Ledford and Downey. Neither could
provide exact figures on the impact
the rental programs would have on the
bottom lines of their stores since their
programs are new, but said whatever
those declines were, they would willingly accept them if they made books
more affordable for students.
Equality Issues
Electronic books and digital content
are attractive to cost-strapped colleges,
as they’re easier to store and manipulate than traditional printed books.
Those emerging electronic capabilities, however, can be confounding. A
combination of technology and access
issues conspired to scuttle an e-book
pilot program by Amazon, Arizona
State University, Case Western Reserve
University, Princeton University,
Reed College, Pace University, and the
University of Washington in the summer of 2009 that would have provided
electronic textbooks through Amazon’s
Kindle DX reader. Amazon unveiled
the plan in May 2009, volunteering to
provide Kindle readers to 50 volunteer
students to download texts for three
courses.
The plan drew complaints to the U.S.
Justice Department from the National
Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the
American Council for the Blind. Dr.
Marc Mauer, president of the NFB, contended that the Kindle offered in the
trial was inaccessible for blind students
and it didn’t meet the requirements of
the Americans With Disabilities Act
(ADA). The ADA requires that blind
students have access to the same textbooks and course materials and
the same technology to read them as
other students.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights
Division eventually reached settlements with the universities requiring
them not to purchase any e-book technology not fully accessible to the blind.
The issue was not that e-readers
presented a problem for blind students,
says NFB spokesman Chris Danielson.
Rather, the programming was noncom-
pliant. “E-books could actually make
things less complicated for the blind,”
he says, because they could make books
more uniform among students, possibly
eliminating the need for blind students
to get special printed editions of text-
books.
Big Savings?
Follett Higher Education Group
in Oak Brook, Ill., estimated in
August 2010 that more than 750
campus bookstores were renting
textbooks online; in-store, more than
150 independently managed college
bookstores were using its rental
program. The company estimates its
Rent-A-Text and Cafescribe programs
will save students $130 million this
academic year.
In July 2010, Amazon unveiled a
more accessible Kindle that is equipped
with a voice guide that reads all menu
options so blind students can use it to
navigate. “We commend Amazon on
unveiling a new Kindle that blind and
print-disabled people can use. In order
to compete in today’s digital society,
blind and print-disabled people must be
able to use the same reading technologies as the sighted,” said Mauer in a
statement the day the new device was
announced.
Turning the (Digital) Page
Even though Amazon has rolled out
a device that facilitates access, the
issue continues to lurk as technology
advances, says Rick Bowes, a digital
publishing expert who has worked as a
consultant for the NFB and helped de-
velop the National Instructional Materi-
als Accessibility Standard, or NIMAS, a
national effort to develop instructional
materials for the visually impaired.
Mark rockwell is an education editor and
writer based outside Washington, D.C.
