Services for Students with Print Disabilities

Harpur, Paul, and Rebecca Loudoun. "The Barrier Of The Written Word: Analysing Universities' Policies To Students With Print Disabilities." Journal Of Higher Education Policy & Management 33.2 (2011): 153-167. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 May 2013.

I moderated a talk at the Texas Library Association conference this year called "Thinking Outside the Book: Providing Library Service to the Blind and Visually Impaired". We had the librarian at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a patron of our Talking Book Program and a librarian involved with disability services at the University of Texas all come and speak about things that their libraries are doing to make the library more accessible or things that they could do to improve. 

The article I read today goes into detail the steps that colleges in Australia are taking to make textbooks more accessible to those with print disabilities. I liked that these authors called it "print disabilities" to include blindness, dyslexia and some motor disabilities. These are the same criteria that would qualify someone for the library where I work. The research focus was to include students in 1-3 year of their university studies. (I'm wondering if this is 1-3 year credit wise, since I know that credits vs. year at school are sometimes different). The researchers were trying to see if there was availability of support for students with print disabilities and then if there was a substantial difference in when materials were received compared to non disabled students. Their study looked at the websites of 39 universities and had survey responses from 22 universities in Australia. 

It talked about a court case that I was not familiar with Hinchcliffe v University of Sydney. The girl sued the school for not providing reasonable accommodations, but then there was some disagreement between what was considered reasonable. The court decided in favor of the school, but it raised some questions for me regarding 1) where do preferences come into play? A student may be able to use both Braille and audio format but may have a preference for one over the other. Or in this case there was a preference in the format of audio (cassette vs. CD)? What is the student's responsibility when it comes to requesting a preference? There is different complexity when it comes to some formats over others. This case did help decide though that universities have the responsibility to act reasonably to support students and universities need to prove that they acted reasonably. One point that came up several times in the article is that students need to communicate with those who are working with them to discuss what are reasonable options. 

The article also talked about what texts might be considered reasonable, such as different options for scanning  (hand scanning vs. digital scanning and the amount of editing involved). With scanned texts there may be a need to add footnotes, or page numbers or to make sure that images are described, but those things are necessary especially if one is trying to cite sources. I have run into trouble with helping patrons cite sources when they are using nontraditional formats (the page number on the Braille book is not the same as in the print edition, or audiobooks don't have page numbers and what is considered reasonable when citing for academic purposes? -- Apparently some Braille texts give both the print page number and the "regular" print page number. Follow standard rules when citing audiobooks as you would for other audio texts.) 

To gather data about information provided the researchers gathered data from a survey and viewed university websites and university library websites. The survey asked such questions as if there was a policy for prodding assistance to students with print disabilities, who provides assistance, what assistance. They searched websites for keywords related to print disabilities (didn't state those key words) to test to see if the websites informed students that those services were available. They also asked how many students were served. With that information they came up with a number stating that there were anywhere between 548 - 1250 students with print disabilities in Australia universities each year. The most common type of help provided to students was retrieval of texts from the shelf and assistance with photocopying. They found that 50% of first year students got materials before the semester starts and there appears to be improvement between first year and second year students in getting material earlier. Reasons listed for the delay include no finalized reading list from the instructor, students don't report that assistance is needed, and waiting on a response from the publisher. Some suggestions for things to do to improve the situation for students include advertising services and policies to students, and sending requests to publishers for material with a statement of intent that you will only use the material with print disabled students. Also making sure that there is a formalized policy at the university level for assisting these students. 

The article also mentioned services in other countries including BookShare in the United States which is one service for textbooks. Depending on situation and current grant funding there may be a cost associated with using BookShare. Also, the books are read with a computerized voice and some are text to speech and may have player compatibility issues. I was wondering about the cost associated with these textbooks. If it is a membership like through BookShare or the similar Learning Ally or if it is similar to the costs of an e-book? I would be interested in seeing if this study's results would be different now two years later, or maybe in five years. I also wonder what the study would be like if it was replicated in other countries and I would have liked it if it mentioned the National Library Service as well.