AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TESTING AND MATERIALS et al v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC.

Filing 164

REPLY in support of motion re #163 SEALED MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE DOCUMENT UNDER SEAL filed by PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. (This document is SEALED and only available to authorized persons.), #120 SEALED MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE DOCUMENT UNDER SEAL filed by PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. (This document is SEALED and only available to authorized persons.) filed by PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC.. (Attachments: #1 [Redacted] Declaration of Matthew Becker, #2 [Redacted] Consolidated List of Exhibits, #3 [Redacted] Response to Supplemental Statement of Facts, #4 [Redacted] Response to Statement of Disputed Facts, #5 Supplemental Objections to Evidence, #6 Response to Evidentiary Objections, #7 Supplemental Request for Judicial Notice, #8 Supplemental Declaration of Carl Malamud, #9 Exhibit 1, #10 Exhibit 2, #11 Exhibit 3, #12 Exhibit 4, #13 Exhibit 5, #14 Exhibit 6, #15 Exhibit [Redacted] 7, #16 Exhibit 8, #17 Exhibit 9, #18 Exhibit [Redacted] 10, #19 Exhibit [Redacted] 11, #20 Exhibit 12, #21 Exhibit 13, #22 Exhibit 14, #23 Exhibit 15, #24 Exhibit 16, #25 Exhibit 17)(Bridges, Andrew) Modified text on 2/5/2016 (ztd).

EXHIBIT 15

The Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in
Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities (the
Commission) was established by the Higher Education Opportunity Act
of 2008 (the Act). In accordance with that statute, this independent
Commission has brought together government leaders, representatives
from the publishing industry, individuals with print disabilities,
representatives from two-year and four-year institutions of higher
education, and leaders in the accessible technology field. The Act also
specifically requires that the Secretary of Education appoint
representatives from three offices of the Department as members. As
with many independent advisory committees of this nature, the
Commission is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act which,
among other things, helps ensure the independent nature of the body
and requires that the Department not exercise “inappropriate influence”
over the advice and recommendations in its report. Consistent with this
provision, neither this report, nor the recommendations it contains,
have been cleared or approved by the Secretary of Education, the U.S.
Department of Education, nor the Administration, and, as such, the
views expressed in this report should not be regarded as those of the
Secretary, the Department, or the Administration. The report
represents the collaborative work and recommendations of the
individual members of the Commission and of the Commission as a
whole.

Russlynn H. Ali
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
United States Department of Education
Lizanne DeStefano, Ph.D.
Fox Family Professor of Education
University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign
Gaeir Dietrich, Chair
Director of the High Tech Center
Training Unit
California Community Colleges
Andrew Friedman
CEO
Learning Ally
Jim Fruchterman
Founder, President, CEO
Benetech
Chester A. Finn
Council Member
National Council on Disability
Peter Givler
Executive Director
Association of American University
Presses
Stephan J. Hamlin-Smith
Executive Director
Association on Higher Education and
Disability
Kurt Herzer
Medical and Doctor of Philosophy
Student
The Johns Hopkins University
Bruce Hildebrand
Executive Director for Higher
Education
Association of American Publishers
Ashlee Kephart
Student
Hamline University

George Kerscher, Ph.D.
Secretary General of the
DAISY Consortium
President of the
International Digital
Publishing Forum
Eduardo M. Ochoa, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary, Office of
Postsecondary Education
United States Department
of Education
Maria A. Pallante
Senior Advisor to the
Librarian of Congress
Appointed Register of
Copyrights June 1, 2011
*Resigned from Commission
9/2/11 (See Appendix A)
Alexa Posny, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary for
Special Education and
Rehabilitative Services
United States Department
of Education
Mark Riccobono
Executive Director, Jernigan
Institute
National Federation of the Blind
Linda Tessler, Ph.D.
Psychology and Learning
Disabilities Specialist
Tuck Tinsley III, Ed.D.
President
American Printing House
for the Blind
James H. Wendorf, Vice Chair
Executive Director
National Center for
Learning Disabilities
NOTE: Biographies of
Commission members
appear in Appendix B.

The Commission wishes to thank the numerous individuals
whose hard work, dedication and insight into the topic of
accessible instructional materials for postsecondary students
with disabilities allowed the Commission to prepare this historic
report in just fourteen months.
The Commission would like to thank all of the stakeholders
who testified before the Commission at the three public hearing
sessions. The public comments that we heard from
postsecondary students, university personnel, parents and
industry experts were invaluable to our ability to study the
experiences of postsecondary students with disabilities,
determine innovative practices and identify challenges that still
exist. This information enabled us to prepare a report that truly
reflects the postsecondary landscape of AIM and to make
recommendations that we hope will improve the postsecondary
experience for all students with disabilities.
The knowledge of the students and postsecondary experts on
technology, disability, accessibility and policy who presented at
the Commission’s public meetings and teleconferences was
vital to our work. We would like to thank Deborah Alexander,
Holly Anderson, Dr. Emiliano Ayala, Ann Berlin, Bonnie
Beacher, Betsy Beaumon, Sheryl Bergsthaler, Rick Bowes,
David Capozzi, Jared Coopersmith, Geoff Freed, Jim Gashel,
Larry Goldberg, Dan Goldstein, Deepa Goraya, Dr. Noel
Gregg, Tom Hadfield, Deborah Hart, Bonnie Jones, Mike
Kurdziel, Alyssa Lang, Richard LaPointe, Christopher Lee,
Laurie Lewis, Scott Lissner, Matt MacInnis, Matt May, Ed
McCoyd, Stacey Montebello, Kimberley Raue, Jeff Rosen,
Katie Salmon, Cathy Schelly, Mark Schneiderman, Kyle
Shachmut, Dr. Judy Shanley, Jo Anne Simon, Mark
Snyderman, Pat Soden, Tom Starbranch, Ron Stewart, Ed
Summers and Suzanne Taylor.
The Commission offers sincere gratitude to the Office for
Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) for the
financial and operational support that it provided which was
critical to the success of this report. The Commission would
like to dedicate this report to the memory of James E. Button,
Ph.D., Director of Communications and Customer Service
Team, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
The Commission would like to thank the Commission staff at
OSERS and at the Center for Applied Special Technology
(CAST): Janet Gronneberg, Scott Lapinski, Mary O’Malley,
Elizabeth Shook and Skip Stahl. These are the individuals who
worked with us full-time during these fourteen months on dayto-day activities ranging from planning and organizing all

meetings and public hearings to drafting and managing the
Commission’s preparation of the final report. Thanks are
extended to Valerie Hendricks for her editing skills.
The Commission would also like to recognize the invaluable
contributions of the three federal employees who represented
the Department’s Assistant Secretaries. For their expertise and
counsel, we respectfully thank Shedita Alston, Glinda Hill, and
Betsey Wiegman of the Office of Postsecondary Education, the
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and the
Office for Civil Rights, respectively.
Finally, the Commission would like to sincerely thank its
Designated Federal Official and Executive Director, David
Berthiaume, for his leadership and commitment to our mission.

The Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional
Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students with
Disabilities (the Commission) was authorized under the Higher
Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) to address and
seek remedies for the challenges encountered by students with
print disabilities enrolled in postsecondary institutions (see
Appendix C).
This report is based on the shared experiences and perspectives
of the 19 stakeholder representatives who make up the
Commission. These Commissioners speak with one voice in
stating that barriers that would deny students with disabilities
their rights to full and complete access to their educational
experience are unacceptable in a society that values
achievement through education.
After much research, testimony, and intense discussion, the
Commission has prepared this report to provide insights into the
array of barriers that often confront postsecondary students with
disabilities. Among these barriers are instructional materials,
technologies and operating systems which, in some
circumstances, are transitory and, with effort, correctable. In
other situations, however, challenges presented to making these
necessary items accessible are more significant due to the
limited resources of campus disability resource/service (DR/S)
offices, the increasing complexity and modalities of emerging
instructional materials and the delivery systems employed to
utilize these materials. It is critical that these and other
obstacles be removed.
The Commission understands that the collaborative efforts of
the companies and individuals involved in the production of
instructional materials and their delivery systems, disability
advocates, institutions of higher education and students with
disabilities themselves can—together—be powerful enough to
overcome barriers to educational opportunity.
Further, the Commission believes that the solution to current
and future challenges lies in the establishment of a vibrant
market of thoughtfully developed instructional tools that are
designed from the outset to meet the needs of the broadest
possible range of students, including those with disabilities.
Congress charged the Commission with several important
functions, including making recommendations to Congress and
to the Secretary of Education. The Commission acknowledges
that the current accessible instructional materials (AIM)
landscape involves a variety of competing forces, many of which
are in motion and some of which are in conflict. It can be seen

as an intersection of converging perspectives and practices. This
intersection could incite a meaningful paradigm shift regarding
the way accessibility in the postsecondary environment is
embraced and implemented. Indeed, change could be profound
over the next few years as the world of print—with its longstanding practices, policies and market dynamics—increasingly
gives way to digital communication. With respect to AIM, the
Commission believes that the impact of these innovations
ultimately will be dramatic. We also acknowledge that change
takes time, and that in the context of higher education in
particular, the evolution of perspectives and organizational
practices will not be immediate.
The complex infrastructure of creating, locating and acquiring
AIM has changed since HEOA legislation was written and enacted
in 2008. At the time of HEOA legislation, the AIM arena was
focused almost entirely on creating alternate formats. Today, it is
shifting towards a more market-based, digital response that, in
some cases, obviates the need for alternate formats. Currently,
market-based and licensed alternate format distribution models
such as CourseSmart and the AccessText Network exist that were
only envisioned when the HEOA was drafted. For the most
commonly used postsecondary textbooks, DR/S offices can now
rapidly acquire publisher files or permission to scan books,
determine whether another school has already created an alternate
format that is available for licensing, and determine whether they
or individual students can acquire digital versions from digital
retailers. Throughout its study, the Commission viewed mediarich products from a number of digital materials and software
vendors that evinced a strong commitment to accessibility. The
Commission’s challenge has been to describe how leveraging
these new possibilities can dramatically improve the delivery of
AIM, immediately and over time.
The Commission heard testimony from more than 50 witnesses
about the persisting needs of individuals with disabilities (both
students and faculty) and those who provide support to these
individuals at the postsecondary level. The Commission heard
testimony from many stakeholder groups, including textbook
publishers, software developers, faculty, advocacy groups,
technology experts, government agencies and others. Most of
these groups are working to develop more effective, balanced
solutions to address the intricate challenge of ensuring that
students with disabilities receive accessible instructional materials
in a timely, cost effective manner.
The Commission also heard testimony from students with
disabilities, D/RS providers and faculty that conveyed a variety of
concerns pertaining to AIM in the postsecondary environment that
still exist. This testimony revealed that some students with

