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Peter Hill writes: >The original question asked about core materials for a PhD student. Brailling >those could be potentially daunting for almost any institution - given that they >could run close to a hundred thousand brailled pages. > ----------------- When you say a hundred thousand Braille pages is daunting - is this right? 100,000 pages equates to approximately 30,000 page of original text, about 50 percent more than I process in a year, footnotes, tables and all. I do this in addition to a lot of other duties. (In the year 2000 - 2001 our embosser used 63,000 sheets, and is now in retirement, smoking gently). It can be done with a good system and software (not Word as a proof reading environment, that would be daunting!), and a knack for fast, accurate proof reading. (Admittedly I do get the relief of Brailling 'Spot's First Walk' and 'The Three Little Pigs' now and again.) If an institution has to employ, say, two skilled staff for the Braille support of a student, this seems entirely reasonable to me, given that sighted users have full access to all books in the library, what possible excuse, given modern technology, and the ratio of blind to sighted students, is there for excluding a blind user from the library. If the sighted users have to loose, say, 2 or even 5 percent of the funding for the print library to pay for blind access, where's the injustice in that? -- Adrian Farnsworth Resource Officer for the Sight Impaired Derby City Council Education Dept. [log in to unmask] http://www.derby-vi-service.demon.co.uk/