worked with state legislatures and state departments of education, these
things just don't work at a high rate of speed.
He added, "It's totally going to be up to the states to make this
happen."
Texas is one of the states that has its own law regarding the format of
digital textbook files.
"I don't believe our agency would be opposed per se, but we need to see
the
devil in the details to see how well [ED's proposal] fits our needs and
the
work of our braillist," said Chuck Mayo, assistant director of textbook
administration for the Texas Education Agency.
(See the April 30 eSchool News article, "New bill would give blind
students
equal access to textbooks at
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstory.cfm?ArticleID=3669.)
Links:
National File Format Initiative
http://www.cast.org/ncac/NationalFileFormat3138.cfm
Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
http://www.cast.org
CAST's National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum
http://www.cast.org/ncac
Association of American Publishers
http://www.publishers.org
Source: www.eschoolnews.com
|