disabilities have experienced a variety of challenges, including
blocked access to educational opportunities and matriculation
failure resulting from inaccessible learning materials and/or their
delivery systems. Testimony also indicated that DR/S and other
university personnel often must engage in labor-intensive practices
to provide AIM for students with disabilities. Each of the
Commission’s five in-person meetings thus reflected that while
there are a variety of emerging improved practices in the area of
AIM, there is still persistent unmet need.
Despite profound differences in opinion on how change should
occur, Commission members have achieved consensus on a
number of fundamental issues. Commission members agree
that a potentially viable accessible digital marketplace is
emerging in some areas, but there is not agreement that this
progress is occurring within all components of the instructional
materials enterprise. While textbook publishers and a number
of e-text vendors are moving to incorporate accessibility into
their products, some developers of web applications, social
media and productivity software used to support postsecondary
instructional practice are less pro-active.
To facilitate the incorporation of accessibility features in
technologies used in postsecondary settings, the Commission’s
recommendations urge Congress to take action on a number of
key issues. Such issues include, but are not limited to, a)
establishing a process for creating uniform accessibility
guidelines for industry and consumers, b) revisiting the
components of existing copyright exception, c) assessing AIM’s
relationship to current research and instructional materials
access taking into account the rights of content owners and d)
re-emphasizing the importance of compliance with civil rights
laws for institutions of higher education so that the needs of
students with disabilities are more adequately addressed by
postsecondary educational institutions.
Further, the Commission urges Congress to establish
mechanisms for assessing the market progress that all
Commission members hope will occur to support additional
means of incentivizing content developers to incorporate
accessibility during product design and to reinforce the
necessity for open source instructional materials to be held to
the same standards for access as other materials. The
Commission has provided a series of specific recommendations
for promoting these outcomes.
The Commission believes that the identification of need for,
acquisition of, and use of accessible instructional materials are
the administrative responsibility of every higher education
institution, not simply the task of DR/S offices. To expand this

understanding and to facilitate procurement processes and to
support personnel in becoming far more sensitive to and
knowledgeable about accessible instructional materials, the
Commission has crafted a set of capacity-building
recommendations for postsecondary personnel and students.
Finally, the Commission believes strongly in the capabilities of
well-designed and innovative models as a mechanism for
promoting effective change. Therefore it has developed
recommendations for model demonstration projects that
promote the effective use of AIM in the postsecondary
environment through training and innovation. The Commission
posits that solutions developed for students with disabilities
have the potential to incite innovative practices that will
improve postsecondary education for all postsecondary
students.

The provision of Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) to
students with disabilities at the postsecondary level has been
impacted by issues associated with the complex interactions
between civil rights and copyright law, as well as an evolving
market and rapidly emerging technology. To address the multifaceted challenges associated with these issues, the Advisory
Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in
Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities (the
Commission) was established under the Higher Education
Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA).1 The HEOA directed the
Commission to—
conduct a comprehensive study, to—(i) assess the barriers
and systemic issues that may affect, and technical solutions
available that may improve, the timely delivery and quality
of accessible instructional materials for postsecondary
students with print disabilities, as well as the effective use
of such materials by faculty and staff; and (ii) make
recommendations related to the development of a
comprehensive approach to improve the opportunities for
postsecondary students with print disabilities to access
instructional materials in specialized formats in a timeframe
comparable to the availability of instructional materials for
postsecondary nondisabled students.2
The Commission has examined these issues and presents its
findings and recommendations in the following report.
As of 2006, there were 6,536 postsecondary institutions
receiving Title IV (student financial assistance) funds, with 21
million students enrolled.3 Of these institutions, 2,707 were

four-year; 2,226 were two-year; and 1,767 were less than twoyear.4 This number includes both full-time and part-time
students in undergraduate, graduate and technical-degree
programs, and is projected to increase steadily in the coming
years. Postsecondary enrollment has increased approximately
34% since 1995 and is expected to increase another 17% by
2019.5
According to a 2009 United States Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report, there were approximately 19.2 million
students enrolled in two-and four-year postsecondary
institutions in 2008 and 2.1 million (10.8%) of these students
had some disability.6 There are researchers who believe that
this number may be low due to the trend of students with nonapparent disabilities—learning, attention-deficit, mental health
and other conditions—choosing not to disclose their disabilities
to their respective institutions.7 Some professionals familiar
with the issue believe that students with disabilities may avoid
disclosure due to the perceived stigma, the adoption of
successful learning strategies, their unfamiliarity with available
supports and services, or for numerous other reasons, according
to the Association of Higher Education and Disability
(AHEAD) Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability.8
Unsympathetic attitudes on the part of faculty and
administration can make some students with disabilities feel left
out and lacking social supports, especially in the first year,
when the provision of auxiliary aids and services can be most
important to students’ success.9,10
Students with a range of disabilities enroll in postsecondary
institutions. The 2011 National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES) survey data and the 2011 AHEAD survey data report
similar distributions of disability types represented by students
enrolled in postsecondary institutions.11,12 (Note that the
percentages below represent disability types within the 10.8% of
students with disabilities reported in postsecondary settings.)

Disability Type
Learning Disabilities
ADD or ADHD
Psychological
condition
Health impairment
Mobility impairment
Hard of hearing or
Deaf
Traumatic Brain
Injury

AHEAD %
28.16%
20.21%

NCES %
31%
18%

15.59%

15%

9.25%
6.20%

11%
7%

3.25%

4%

2.79%

2%

I think that the thing that this
group has to think about is that
everything you see and use today
will be obsolete and irrelevant
five years from now. And when
setting guidelines and directives
for companies like ours that
move at a very quick pace with
respect to technology
development, you have to
remember that we don't believe
that the textbook as it exists
today will be a meaningful tool
by the end of this decade.
CEO of Inkling (2011, July 12)

At this point, I'm not sure I will be
getting a degree, primarily because
I came in 2008 and now if I were to
actually try to get a degree, I
would be there until 2016, and I
have other stuff I need to do. As I
said, I started a software company
about two years ago and that's
been doing quite well and I need to
spend my time on that and wasting
time on getting a degree that I
should have had now, you know,
it’s not really in the cards.
Student with a visual
impairment (2011, February 24)

Vision impairment
Intellectual disabilities
Temporary
impairment
Autism
Speech/language
impairment
Deaf-blind
Other

2.61%
2.40%

3%
3%

2.01%

N/A

1.94%

2%

0.72%

1%

0.09%
4.79%

N/A
3%

Retention and graduation rates for all students with disabilities
are improving, but are still disheartening. Students with
disabilities at four-year institutions currently have a
34.8%graduation rate, well below the 51.2% for the general
student population. 13,14 The graduation rate of 29.4 percent for
students with disabilities enrolled in two-year programs is
equally low. Students enrolled in vocational or technical
programs fare better, with 54.6% completing their courses of
study or certifications. With appropriate accommodations,
however, students with disabilities have the opportunity to
flourish and to perform as well as their non-disabled peers.15,16
Alternate-format materials may be obtained from four primary
sources. First, students may purchase accessible materials from
publishers or digital retailers. Second, the AccessText Network
facilitates the provision of e-text versions of print textbooks and
related materials from participating publishers upon request
from postsecondary institutions’ DR/S offices. Third, DR/S
offices and students who qualify under the Section 121
copyright exception (Chafee Amendment) may seek previouslypublished works in accessible formats from national authorized
entities like the American Printing House for the Blind’s
LOUIS database, Bookshare and Learning Ally. These
authorized entities operate under the Section 121 copyright
exception and provide one or more specialized alternate
formats, including braille, large print and, in the case of the
latter two, accessible e-text and audio versions. Fourth,
students’ own postsecondary institutions may be capable of
adapting instructional materials for accessibility on an ad hoc
basis to meet student needs in a timely manner.
The number of curriculum publishers and other content
developers offering accessible digital versions of their print
materials has increased in recent years. Large learning
technology companies, such as C-engage, Elsevier, McGrawHill, Pearson and Wiley are providing versions of their

The Access Text Network
operates by publisher
participation, and we’ve got
some of the largest publishers
participating—92% of the
textbook publishing
marketplace. The distribution
formats that we’re looking at
are DAISY, MP3s, DOCs and
PDFs to provide to campuses.
Project Director, Access Text
Network (2011, February 24)

educational materials with accessibility features. Other
companies, including CourseSmart (a cooperative digital
venture of several major publishers), VitalSource (Ingram
Digital) and CafeScribe (Follett) are currently offering digital
versions of instructional materials on a variety of technology
platforms. New sources are regularly entering the market (e.g.,
Inkling, AcademicPub, Kno). While some are currently more
accessible than others, most, if not all, are understood to be
working to become conformant with prevailing standards
(Section 508 and/or WCAG 2.0).
The companies referenced above provide access to multiple
thousands of titles and several highlight their application of
accessibility standards, most commonly Section 508
compliance. The proprietary “e-reader” software provided by
these distributors is expected to be accessible within the coming
months and is designed to maintain the security of content
without compromising accessibility. None of these accessible
market options were in place just two years ago.
The AccessText Network (ATN) was established in 2008 at the
Alternative Media Access Center at the Georgia Institute of
Technology. ATN is a web-based resource that enables its
1,500 postsecondary members to connect with publishers to
obtain digital versions of or permissions to create alternate
formats of specified instructional materials for documented
students with print disabilities. ATN’s participating publishers
currently include major postsecondary publishers who together
cover more than 250 subsidiary publisher imprints (brands); via
ATN they provide access to more than 230,000 title records. As
of October 2011, ATN has fulfilled 70,000 requests. In most
instances, ATN has been able provide DR/S offices with
requested digital files far faster than has traditionally been the
case, with 42% fulfilled within a single day and 71% fulfilled in
four days or less. Requesting electronic files from member
publishers is free to all postsecondary institutions.
Publishers participating in ATN can readily allow ATN’s
registered users to share files that have been processed for
student use. This facility can shorten the lag time between file
request and receipt by allowing one member postsecondary
institution access to an accessible version created by another. In
August 2011, ATN launched a federated search capability called
the Accessible Textbook Finder (ATF). ATF searches the
online catalogs of multiple sources of accessible instructional
materials and provides the results in a combined format. The

Bookshare just passed 120,000 titles,
and that’s really what you might think
of as books in addition to periodicals.
We’re adding between 2,000–5,000
books every month. We have over
130 publisher partners, 100 of those
in the U.S. That includes 18
University presses.
Bookshare Vice President
(2011, July 11)

Over the past three years, Learning Ally
has delivered over 1 million copies [of
digital books] from our libraries to
students who are qualified. We have
about 65,000 titles in our library. The
vast majority, about 70% of them, are
textbooks. We specialize in the STEM
books, the science, technology,
engineering and math books, because
that really lends itself to the descriptive
human voice. A good percentage of
those are postsecondary titles.
Chief Program Officer, Learning Ally
(2011, February 25)

