Half my internship hours for the first five weeks were spent helping in the assistive technology lab in the library. This office supports the work of the Office for Disability Services by converting textbooks into digitally accessible formats. They convert thousands of books each semester, but don’t really have enough staff to get the conversions done in a timely manner. It is week 7 of the semester and they’re still working on some books. That means that there are students who still don’t have access to their books in an accessible format. While I didn’t mind doing this work, as I have done it before and know how important it is, I think my being asked to work there during my internship hours says something about institutional priorities. I also enjoyed having the opportunity to learn about different softwares used to make documents accessible. I think that is beneficial for me professionally because I can now weigh the pros and cons of multiple different methods.
My concern with the length of time it takes is that despite the fact that the university has a legal obligation to provide students with reasonable accommodations, there is simply not staff available to do that. Of course the legal obligation should not be the only motivating factor, but unfortunately that is often the largest motivator. I have become very frustrated with the fact that the institution has not made the financial and staffing resources available to provide students with these books.
I’ve also seen it in the larger context of the problem, which is the publishers. If publishers would simply produce books in an accessible format, it would allow students to not have to wait up to seven or eight weeks into the semester to have their books available. Fortunately the disability services community has a lot of resources like AccessText.com and BookShare.com. In three years working in digital book I saw these resources grow tremendously and hope to continue to see them grow, but also see less of a need because of resources provided by publishers.
My concern with the length of time it takes is that despite the fact that the university has a legal obligation to provide students with reasonable accommodations, there is simply not staff available to do that. Of course the legal obligation should not be the only motivating factor, but unfortunately that is often the largest motivator. I have become very frustrated with the fact that the institution has not made the financial and staffing resources available to provide students with these books.
I’ve also seen it in the larger context of the problem, which is the publishers. If publishers would simply produce books in an accessible format, it would allow students to not have to wait up to seven or eight weeks into the semester to have their books available. Fortunately the disability services community has a lot of resources like AccessText.com and BookShare.com. In three years working in digital book I saw these resources grow tremendously and hope to continue to see them grow, but also see less of a need because of resources provided by publishers.