Hi all,

I'd like to seriously revisit the current state of affairs of available,
accessible amateur radio study materials.  I am aware of the Now You're
Talking book being available from Handiham on cassette.  Though no offense
toward Handiham is at all intended, I consider this level of accessibility
to be insufficient if that's all there is.  The material is read on to
cassette rather than available in accessible electronic format.  That means
all presentation of the information has been controlled by the reader, not
by the user of that information as can be the case with electronic formats.
A person on Handiham's staff has told me that the League is "uncomfortable"
with making this material more accessible to us.  This is, obviously, never
a sufficient reason for ongoing inaccessibility.  If we accepted that
reason, then blind people would have virtually no success at all in society,
be it education, employment or anything else.

If necessary, I'll begin a campaign to battle the League over this
inaccessibility of their amateur radio study materials.  I know I am
determined and I will ultimately succeed with this, but a lot of feelings
will be hurt and many otherwise good people in the amateur radio community
will be deeply offended.  I'd thus like to get the job done in a
constructive manner.

 I have some ideas for making this work.  First, the League could sell a
copy of this material in BRF format.  These "Braille ready files" are
useless to sighted people but could be used by the blind with Braille
displays or certain other accessibility software applications and devices
that can successfully back translate these files.  Second, someone could
scan Now You're Talking and other study materials, clean up the OCR results
and submit them to Bookshare.org for legal distribution to those with print
disabilities.  Third, we could explore obtaining greater cooperation from
other providers of amateur radio study materials like Gordon West.

Any other ideas or information on materials that might already be available
would be extremely helpful.  Karen would like to study for her ham license,
but she currently has no interest in going through the bureaucratic process
required to join Handiham just for the privilege of obtaining study
materials which the sighted may purchase and read without such requirements.

Thanks and 73.