ATF search currently includes six participating accessible media
producers (AMPs) and libraries. When a user selects a specific
item from the consolidated search results, they can then follow a
link to obtain the desired material under the terms of that
participating source. Additional sources are planned for
addition during the beta phase. Currently, ATF search partners
include AccessText Network, Alternative Media Access Center,
Bookshare, CourseSmart, Ingram, Learning Ally, National
Library Service (NLS), and Project Gutenberg.
For DR/S providers who may not be ATN members, the
Association of American Publishers (AAP) offers the Publisher
Look-Up Service at http://www.publisherlookup.org/ which
provides postsecondary providers with publisher contact
information.
AMPs that are federally supported entities, including the NLS
of the Library of Congress, the American Printing House for the
Blind (APH), Bookshare, and Learning Ally transform print
works into student-ready digital versions. All AMPs operate
within the constraints of the Section 121 copyright exception
(Chafee Amendment), which allows them to provide specialized
format materials—braille, digital text, audio, and large print—to
individuals with qualifying disabilities. Many postsecondary
institutions take advantage of these resources directly and
support or provide memberships for students who qualify for
these services. However, many students who are eligible under
civil rights law for accommodations in postsecondary settings
may not qualify under the existing copyright exception.
The National Library Service (NLS) of the Library of Congress
supports the framework of a nationally coordinated system for
the provision of alternate-format materials. APH manages
LOUIS, an online catalog of approximately 363,000 K–12,
postsecondary, and trade titles available in braille, large print, etext and audio from nearly 200 contributing agencies. The
purpose of LOUIS is to minimize duplication of effort and to
facilitate the acquisition of specialized-format materials. Statelevel vocational rehabilitation offices and state braille
commissions respond to local requests for braille and other
alternate formats.
Bookshare’s 125,000 accessible e-text titles are all available in
both DAISY e-text and digital braille formats for direct
downloading by DR/S offices and by blind postsecondary
students. Bookshare does not provide hard copy braille versions
of books, but users can create hard copy braille versions of this
content if they choose to or may utilize them on various
hardware devices with refreshable braille displays. More than
50,000 of these titles come directly from publishers under

voluntary licensing agreements, and these can be transformed to
accessible e-text and/or digital braille files. Bookshare DAISY
books can be converted into synthetic speech, audio, large print
and/or braille using software supplied by Bookshare and other
assistive technology vendors. Postsecondary students have
downloaded more than 80,000 different accessible e-texts titles
from Bookshare. The total number of downloaded files for such
students currently exceeds 300,000 books and periodicals.
Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic)
offers students access to their digitally-recorded (human-voice
narrated) 69,000-title textbook and trade book library. Learning
Ally’s titles are designed to work with assistive technologies
(both hardware and software) and with consumer portable
media devices. Learning Ally also creates accessible content
for a wide range of commercial clients and public sector
organizations in the form of quality accessible digital audio
media and solutions in braille, large print and electronic text.
Nearly every postsecondary institution has evolved strategies,
protocols and resources for acquiring or creating AIM for
students with disabilities. As referenced above, braille is sought
from a collection of local, regional and national sites, or created
on an ad hoc basis as needed utilizing state vocational
rehabilitation or state commissions as a source for blind
contractors and specialists. The national AMPs and ATN are
additional resources for braille, e-text and audio, but a
significant portion of required AIM is still produced on
individual campuses and by system-wide production centers in a
one-off and as-needed manner depending on student needs. For
example, the Alternate Text Production Center (ATPC) of the
California Community College system reports that for the
2010–2011 academic year there were 2,609,224 enrolled
students in the community college system at 112 campuses.
The ATPC produced 6,474 e-texts and 135 braille/tactile
graphics materials during that time period.17
It should be noted that in the postsecondary marketplace, many
original print works are revised on a three- to four-year cycle,
on average, which can result in workload challenges for
resource-strapped state and local AIM production centers.18
Institutions of higher education (IHEs) must comply with
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) and
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibit
discrimination on the basis of disability. Under these laws,
IHEs, in providing an aid, benefit, or service, may not afford a
qualified person with a disability an opportunity to participate in
or benefit from the aid, benefit, or service that is not equal to
that afforded others.19 To ensure that qualified students with

disabilities are not denied the benefits of their postsecondary
educational program, IHEs are required under Section 504 and
the ADA to provide academic adjustments, including auxiliary
aids and services when necessary, to prevent discrimination.
Such aids and services may include taped texts, audio
recordings, brailled materials and displays, screen reader
software, magnification software, large print materials and
access to electronic and information technology.20
The provision of AIM to students with disabilities at the
postsecondary level is also governed by the legal parameters of
copyright law. Copyright serves as “an engine of free
expression” and establishes the economic incentive to create
and disseminate ideas by creating a marketable right to the use
of one’s own expression. 21,22 Two fundamental aspects of the
U.S. copyright system are ensuring that authors and publishers
can control and profit from their creative efforts.23 The U.S.
copyright system is economic by design and is a major building
block of both U.S. domestic trade and the world economy. The
protections provided by copyright law expand the knowledge
base and, at the same time, support the creative industries,
including the millions of people engaged in the production,
marketing and distribution of creative works (see Appendix
D).24
The Chafee Amendment, a 1996 amendment to the U.S.
Copyright Act, codifies an exception to copyright law for
purposes of serving blind or other persons with disabilities.25 It
sets forth the kind of copying that is permissible for free and
without permission of the copyright owner, as well as the legal
conditions and the beneficiaries of the exception. In general,
the Chafee Amendment allows certain entities to convert nondramatic literary works into specialized formats—defined as
braille, audio, digital text and, as added in 2004, large print—for
exclusive use by blind or other persons with disabilities. These
conversions can only be made by “authorized entities” as
defined in the amendment, and may only be distributed to
individuals with qualifying disabilities.
It should be noted that the beneficiary population of the Chafee
Amendment is narrower than the population of students who
may be determined to require alternative formats to print under
civil rights statutes. In the HEOA, Congress defined the term
“student with a print disability” as including (but not limited to)
those individuals who would be found eligible under this
copyright amendment:
DEFINITION OF STUDENT WITH A PRINT
DISABILITY.
In this sub-part, the term ‘student with a print disability’
means a student with a disability who experiences

barriers to accessing instructional material in
nonspecialized formats, including an individual
described in section 121(d)(2) of title 17, United States
Code [i.e., the Chafee Amendment].26

I know the mandate for the
Commission was to look principally
at print material, but the definition
of textbook has changed. If you
don’t look at multimedia, you will
be doing all of us a terrible
disservice.
Postsecondary ADA Coordinator
(2011, July 12)

Another copyright exception that is relevant to the AIM
discussion is Section 107, commonly known as “Fair Use.”27
This doctrine is explained in greater detail in Chapter 1.
Additionally, the triennial rule-making provisions of section
1201 of the Copyright Act may be relevant.28 Section 1201 was
enacted in 1998 as one part of a copyright amendment known as
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).29 It allows the
Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the
Register of Copyrights, to exempt certain classes of works from
the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures
that control access to copyrighted works, when that
circumvention is undertaken for certain non-infringing uses
(e.g., to enable certain e-text controls).30 This process and some
of the exemptions of recent rule-makings are summarized in
Chapter 1 of this report and in more detail in Appendix D. (A
new rule-making period under section 1201 is currently under
way; public comments are due December 1, 2011.31

The provision of AIM—most commonly in the form of digital
text, refreshable braille generated from a digital text, embossed
(paper) braille, tactile graphics, audio, or large print—and of
access to content in general, is also significantly challenged by
the emerging importance of digital technologies. In addition,
online course registration, delivery and assessment; online
databases, course chat rooms and message systems; open
educational resources and web pages created by faculty; mediarich “textbooks” embedded in popular course management
systems; computer-based exams used for entrance to or in order
to complete a course, a major, or a certificate program all
involve digital technologies. This complex, evolving and
promise-filled landscape presents an opportunity for
postsecondary institutions to implement educational practices
that meet the needs of students who aspire to higher learning
and improve access for students with disabilities. However, the
presence of inaccessible technology-based products and services
within the postsecondary environment can create unintended
and nearly impenetrable barriers, while the availability of
products and services that can be accessed by all students,
including those with disabilities, can open new doors.
As technology continues to change the instructional materials
landscape and increases the variety of available course
materials, digital media has become more commonplace. The

preeminence of print remains, but it is likely to diminish as the
use of rich media increases even more. A medium that provides
access for one student may be a barrier to another. For
example, a student who is blind might prefer to receive course
content in a digital text format that could be subsequently
rendered in refreshable or embossed braille, audio, or as
enlarged text, but a student who is deaf would likely prefer a
visual format. In short, there is no one media type that meets
the accessibility needs of all students.
The Commission unanimously agrees that instructional
materials should be accessible to postsecondary students with
print disabilities on the open market at the same time and at the
same cost as they are for other students, with the recognition
that certain low-incidence, highly specialized, or limited-run
materials may not be as readily available.

As the CEO, when I’m asked by
my Board, ‘why are you spending
engineering resources on
accessibility, that can’t reach but
1% of the market?’ I respond,
‘it’s 100% of the market because
I can't serve higher education
properly without serving
everyone equally, or at least to
the best of my ability as equally
as possible.’
CEO of Inkling
(2011, July 12)

The Commission proceeds from the premise that individuals
with print disabilities must have equal opportunity and
discrimination-free access to full participation and success in
postsecondary education. Unfortunately, for many years, the
specialized formats needed by such individuals were expensive
and labor intensive to produce (e.g., embossed braille versions,
recorded books). As such, they were distinct from materials
sold in mainstream markets. Put simply, accessible versions of
textbooks were available only from specialized sources. Today,
as the focus of instructional materials shifts from hard copy
textbooks to digital books, learning software, computer
presentations created by instructors and other digital formats, it
becomes theoretically possible that, in some instances, the
format required for accessibility purposes might be the same as,
or substantially similar to, the format distributed to mainstream
markets. At the present time, however, some digital materials
that hold the most promise for equal access are often partially or
completely inaccessible to students with disabilities.
The mainstream and specialized markets have the potential of
converging, with accessibility being included from the design
phase of digital materials through to the final product. This
would be a positive development that should be encouraged in
every possible way, including through federal funding,
investments in technology, the establishment of functional
guidelines and the development of best practices for the creation
of universally-designed instructional materials. As a general
rule, the Commission notes that achieving accessibility in the
marketplace is the best way to ensure that the greatest diversity
of content reaches the greatest number of individuals with
disabilities in postsecondary settings.

