Hi
We’ve been contacting publishers for accessible texts for our visually impaired students for a few years now and have found most UK publishers to be helpful in providing a PDF version, sometimes after signing a licence agreement, restricting its use to the named VI student.
Mostly the PDFs are provided free, but publishers, particularly, of law titles, have often charged for an accessible copy e.g. Thomson Reuters and this causes even more work dealing with invoices, setting up accounts for the students to log into to access these titles etc.
We’ve also had difficulties with US publishers, most of whom will only deal with our Disability team, not librarians. They have also been required to complete lengthy online forms and sometimes proof of purchase of the print version has been necessary.
I’ve attached a copy of one of our templates for requesting accessible texts for VI students.
Regards
From: A general library and information science list for news and discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tania Durt
Sent: 14 January 2015 11:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: DSA Changes
Hello,
As part of the digitisation service we provide to students with special needs we have been contacting publishers over the past 5 years or so and have received PDFs for free whenever the publisher had them available. We would only request publishers PDFs or Word documents for books that we have available in the Library.
As Susie Hastie mentions on her message this process takes quite some time.
Last semester we had very good results with Bloomsbury, Sage, Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Intellect Books, McGraw-Hill Education, Pan Macmillan, Quercus Books.
Some of them sent us CDs, the PDF via email or the FTP link.
We also contacted a few publishing houses that never replied to us.
Last semester we purchased a PDF from Hodder & Stoughton publishers as they clearly told us we could not scan the book in house to provide it to one of our students with special needs.
The Open University Press also replied to one of our requests telling us to purchase the PDF from their online shop.
Regarding electronic resources, some of our students with special needs have reported finding difficult to navigate through so on occasions we had to digitise electronic resources for those students.
Last semester we had a particular high number of requests and a result we will be investigating options such as Load2learn. I would also like to know more about how other institutions deal with requests from students with special needs … so should be contacting you soon!
Please see below the email template we use for contacting publishers. When required we complete their specific form providing further details on the specific student, course, etc.
Dear Sir/Madam
As part of the digitisation services we provide to students at University of Roehampton, we are responsible for improving access to the library holdings for our students with special needs.
We have received a digitisation request from one of our students with special needs for the following book(s) available in our collection:
Author of the book:
Title of the book:
Year of publication:
ISBN:
Would it be possible for NAME PUBLISHER HERE to supply the item(s) in WORD/Searchable PDF format?
Yours sincerely,
Best wishes,
Tania Durt
Digitisation & Document Delivery Co-ordinator
Library Services
University of Roehampton | London | SW15 5SZ
[log in to unmask] | www.roehampton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8392 8121
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From: A general library and information science list for news and discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Bowman
Sent: 14 January 2015 09:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: DSA Changes
Hi All,
In reading through the impact assessment for the proposed transfer of funding for DSAs from central government to Universities, I came across the following statement (Para. 53);
Many publishers have agreed to make alternative formats of their publications available to disabled students, online and at no cost. We wish to see this facility used widely and routinely.
Has anyone come across this, as it seems contrary to the ethos of most academic publishers!
Many Thanks,
Steve b.
Stephen A Bowman BA(Hons) MA MSc FCLIP FHEA
Deputy Librarian
University of Chichester
Bognor Regis Campus
Upper Bognor Road
Bognor Regis
West Sussex
PO21 1HR
Tel: 01243 812082
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