When evaluating the potential for a
“market model” the perspective must
always be about the future. The key
question is, “What will the consumer
want and be willing and able to buy
that publishers and distributors will
be able to produce, sell, and
distribute in sufficient quantity to
recover their costs and generate a
return commensurate with the
financial and other risks they will be
taking?”
AAP presentation to Commission
(February 22, 2011)

However, the Commission also recognizes that fully accessible
instructional materials cannot always be produced through
regular publishing/development processes. Some works, such as
embossed braille or tactile graphics, require significant added
production costs to achieve accessibility. Further, these works
may only serve limited markets of users—for example, certain
publications that serve braille or tactile graphics users. In the
case of these high-cost and/or low-incidence works, the
Commission thinks it is unlikely that the open market will
provide a meaningful solution, even over time. The Commission
expects that the users of these works will continue to require the
support of the federal government, as well as the services of
specialized organizations and authorized entities that currently
operate on a not-for-profit basis under the Section 121 copyright
exception and DR/S and other service organizations.
All publishers will face challenges when contemplating the
production of high-quality accessible formats for out-of-print
works and works of interest only to very narrow niche markets.
This will be a greater challenge for small publishers and
university presses. However, some of these smaller producers
may benefit from creative licenses with specialized format
producers or with colleges and universities for the creation of
enhanced accessible content that can be sold under license or
returned to the original publisher for sale to new customers.
Against this evolving backdrop, the marketplace is expanding
and many larger publishers are migrating to “born digital”
multimedia educational products (products produced
specifically for use in a digital-only format) and have
demonstrated a growing commitment to building accessibility
directly into products to serve marketplace demands.
The Commission reached consensus in defining the challenges
that needed to be addressed. These include—
•
•
•
•

•

Improving and assuring timeliness for the effective
delivery of AIM
Eliminating redundancy in production of AIM
Assuring that students receive high-quality AIM
Effective and timely meeting of AIM requirements for
low-incidence formats, e.g., braille and tactile graphics
and
Meeting AIM requirements for challenging types of
content, e.g., science, engineering, technology and
mathematics (STEM), foreign languages and music

•

•
•

•

•

•
•
•

•

•

•

•

•

•
•

Addressing the significant lack of hard, quantitative
data about the many aspects of the AIM challenge:
Inadequate data about (a) students’ needs, (b) available
AIM, (c) usage of AIM
Engaging all levels of postsecondary institutions in
AIM delivery and overall accessibility issues
Assuring that postsecondary disability staff are
sufficiently trained in relevant technologies to (a)
support the AIM needs of students with disabilities and
(b) interact effectively with sources of AIM
Assuring that instructional materials produced by
faculty and other non-market content area professionals
incorporate the same required accessibility features as
commercial products, and
Providing AIM to students who need materials but do
not request them
Engaging small publishers and other content owners in
AIM delivery
Improving the timeliness, quality and consistency of
content production without driving up cost
Establishing and implementing functional accessibility
standards for new, digital-only instructional materials
and for digital versions of print materials
Establishing and implementing functional accessibility
standards for software applications to ensure that
software is accessible in the digital-delivery
environment
Assuring that producers/providers of non-textbook
content used by students with print disabilities meet the
same AIM requirements for accessibility and timeliness
as textbook content
Assuring that AIM principles are embedded in the
design and implementation of new forms of educational
software being developed
Encouraging manufacturers of authoring software and
other suppliers to make helpful modifications regarding
accessibility
Evaluating the application and effects of the Chafee
Amendment in the postsecondary context during the
past 15 years, including research regarding the physical
and neurological basis of specific learning disabilities
Stimulating market demand for AIM to foster a
concomitant increase in supply
Effectively measuring progress and responding with
modified strategies if progress is determined to be
inadequate

The following sections provide definitions for commonly used
terms and abbreviations; a list of the Commission’s
recommendations; an overview of existing higher education
environments and the instructional materials required by
students with disabilities; the systems for purchasing, creating,
or otherwise acquiring these materials; and the challenges faced
by students, postsecondary education personnel and curriculum
publishers.

The worlds of postsecondary education, publishing and product
development, disability and technology are each rife with
abbreviations; together they create a confusing lexicon.
Abbreviations familiar to one segment of stakeholders are often
unknown to the others. In all circumstances, when commonly
abbreviated terms or references are employed, they are paired
with the full text they represent in their initial appearance in the
text. In addition, an abbreviation glossary is included in the
appendices to help with additional instances of abbreviation.
Other terms have proven to be more fundamental to
understanding the scope and emphasis of both the report
narrative and the Commission’s recommendations:
Academic Adjustments: Modifications to academic
requirements as are necessary to ensure that such
requirements do not discriminate, or have the effect of
discriminating, on the basis of disability against a
qualified applicant or student with a disability.
Modifications may include changes in the length of time
permitted for the completion of degree requirements,
substitution of specific courses required for the
completion of degree requirements, and adaptation of the
manner in which specific courses are conducted.32
Auxiliary Aids and Services: Auxiliary aids and services
include—
(1) Qualified interpreters on-site or through video remote
interpreting (VRI) services; note takers; real-time computeraided transcription services; written materials; exchange of
written notes; telephone handset amplifiers; assistive listening
devices; assistive listening systems; telephones compatible
with hearing aids; closed caption decoders; open and closed
captioning, including real-time captioning; voice, text and
video-based telecommunications products and systems,
including text telephones (TTYs), videophones and captioned
telephones, or equally effective telecommunications devices;
videotext displays; accessible electronic and information

technology; or other effective methods of making aurally
delivered information available to individuals who are deaf or
hard of hearing
(2) Qualified readers; taped texts; audio recordings; brailled
materials and displays; screen reader software; magnification
software; optical readers; secondary auditory programs
(SAP); large print materials; accessible electronic and
information technology; or other effective methods of making
visually delivered materials available to individuals who are
blind or have low vision
(3) Acquisition or modification of equipment or devices, and
(4) Other similar services and actions33
Disability: With respect to an individual, the term “disability”
means (a) a physical or mental impairment that substantially
limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual;
(b) a record of such an impairment; or (c) being regarded as
having such an impairment. A person must meet the
requirements of at least one of these three criteria to be an
individual with a disability under the ADA and Section 504.34
Instructional Materials: Instructional materials are the
curricular content (printed and digital books, journals, course
packs, articles, music, tests, videos, instructor-created PDFs and
PowerPoint documents, web pages, etc.), as well as the
technologies required (hardware, firmware, software and
applications) for the manipulation, annotation and dissemination
of content. This definition also includes any other required
instructional software and applications used to facilitate the
teaching and learning process, including learning software,
courseware/learning management systems, digital “learning
objects,” library databases, and others.35
Low-Incidence/High Cost: Disabilities such as visual
impairments, deaf-blindness, significant physical disabilities,
deafness/hard of hearing and traumatic brain injury are
examples of “low-incidence” disabilities. Cost factors
associated with the provision of academic-related services and
materials to students with low-incidence disabilities
(extrapolated from K–12 special education data sources)
indicate costs ranging from four times to one hundred times the
costs associated with the provision of similar academic services
to non-disabled students.36
Qualified Student with a Disability: In the postsecondary
context, a qualified student with a disability is an individual
with a disability who, with or without reasonable modifications
to rules, policies, or practices; the removal of architectural,
communication, or transportation barriers; or the provision of
auxiliary aids and services meets the essential eligibility

requirements for the receipt of services or the participation in
programs or activities provided by the applicable educational
institution.37
Rich Media: This term is often used to describe media (text,
audio, video, animation, etc.) that includes interactivity,
including dynamic prompt and response components that may
be embedded in any of the listed media types.
Universal Design: A concept or philosophy for designing and
delivering products and services that are usable by people with
the widest possible range of functional capabilities, which
include products and services that are directly accessible
(without requiring assistive technologies) and products and
services that are interoperable with assistive technologies.38

Listed below are the Commission’s recommendations,
numbered as they appear in subsequent chapters of this Report.

1. Congress should authorize the United States Access
Board to establish guidelines for accessible instructional
materials that will be used by government, in the private
sector, and in postsecondary academic settings.

2. Congress should review the scope, effectiveness and
function of the Copyright Act as amended (Section 121, the
Chafee Amendment) to determine whether it or any of its
key component elements, as well as its implementation
through applicable regulations, need to be updated to
adequately address the needs of individuals with print
disabilities, including those enrolled in postsecondary
education.
3. The Commission recommends that the Department of
Education and the Department of Justice consider whether
to provide additional guidance on legal requirements
concerning postsecondary institutions’ policies and
procedures regarding documentation of disability under
Title II and Title III of the ADA and according to Section
504, to reduce the barriers currently presented by some
institutions’ requirements for documentation of disability.

4. If the postsecondary marketplace—producers of
instructional materials and delivery systems and institutions

of higher education—does not adequately provide AIM for
students with print disabilities, Congress should consider
appropriate legislation to better address these shortcomings.
5. Congress should consider incentives to accelerate
innovation in accessibility by publishers and producers of
course materials, hardware and software by offering
support and incentives for the production, sale and
consumption of accessible instructional materials and
delivery systems.
6. Congress should consider means to encourage authors,
publishers, producers and other content providers to
collaborate with a range of organizations, including
postsecondary institutions and alternate media producers,
in developing cost-effective licensing models for the
production and delivery of AIM.

7. The Commission does not recommend a single file format
solution similar to the (K–12) National Instructional
Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) nor a single
centralized clearinghouse, file sharing network, or national
repository similar to the National Instructional Materials
Access Center (NIMAC). The Commission recommends
that postsecondary students with print disabilities would be
best served by explicit support for a wide variety and range
of different options and suppliers.
8. The Commission recommends that publishers,
distributors, content producers and AMPs facilitate the
distribution of new AIM products by including accessibility
metadata used for marketing and discovery. Also,
standards organizations are encouraged to incorporate and
further develop accessibility specifications in their domains
based on a common list of accessibility-focused metadata.
9. The Commission supports the development of federated
search capabilities that enable individual students and DR/S
offices to make a single online search to locate existing
accessible resources.

10. The Commission recommends that producers of
courseware management systems, web development
software, content authoring software, word processors and
layout programs, among others, be encouraged to create

accessibility wizards and prompts that launch validation
processes to inspect materials for accessibility as they are
created and before they are distributed to students.
11. The Commission recommends that content producers,
producers of software applications, supporting device
manufacturers, producers of digital content, providers and
producers of software applications and their Digital Rights
Management (DRM) suppliers should ensure that accessible
versions of both materials and delivery systems using DRM
are made available without harming publishers’ established
and emerging distribution channels.

12. The Commission recommends that federally sponsored
projects and programs encourage and support systemic
faculty and staff professional development with respect to
selection, production and delivery of high-quality AIM to
meet the needs of students with disabilities in postsecondary
settings.
13. The Commission recommends that the Department of
Education re-establish an intra-agency working group on
postsecondary students with disabilities and also create a
cross-agency working group to provide a more unified and
consistent approach to federal initiatives regarding the
provision of AIM at postsecondary institutions.
14. The Commission recommends that the federal
government support the creation and sharing of both
embossed and digital braille as well as tactile graphics
materials in postsecondary settings, particularly for STEM,
foreign language and music.
15. The Commission recommends that producers of
instructional materials for the postsecondary education
market (including postsecondary institutions themselves)
that incorporate synchronized audio and visual formats
(VHS tapes, DVDs/CDs, video, web video, etc.) should
provide closed captions or subtitles for the Deaf/hard of
hearing (SDH).

16. The Commission recommends that Congress
appropriate funds to the Department of Education for the
development of a discretionary priority to fund model
demonstration projects designed to identify, validate and
disseminate project results regarding best practices in the

provision of AIM as part of a project candidate’s campuswide delivery system for auxiliary aids and services. The
purpose of the demonstration projects will be to develop
best practice models for implementing AIM and its delivery
systems campus-wide.

17. The Commission recommends that Congress
appropriate funds to the Department of Education to
support faculty professional development demonstration
projects to develop and validate effective practices in the
creation and provision of universally designed instructional
materials in STEM courses and laboratory classes.

18. The Commission recommends that the Department of
Education fund postsecondary demonstration projects that
model how to improve the quality, efficiency and timeliness
of the acquisition and provision of AIM in postsecondary
education and reduce duplication of effort in accordance
with Section 773 of the HEOA.

The following pages are meant to provide an overview of
relevant statutes affecting the provision, availability and
distribution of accessible instructional materials. For a full
discussion of relevant statutes please view Appendix D.

The U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights
(OCR) enforces Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
with respect to entities that receive federal financial assistance
from the Department of Education, including Pell grants and
Federal Work Study grants.39 OCR and the U.S. Department of
Justice (DOJ) enforce Title II of the ADA with respect to public
educational institutions.40 Section 504 and Title II both require
that no qualified individual with a disability shall, on the basis
of disability, be excluded from participation in or otherwise be
denied the benefits of a service, program, or activity, or be
subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability.41
Generally, postsecondary institutions fall under the purview of
at least one of these laws. In addition, Title III of the ADA
prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by places of
public accommodations, including private postsecondary
institutions.42 Title III is enforced by DOJ. (This document
uses “ADA” to refer to both Title II and Title III, unless
otherwise noted.)

These laws define disability, with respect to an individual, as “a
physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or
more of the major life activities of such individual; a record of
such an impairment; or being regarded as having such an
impairment.”43 In the postsecondary context, a qualified person
with a disability is “an individual with a disability who, with or
without reasonable modifications to rules, policies, or practices,
the removal of architectural, communication, or transportation
barriers, or the provision of auxiliary aids and services, meets
the essential eligibility requirements for the receipt of services
or the participation in programs or activities” provided by the
obligated educational institution.44
The general prohibitions against discrimination under Section
504 and Title II prohibit different or separate services or
benefits for persons with disabilities unless necessary to provide
a qualified person with a disability services or benefits that are
as effective as those provided to others.45 Academic
adjustments, including auxiliary aids and services, must be
provided when they are necessary for a qualified student with a
disability to have an equal opportunity to participate in and
enjoy the benefits of an educational program or activity.46
Academic adjustments are modifications to academic
requirements necessary to ensure that such requirements do not
discriminate or have the effect of discriminating, on the basis of
disability against a qualified applicant or student with a
disability. 47 Academic adjustments may include but are not
limited to a reduced course load, extended time on tests and the
provision of auxiliary aids and services.48 AIM are frequently
required in postsecondary settings as an auxiliary aid. They
often take the form of alternate versions of print materials
(textbooks, course packs, articles and hand-outs, etc.). The
implementing regulation for Title II specifies, “In determining
what types of auxiliary aids and services are necessary, a public
entity shall give primary consideration to the requests of
individuals with disabilities.”49 In addition, the regulation
states, “In order to be effective, auxiliary aids and services must
be provided in accessible formats, in a timely manner and in
such a way as to protect the privacy and independence of the
individual with a disability.”50
Title II further requires public entities to “take appropriate steps
to ensure that communications with applicants, participants,
members of the public and companions with disabilities are as
effective as communications with others.”51
On June 29, 2010, OCR and DOJ issued a joint “Dear
Colleague” letter (DCL) to college and university presidents
regarding the use of electronic book readers and other emerging
technologies that are inaccessible to students who are blind or

have low vision.52 The letter explained that requiring use of an
emerging technology in a classroom environment when the
technology is inaccessible to individuals with disabilities is
discrimination prohibited by the ADA and Section 504 unless
those individuals are provided accommodations or
modifications that permit them to receive all the educational
benefits provided by the technology in an equally effective and
equally integrated manner. Postsecondary institution presidents
were asked to take steps to ensure that their institutions refrain
from requiring the use of any electronic book reader (or other
similar technology) in a teaching or classroom environment as
long as the device remains inaccessible to individuals who are
blind or have low vision. (See Appendix F.)
On May 26, 2011, OCR issued a frequently asked questions
(FAQ) document with accompanying cover letters that provided
more detail about schools’ responsibilities when using
technology.53,54 The FAQ clarified that the principles
articulated in the June 2010 DCL apply to all emerging
technologies, not just electronic book readers, and that the
principles in the DCL apply not only to students who are blind
or have low vision, but also to students with other disabilities
(such as dyslexia) that affect their ability to access written
materials in a traditional manner. The nondiscrimination
requirements of Section 504 and the ADA apply to all of the
operations of a school, and, thus, all faculty and staff must
comply with these requirements as outlined in the June 2010
DCL. It was clarified that the principles underlying the June
2010 DCL apply not just to the postsecondary schools to which
it was sent, but also to elementary and secondary schools. In
addition, the FAQ outlines considerations related to
accessibility that educational institutions should apply when
purchasing and implementing technology-based tools and
resources.
Federally assisted postsecondary institutions and public
postsecondary institutions are required to provide students with
disabilities with grievance procedures for the resolution of
complaints of disability discrimination.55 A student may file a
complaint under an institution’s grievance procedure to redress
rights under Section 504 or Title II. (Grievance procedures may
vary from institution to institution.) Such a student may also
file a complaint with OCR about violations of Title II by public
postsecondary institutions or violations of Section 504 by
postsecondary institutions that receive federal financial
assistance from the Department of Education, or may file a
complaint with the DOJ about violations of Title II by public
postsecondary institutions or violations of Title III by private
postsecondary institutions. 56,57,58 In addition, a student may file
a complaint in federal court alleging a violation of applicable
civil rights laws.

OCR has 12 enforcement offices around the country that handle
complaints alleging discrimination. The person or organization
filing a complaint need not be a victim of the alleged
discrimination, but may complain on behalf of another person or
group. An individual who wishes to file an OCR complaint
may do so within 180 days of the alleged discrimination by
filling out OCR’s electronic complaint form or by contacting
the applicable OCR regional enforcement office for a complaint
form.59,60 OCR acts as a neutral fact finder and may use any
number of viable options, including investigation and facilitated
resolution, to promptly resolve the complaint.

Congress enacted the first Copyright Act of the United States in
1790, under the authority provided in Article I, Section 8 of the
U.S. Constitution: It provides that Congress shall have the
power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
The “exclusive right” provided to copyright owners is actually a
“bundle” of rights that only the author, or those authorized or
licensed by the author, may exploit during the term of
copyright, subject to the applicability of fair use or another
express exception or limitation in the Copyright Act. Exclusive
rights are not absolute. Copyright is limited in time and scope,
is subject to a number of exceptions and limitations, and
contains “built-in First Amendment accommodations.”61 Only
creative expression is protectable: ideas, facts, systems,
processes and procedures are not.62
Copyright is much more than a right of remuneration. As a
general rule, whether and how a work is made available to the
public, under what conditions, whether and how an author will
be compensated, and whether and how others may reproduce,
distribute, or otherwise use a work are decisions that legally
belong to an author/copyright holder. By establishing a
marketable right to the use of one’s own expression, copyright
supplies an economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.
Ensuring that authors and publishers can profit from their
creative efforts is central to the goals of the U.S. system of
copyright.
A key element of the U.S. copyright system is the contribution
of authors, publishers, producers and other rights holders to the
cultural heritage of the United States. Consider the fact that the
U.S. Copyright Office is housed in the Library of Congress and
that our national collection of creative works is derived in large
part from deposits submitted for copyright registration.
Copyright is also a major building block of the U.S. domestic

economy and U.S. trade. These copyright protections support
both a vital economy of trade in copyrighted goods and services,
as well as a “knowledge economy” of education and expertise.
At the same time, the activities fostered by exceptions to
copyright contribute to important public policy objectives.
These two forces are interdependent: the trade in creative
content benefits from the fertile environment for creativity and
knowledge provided in part by libraries and archives. Together
they produce significant economic benefits for the nation as a
whole.
Academic and research communities also rely on copyright.
Not only do they depend upon the scholarly record, they depend
on the value that is added by publishers. That is, they must
have confidence that articles and other published works they
rely on have not been altered, that citations have meaning, and
that research is properly attributed. Copyright protects the
integrity of academic publications.
Licenses can take many forms and may be granted on an
exclusive or nonexclusive basis. Broadly, licenses fall into
three general categories: individual, collective and statutory.
An individual license is the most straightforward example of a
license arrangement, where two or more parties voluntarily
negotiate an agreement for certain exploitations of exclusive
rights to all or part of a particular copyrighted work or
collection of works.
Individual licensing requires identification and negotiation with
individual copyright owners. To enhance efficiency, it is
possible to license broad catalogues of works for certain limited
uses. This is the primary structure of collective licensing. The
most common examples of collective licensing are music
performance rights organizations (PROs)—American Society of
Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast
Music, Inc. (BMI) and the Society of European Stage Authors
and Composers (SESAC)—as well as the Copyright Clearance
Center (CCC), which licenses groups of print materials.
Statutory (or compulsory) licenses have been used in limited
circumstances—currently there are only eight in existence in
U.S. law—in which there was a marketplace failure at the time
the license was adopted. 63,64 Consequently, to bring licensors
and licensees together where other mechanisms cannot,
statutory licenses guarantee users’ access to certain types of
works, under certain circumstances, in exchange for a fee
established by statute or legal proceedings.

Statutory licenses are structured to address a particular market
failure without interfering with the rest of the marketplace.
They are a limitation on copyright owners’ exclusive rights, and
must comply with United States international treaty obligations,
which require that the exceptions and limitations must relate to
“certain special cases,” may not “conflict with the normal
exploitation of the work,” and may not “unreasonably prejudice
the legitimate interests of the rights holder.”65
Remedies for civil copyright infringement can be significant
and include temporary and permanent injunctions, and
impoundment and destruction of infringing materials.66 A court
may award fees and costs to the prevailing party in an
infringement suit.67 Financial awards usually granted by a court
may be reduced for an innocent infringer, or may be abated
altogether against certain individuals, including employees or
agents of nonprofit libraries, archives, or educational
institutions who have reproduced copyrighted materials in the
scope of their employment, believing it to be a fair use.68 In
addition, under the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, the Supreme Court has held that state universities
and other state entities are immune from copyright damages for
past infringing behavior, although not from injunctions against
future infringing behavior.69
The first listed and best known of the exceptions to the
Copyright Act is fair use, which allows for the use of
copyrighted work without permission from the rights holder in
certain circumstances prescribed by statute and interpreted by
the courts. The various exceptions and limitations cover many
different kinds of uses, such as exceptions for distance
education, for libraries and archives and, notably for this report,
exceptions for individuals who are blind or who have another
qualifying print disability. 70,71,72
U.S. copyright law provides no definitive legal standard for the
acceptable scope of copyright exceptions and limitations. The
fair use doctrine and its surrounding case law provide some
guidance on how exceptions can be crafted to permit beneficial
and reasonable uses without causing undue harm to rights
holders.73 Typically, copyright law’s limitations and exceptions
have been confined to those circumstances where there is
evidence of a market failure, or where some culturally desirable
purpose requires such an exception. An example of an
exception to the Copyright Act that has been carefully
circumscribed to avoid unreasonable harm to creators and other
rights holders pertains to the privileges associated with the
reproduction and distribution of copies of protected works for
the visually impaired and others with disabilities in Section 121,

which are available only if the copies are in specialized formats
“exclusively for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities.”74
Section 121 of the Copyright Act (the Chafee Amendment)
provides that,
it is not an infringement of copyright for an
authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute
copies or phonorecords of a previously
published, non-dramatic literary work if such
copies or phonorecords are reproduced or
distributed in specialized formats exclusively
for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities.75
The statute defines an “authorized entity” as a “nonprofit
organization or a governmental agency that has a primary
mission to provide specialized services relating to training,
education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of
blind or other persons with disabilities.”76 “Specialized
formats,” is defined to mean “braille, audio, or digital text
which is exclusively for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities,” and, in the case of “print instructional materials,
includes large print formats when such materials are distributed
exclusively for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities.”77,78 Finally, “blind or other persons with
disabilities,” is defined as “individuals who are eligible or who
may qualify in accordance with the Act entitled “An Act to
provide books for the adult blind” approved March 3, 1931 to
receive books and other publications produced in specialized
formats.”79,80
The eligible population specified in the current statute, which
was first added to in 1966, includes “blind and … other
physically handicapped readers certified by competent authority
as unable to read normal printed material as a result of physical
limitations, under regulations prescribed by the Librarian of
Congress for this service.”81
The Librarian of Congress issued implementing regulations in
1974, which have remained essentially unchanged until the
present day.82 The current regulations define the eligible
population for the national library service as follows:
i

Blind persons whose visual acuity, as determined by
competent authority, is 20/200 or less in the better eye
with correcting glasses, or whose wide diameter of
visual field subtends an angular distance no greater than
20 degrees;

ii

Persons whose visual disability, with correction and
regardless of optical measurement, is certified by
competent authority as preventing the reading of
standard printed material;

iii

Persons certified by competent authority as unable to
read or unable to use standard printed material as a result
of physical limitations;

iv

Persons certified by competent authority as having a
reading disability resulting from organic dysfunction and
of sufficient severity to prevent their reading printed
material in a normal manner.83

With respect to blindness, visual disability and physical
limitations, “competent authority” is defined as follows:
doctors of medicine, doctors of osteopathy,
ophthalmologists, optometrists, registered nurses,
therapists and professional staff of hospitals, institutions
and public or welfare agencies (e.g., social workers,
case workers, counselors, rehabilitation teachers and
superintendents). In the absence of any of these,
certification may be made by professional librarians or
by any person whose competence under specific
circumstances is acceptable to the Library of
Congress.84
With respect to “reading disability resulting from organic
dysfunction,” competent authority is defined as “doctors of
medicine who may consult with colleagues in associated
disciplines.”85
The Chafee Amendment was heavily negotiated by concerned
stakeholders and is narrow on its face. In enacting Chafee in
1996, Congress stated a defined population of beneficiaries,
implicated non-dramatic literary works only, and addressed
reproduction and distribution rights only.86 The Chafee
Amendment was further amended in 2004 in the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) and to
facilitate accessible K–12 instructional materials.87
Providing information access to individuals with disabilities has
been implicated and to some degree reinforced under section
1201 of Title 17, which requires the Librarian of Congress,
upon recommendation of the Register of Copyrights to make a
determination regarding the exemption of certain classes of
works from the prohibition against circumvention of
technological measures that control access to copyrighted

works, provided the proposed use would be noninfringing.88
This rulemaking is undertaken every three years.89 The 2010
rule-making process provided an exemption for electronic
books, allowing circumvention of access controls on such books
in circumstances “when all existing e-book editions ... contain
access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s
read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into
a specialized format.”90 In September 2011, the Register
announced the next triennial rulemaking—initial public
comments are due December 1, 2011.91
Congress and the courts have long recognized that allowing
some reasonable uses of copyrighted works without permission
or compensation is fully consistent with and sometimes required
to facilitate competing objectives in the national copyright
system. Where Congress has found that public policy concerns
warrant exceptions or limitations, it has enacted exception to the
law, or limitations (e.g., to liability or to remedies) so that it
complements the fundamental aims of copyright law and
preserves the incentives to create, to share creations, and to
invest in the creation of new works.92
The publishing industry relies heavily on copyright law and
licensing transactions. Indeed, virtually every stage of the
publishing value chain is connected to some type of copyright
license relationship: author to publisher, publisher to ancillary
product producers and publisher to distributors. Often there are
numerous copyright owners involved in any one particular
work, which raises significant challenges for rights clearance.
A typical textbook, for example, may be comprised of several,
separately licensed components, such as prefaces, introductions,
forwards and chapters, as well as images, graphics, charts and
diagrams.
Contract language is often outpaced by technology which can
lead to confusion about who owns, or is licensed to exploit,
certain rights. In the publishing industry, many older book
contracts are silent on terms and conditions relating to digital
product offerings. Although the phenomenon is not new, recent
confusion over rights as a result of emerging technologies is
illustrated by text-to-speech technology, where there are
significant questions about whether such technology is an
exploitation of reproduction rights and whether traditional
publishing contracts cover such technology or whether these
rights remain with the authors.93
Despite the challenges with rights management, technological
evolution has spurred the development of new markets. The
Internet has become a viable distribution mechanism for digital
content, and electronic reading devices and electronic books are

now a rapidly growing market.94 Moreover, there appears to be
a trend towards standardization of formats for digital content,
allowing certain content to be used across multiple devices,
including, perhaps, adaptive technologies. For example, the
ePUB3 technical specification for electronic book production
incorporates standards for accessible books as set forth by the
Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) Consortium.
A final trend in digital publishing that raises implications for the
development of accessible materials is the widespread use of
DRM technologies. Such technologies are technologically
based protection measures that allow publishers, content
producers and digital retailers to control access to distributed
content. DRM typically imposes restrictions on the number and
type of devices that can access protected content, and these
restrictions often create accessibility barriers.

The Access Board has provisions
in our standards for equivalence
facilitation that allow for
innovation by manufacturers. So
if they can't meet a technical
provision that we have, then they
can do it differently as long as
[they] are providing equal or
better access. But if somebody
has a better way to skin the cat,
then they can certainly do that
under that facilitation method.
That seems to have worked in the
past.
Executive Director of the US
Access Board
(2011, September 9)

Although originally added to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in
1986, Section 508 (which contains provisions related to access
to electronic and information technology provided to or
procured by the federal government) was significantly
strengthened and expanded in 1998.95,96 This expansion was
designed to ensure that anyone availing themselves of federal
government resources (such as -.gov web sites) is provided
appropriate access to all aspects of digital technology, including
web pages and computer hardware and software. The legal
mandates of Section 508 are limited to purchases by federal
agencies and do not apply to private sector purchases or to
public entities other than federal agencies, even public
educational institutions.
To establish some consistent and implementable functional
standards for accessibility, Congress also authorized the
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
(commonly referred to as the Access Board) to (1) define
“electronic and information technology” and (2) determine the
“technical and functional performance criteria necessary to
implement the requirements set forth in paragraph (1).”97
The standards established by the Access Board became
mandates for all federal agencies in 2001, and, as required by
law, are currently undergoing a formal “refresh” to address the
emergence of new technological applications and products
relevant to Federal government activities.98 The refresh is
expected to elevate the importance of functional requirements,
especially those related to providing alternate forms of
navigation and interaction with digital content and equivalent
representations of various media types—text, images, audio and
video—to a higher level of importance. In addition, the refresh

is expected to effectively harmonize Section 508 standards with
the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG2) to bring
both standards sets into alignment. The anticipated
harmonization between WCAG2 (which is the leading
accessibility standard used for the world wide web) with
Section 508 standards (which are the U.S. government’s
accessibility standards) will provide clearer procedures for those
in the content creation field.
Due to the far-reaching impact of Federal government
procurement policies, in the decade since the establishment of
Section 508 standards by the Access Board, these functional
approaches to accessibility have become a de facto standard for
many states and for product developers for guiding the creation
of accessible digital technologies and content, and some states
have adopted state standards often described as “mini-508’s.”
The direct application of Section 508 does, however, remain
limited to federal agencies, as does enforcement pertaining to
violations.

There are at least 12 states with laws requiring accessible
instructional materials in higher education, referred to as
“postsecondary e-text statutes:” Arkansas, California,
Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New
York, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington.99 These statutes
support postsecondary institutions in fulfilling their mission and
their requirements under civil rights law and are precedentsetting in establishing procedures for the provision and
permissioning of e-text by publishers for use by students with
documented disabilities.

Providing students with access to AIM was a prominent focus
of the 2004 re-authorization of the IDEA 2004.100 IDEA 2004
established the NIMAS, an eXtensible Mark-up Language
(XML)-based source file standard intended to be used to create
files in specialized formats. The law requires all state and local
educational agencies to adopt the NIMAS for the purpose of
providing AIM to elementary and secondary students who are
blind or who have print disabilities.101 “NIMAS” is defined as
“the standard established by the Secretary to be used in the
preparation of electronic files suitable and used solely for
efficient conversion into specialized formats.”102 The term
“specialized formats” has the same meaning as that under the
Chafee Amendment—braille, audio, or digital text and, as
amended by IDEA 2004, with respect to print instructional
materials, large print formats when such materials are
distributed exclusively for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities.103

IDEA 2004 also allowed state and local educational agencies to
voluntarily coordinate with the NIMAC, a federally funded,
national electronic file repository for AIM, in order to receive
NIMAS source files.104 Alternatively, state and local
educational agencies could meet their AIM obligations by
purchasing accessible versions of core textbooks and related
instructional materials directly from curriculum publishers.
IDEA 2004 also amended the Chafee Amendment to extend
limited copyright protections to publishers to create and
distribute copies of electronic files to the NIMAC that contain
the contents of print instructional materials using the NIMAS,
provided that (1) the inclusion of the contents of such print
instructional materials is required by an SEA or an LEA (2) the
publisher had the right to publish such print instructional
materials in print formats and (3) such copies are used solely for
reproduction or distribution of the contents of such print
instructional materials in specialized formats.105
On sheer volume alone, there
are more instructional materials
being provided digitally than in
print. When it comes to these
course materials, they need to be
looked at by our DR/S office to
make sure they are accessible.
Postsecondary ADA
Coordinator
(2011, July 12)

Our markets are becoming
increasingly digital and
demanding accessible content
and the publishers are
beginning to respond to these
demands.
Publisher Representative
(2011, August 12)

Although the market has made strides in the development and
delivery of accessible instructional materials, not every digital
file and product that enters the marketplace is accessible to
users with disabilities due to a number of factors. Many times
these inaccessible products come from individuals or companies
that did not intend to publish for postsecondary education, i.e.,
small- and medium-sized publishers without the capacity or
funds to produce accessible media; faculty and other content
experts with little accessibility awareness who produce opensource materials; and producers of materials only in print
formats. Compounding this barrier is a lack of systemic
purchasing practices in some postsecondary institutions, a
systemic design flaw which allows for the adoption of products
that are not accessible to students with disabilities. Addressing
accessibility issues across these categories of producers remains
a significant challenge.
In addition to accessibility challenges posed by various types of
digital content, students with disabilities often encounter
barriers when attempting to use course management or
courseware delivery systems, online course registration utilities,
basic productivity software and library reference databases.
While not all of these commonly installed software programs
are inaccessible, many of them pay only marginal attention to
accessibility.
Commercial content producers now have the opportunity and
the technologies to accelerate the move toward accessibility of
many products, and in so doing to better meet the needs of all
students. Many institutions and faculty sit on both sides of the

supply/demand equation, as they are often producers of content
(print and digital) and learning technologies and thus have
similar obligations to provide accessibility, including for open
educational resources. The Commission recognizes that it may
take a combination of regulatory and market forces to drive
further development and adoption of AIM.

Congress should authorize the United States Access Board
to establish guidelines for accessible instructional materials
Congress should authorize the United States Access Board
to establish guidelines for accessible instructional materials
that will be used by government, in the private sector and in
postsecondary academic settings.

The nice thing about 508 is that
it is a standard and it’s a
consistent standard that people
can rely on. Section 508 exists
in K–12 with a number of states
that are requiring the
purchasers to purchase 508
materials and one who requires
us to sell materials that are
508-compliant, which has
moved us rapidly into that
arena.
Publisher Representative
(2011, May 3)

The Commission unanimously agrees that Congress should
authorize and direct the United States Access Board to establish
guidelines for AIM. The Commission believes that the revised
and updated Section 508 guidelines (if adopted), while not
intended to address the unique aspects of access to instructional
materials, will better serve students with disabilities by
incorporating instructional requirements.106 In making this
recommendation, the Commission is clear that the proposed
guidelines for accessible instructional materials should serve to
provide clarity to the market.
The Commission heard consistent testimony from a wide range
of stakeholders, including end users, service providers and
industry representatives such as the Association of American
Publishers (AAP), the Association of American University
Presses (AAUP) and the Software and Information Industry
Association (SIIA), in support of Section 508 as the foundation
for guidelines for accessible instructional materials. Section
508 has become the default accessibility standard for the
industry and for many states and public educational
institutions.107 Although not designed with instructional
materials in mind, Section 508, when “refreshed,” can provide a
baseline set of functional performance standards and review
criteria, as well as a balanced process that recognizes the
multitude of applications and platforms, the dynamic nature of
technology, and the wide variety of decision factors.
Section 508 appropriately focuses on functional requirements
rather than a specific file or other format. The pending updated
Section 508 standards (Section 508 “refresh”) are currently
expected to be harmonized with WCAG2. A single 508
standard is especially appropriate because many technologies
are designed for use outside of education, but utilized in
education. A unified guidelines approach also will promote
competition in the industry by clarifying market requirements
for accessibility.

Establishing and implementing a single unified set of
accessibility performance standards for digital documents and
their delivery systems is highly desirable. Guidelines developed
under the auspices of the Access Board would (a) build upon an
already-established set of specifications for electronic and
information technology (Section 508), (b) work to assure
harmonization with other accepted national and international
accessibility specifications (WCAG2, etc.) and (c) provide a
technical specification as the foundation for enforceable
standards.

As we look to the future, our hope
is that there will be a universally
accessible standard format
identified for the various devices
and materials available to our
users.
Postsecondary Disability
Service Provider
(2011, May 4)

The Commission recommends that the criteria described below
be implemented. Rather than adopting a specific file format for
creating accessible documents and documents that can be easily
transformed into other formats (such as braille, DAISY and
other student-requested accessible formats) the following
document characteristics should, at a minimum, be provided:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

All content included and structured in a logical
sequence
All major heading structures retained and
designated as such
Page breaks included for each page
Page numbers included for each page (regardless
of whether or not numbers are to be displayed)
Content presented in a table format must be
properly structured
Text contained in an image must be provided
Adequate descriptive text must be included for
images, charts, graphs, et al.
Mathematical Mark-up Language (MathML) or
sufficient textual expression for mathematical
content must be provided

These functional capabilities for digital documents are
supported or referenced in the 2011 Accessible Publishing—
Best Practice Guidelines for Publishers, a joint publication of
EDItEUR, the DAISY Consortium and the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO).108

Congress should review the scope, effectiveness and function
of the Copyright Act as amended (Section 121, the Chafee
Amendment) to determine whether it or any of its key
component elements, as well as its implementation through
applicable regulations, needs to be updated to adequately
address the needs of individuals with print disabilities,
including those enrolled in postsecondary education.

It would be beneficial to revisit the existing Section 121
Copyright exception (Chafee Amendment) in hopes of
clarifying or updating some of its components. Section 121 has
significantly expanded the availability of AIM for those
individuals who qualify as beneficiaries. However, ambiguous
and sometimes conflicting interpretations of its components
have resulted in widespread confusion, which has, in turn,
decreased its efficacy.
Therefore, determining the effects of the Chafee Amendment,
its application in postsecondary settings, the rapid shift to digital
materials and delivery systems and their associated copyright
issues, and whether the Amendment accurately reflects research
into the physical and neurological basis of specific learning
disabilities over the past 15 years, is warranted.
The Commission was charged with examining the definitions of
“authorized entities,” “instructional materials,” and “eligible
students.” The terms “authorized entity” and “print
instructional materials” are currently defined in Section 121 and
some students with print disabilities may or may not fall under
Section 121’s definition of “blind or other persons with
disabilities.”
Science, technology and instructional materials have all
advanced considerably since the passage of Section 121 in
1996. Scientific research related to specific learning disabilities
has evolved considerably.109,110,111 The newest version of the
popular ePUB standard for production and delivery of
reflowable e-books, ePUB3, is converging with DAISY, the de
facto accessible content standard for XML-based e-books.
Similarly, the increased flexibility of technology has resulted in
instructional materials that are now far more diverse and
delivered increasingly in digital rather than print formats.
There are four particular references in Section 121that are of
greatest relevance to the context of AIM in higher education in
2011:
1. The kinds of organizations that may qualify as an
“authorized entity,”
2. The types or nature of “specialized formats” that
qualify for purposes of reproduction and distribution,
3. The scope of the beneficiary class, for purposes of who
is considered to be eligible as “blind or other persons
with disabilities,” and
4. The definition of “previously published, non-dramatic
literary work” in the digital age.

Providing disability
documentation is a timeconsuming, embarrassing
process requiring significant
planning and coordination by
students and staff. Students
with learning disabilities learn
differently, but we are not less.
By requiring us repeatedly to
“prove” our deficits to receive
the accommodations that best
suit our brains is discouraging
students.
Student with dyslexia
(2011, February 25)

With respect to what kind of organization may qualify as an
authorized entity, the Commission’s discussion focused on
whether Congress intended a campus-based or system-wide
office that provides academic support services for
postsecondary students with disabilities to qualify as “a
nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a
primary mission to provide specialized services relating to
training, education, or adaptive reading or information access
needs of blind or other persons with disabilities.” However,
this is largely a matter of legal interpretation.
With respect to such offices or institutions, which collectively
number more than 5,000 in the United States, the latter issue
includes consideration of how interpreting the intent of
Congress to include organizations that are so numerous by their
nature would impact the industry as a whole. Limiting the types
of organizations that would qualify to exercise reproduction and
distribution privileges as an authorized entity under this
copyright exception may be needed to avoid harm to copyright
owners in their mainstream markets.
The Commission’s discussions about specialized formats in
Section 121 started with the statutory definition: “braille,
audio, or digital text which is exclusively for use by blind or
other persons with disabilities; and with respect to print
instructional materials, includes large print formats when such
materials are distributed exclusively for use by blind or other
persons with disabilities.” The Commission observed that that
audio, digital text and large print formats that now make up the
majority of accessible materials delivered under Section 121 are
based on mainstream technology formats such as XML and
MP3. The main question on specialized formats was whether
the term should mean the intrinsic technical nature of current
formats on the one hand, or on the scope of distribution
limitations (“for the exclusive use of blind or other persons with
disabilities” as defined in Section 121) on the other hand. The
Commission reached consensus that Section 121 should
continue to have distribution limitations.

With respect to the eligibility of “blind or other persons with
disabilities,” discussions focused on the Section 121
certification requirement for learning disabilities that affect
reading.
Currently, certification for reading disabilities requires a
medical doctor and does not allow professionals such as
psychologists and special education professionals who do have

the necessary clinical expertise and experience to provide
certification. The Commission noted that various authorized
entities have interpreted certification requirements in different
ways, and this has caused inconsistency due to differences in
perspectives with regard to which postsecondary students
qualify for services under Section 121. The Commission did
reach consensus that any changes to Section 121 should not lead
to a significant expansion of students eligible for these services:
the eligible population should remain as 1–2% of total student
populations. While eligibility remains narrow, it ensures that
requirements are met for copyright exemption and minimizes
the exemption’s economic impact on rights holders.

Currently, the Section 121 exception covers only “non-dramatic
literary works,” which does not address the full range of
instructional materials used in postsecondary education. This
definition excludes plays, music and films that are frequently
required course-related materials in academic settings. In a
review of the Chafee amendment, this exclusion may bear
examination.

The Commission recommends that the Department of
Education and the Department of Justice consider whether
to provide additional guidance on legal requirements
concerning postsecondary institutions’ policies and
procedures regarding the documentation of disability under
Title II and Title III of the ADA and according to Section
504, to reduce the barriers currently presented by some
institutions’ requirements for documentation of disability.
Postsecondary institutions require students with disabilities to
present supporting documentation as to the nature and severity
of their condition. Best practices guidelines promulgated by
AHEAD recommend flexibility in the nature of documentation
required to determine eligibility and the uses for that
documentation to determine the most appropriate
accommodations.112
Postsecondary institutions are not necessarily required to accept
documentation of a disability that originated in a student’s
elementary or secondary experience as sufficient documentation
of disability for the purposes of postsecondary academic
adjustments or auxiliary aids. Additional and more up-to-date
assessments may be required, and payment for these (often
high-cost) procedures is the responsibility of the student.113 If a
student’s documentation is insufficient, their postsecondary
institution is not required to pay for testing that is required to
determine whether a student has a documented

disability. Thus, while providing documentation of disability is
necessary, for many students it is a costly step, sometimes
prohibitively so.
The Commission found that some postsecondary institutions
require students to periodically update documentation of their
disabilities to demonstrate that they are still qualified students
with disabilities for the purpose of receiving auxiliary aids and
services. In addition, testing entities conducting graduate and
professional school examinations frequently require new
certification. The Commission believes that such requirements
for students with long-term disabilities and no near-term
prospect of change may create unnecessary expense and
potential delay in receiving auxiliary aids and services.

Out of those 6,000 requests for
alternate formats, interestingly
enough, over 3,000 of them—I mean,
over 3,000 titles were requested.
Which means, as you break it down,
61 percent of their titles were only
requested once. And not only the 61
percent have a single request,
another 20 percent had only two
requests. So, basically, four out of
five titles were only requested over a
five-year period twice. So this is an
issue for the publishers who are
trying to figure out how to support
people efficiently in those needs.
AIM Consultant
(2011, May 3)

While there are disabilities that are by their nature variable, such
as a disability that is episodic or that can go into remission,
most students with print disabilities have disabilities that are
likely to persist throughout their education and lifespan: from
K–12 through postsecondary, graduate and adult education. For
many students with certain kinds of impairments, such as
dyslexia, each disability assessment can cost thousands of
dollars.114 Requiring these assessments to be performed
annually, or every few years, can easily create an adverse
impact on students who cannot afford this expense. In some
cases, students who have had a detailed assessment in secondary
school and are preparing for transition to postsecondary studies
should not need to provide new documentation to demonstrate
that they meet the legal definition of an individual with a
disability. Even for those institutions of higher education that
pay for such assessments, the time required and delays in
provision of services while waiting for such assessment results
can be problematic.
The Commission notes that OCR interprets regulatory
requirements as giving postsecondary institutions the discretion
to develop their own policies and procedures for documenting
students’ disabilities, as long as those policies and procedures
are reasonable and in compliance with Section 504 and Title
II.115 The Commission suggests that the Department consider
issuing policy guidance on how to determine whether policies
and procedures are “reasonable.”
In addition, the Commission believes that the departments of
Education and Justice should consider examining this issue in
the context of high-stakes testing for professional and
educational purposes in order to reduce the barriers to access to
education created by excessive and duplicative requirements for
disability assessments.

These disability determinations also affect a student’s eligibility
for services through Section 121 authorized entities because
most students receiving services from authorized entities have
their proof of qualifying disability supplied by their educational
institutions.116
This recommendation is not intended to affect the normal
activities of DR/S offices in working with students with
disabilities to determine the best accommodation(s) for them for
each class and educational activity.

The challenge of providing AIM for students with disabilities in
a timely and cost-effective manner involves many different
variables that are all in motion. The confluence of these
variables will effect change that is likely to be most profound
over the next five years as the print-oriented world with its
longstanding practices, policies and market dynamics is altered
by a world that is increasingly digital. The evolution of
challenges related to the provision of AIM has occurred rapidly.
Acquisition of accessible materials was a laborious task that was
focused entirely on creating alternate formats at the time the
HEO Act was written and enacted in 2008. Today, providers of
AIM are poised for instant response and market options may,
for some materials and for some students, completely obviate
the need for alternate formats.
By 2007, several drivers (e.g., digital technologies, including etexts; Section 508; and ripples from K–12’s IDEA legislation)
were already in place to stimulate a transformation in the print
books market. In higher education, educational, trade,
professional, scholarly and independent press publications may
be assigned reading in a postsecondary classroom. Regarding
the creation of accessible versions of these materials, processes
related to obtaining files and permissions that previously took
weeks and months to accomplish can now be completed in
minutes or hours. Procedures that consumed hours of valuable
staff time for publishers and DR/S offices alike can now be
completed with minimal human intervention. The redundancy
of the current system which still often requires DR/S
coordinators to transform source files or scan and process print
copies into student-ready digital files will be dramatically
reduced. As sanctioned file-sharing efforts, coupled with the
availability of more accessible files from course material
producers, emerge more student-ready files will become
available to be used by multiple institutions.

And I also think that “out of the
box” accessibility of born
digital instructional materials is
huge. Anything that supports
universal design and
accessibility right up front is
very good.
Community College
Alternate-Format Production
Specialist
(2011, July 12)

While the present efficiency in delivering alternate formats for
students is a major change from even the recent past, it still is
not the ideal. Rather, the ideal is for the vast majority of
mainstream instructional materials to be available in accessible
forms in the same manner that and at the same time as
traditional materials are available. The Commission believes
that this ideal can best be achieved through market model
solutions. Such market model solutions can include products
produced and sold by publishers and other content owners as
well as products using licensed publisher content that are
produced, sold and supported by digital distributors. In some
capacities, the market is already moving towards accessibility
solutions. For example, several major digital retailers
(CourseSmart, VitalSource, Inkling and others) began releasing
accessible textbook products that embrace universal design
during 2011.
Even when market models mature there will be instructional materials
that, for the foreseeable future, will not be available through market
channels. These include older titles, titles from small- and mediumsized publishers, titles from non-commercial publishers and
instructor-created materials. It is also important to recognize those
areas where market-based options can, at best, be only part of the
total solution. Market-based solutions will take time to become fully
established, but as authoring and product development tools are
improved and publishing services vendors become more accessibility
savvy, smaller publishers will be able to make their offerings
accessible. Regardless of whether AIM are provided via marketbased distribution or by some other means, the needs of lowincidence student populations will continue to require and to deserve
special attention.
There are more than 262,000 publication titles currently for sale
in college bookstores that are produced by more than 4,000
publishers.117 The AAP estimates that its nine higher education
publisher members produce more than 90% of all print and
digital textbooks currently sold in the United States, calculated
by unit volumes.118 At the time of this report, only a small
percentage of these titles are available in the marketplace in an
accessible digital form. That number, however, is growing
significantly as digital retailers (e.g., CourseSmart, VitalSource,
etc.) grow their catalogs of AIM texts.
During the last decade, publishers have cumulatively provided tens
of thousands of e-text files of their printed textbooks each year to
college DR/S offices around the country. These files are converted,
enhanced, or otherwise used to provide accessible formats of
textbooks to students with print disabilities. While some 12 states
have laws requiring publishers to provide these digital files under
specific circumstances and on an as-needed basis to serve a student

enrolled in a course for which the textbook has been assigned,
publishers have long provided e-text files to DR/S offices
voluntarily in states without such legislation as well.

Simplification and
automation of production
would be helpful, but even
more so, born digital
accessible formats from the
publishers, both book and
periodical, we feel is the true
goal.
Postsecondary Disability
Service Provider
(2011, May 4)

My degree is pretty much
completely ruined because I have
not been able to take a single
math course. Computer science
is extremely math heavy, as it
should be. But this is something
that I am quite interested in. I
write software for a living now
and the only way I’m going to be
able to do that is, well, it’s
certainly not going to involve a
degree.
Student with a visual
impairment
(2011, February 24)

The role of the classic printed textbook is expected to gradually
decline; becoming a smaller portion of the required course
materials that faculty will expect their postsecondary students to
use in their studies. Continuing growth is expected, however, in
the use of software, multimedia resources and non-print
supplements provided by textbook publishers. Instructors are
also increasingly reserving digital course materials for students
at a school’s library and requiring students to utilize course
packs, periodicals, articles, novels, nonfiction works, reference
materials and other resources there. All of these required
materials must be provided in accessible form to students.
These and other required resources may be web-based and, if
they are not controlled by the school, a student with a disability
is often without AIM support and can face a significant
challenge.
The rate of change in assistive technologies such as screen
readers and the explosion in new portable technologies such as
tablet computers are creating an array of challenges. Some
faculty have shown an eagerness to adopt new technologies
because of the promise they hold for energizing the learning
experience for students, improving student success rates and
lowering the cost-per-pupil for instruction. However,
technologies that do not incorporate accessibility features will
prevent students with disabilities from being able to fully
participate. This would place postsecondary institutions in a
difficult position as there may not be an equally effective and
equally integrated alternative to the chosen technology.
Recent OCR and DOJ guidance related to electronic book
reader pilot programs has demonstrated explicitly that new
technologies, while opening up a world of educational
possibilities, also can create accessibility challenges. OCR’s
June 2010 DCL stated, “Requiring use of an emerging
technology in a classroom environment when the technology is
inaccessible to an entire population of individuals with
disabilities—individuals with visual disabilities—is
discrimination prohibited by the Americans with Disabilities
Act of 1990 (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of
1973 (Section 504) unless those individuals are provided
accommodations or modifications that permit them to receive
all the educational benefits provided by the technology in an
equally effective and equally integrated manner.”119

The June 2010 DCL called for colleges and universities to
“refrain from requiring the use of any electronic book reader, or
other similar technology, in a teaching or classroom
environment as long as the device remains inaccessible to
individuals who are blind or have low vision. It is unacceptable
for universities to use emerging technology without insisting
that this technology be accessible to all students.”120 OCR also
noted in the follow-up May 2011 FAQ document that “As
explained by the DCL, application of our long standing nondiscrimination requirements means that schools must provide an
electronic book reader (i.e., the technology that the school uses
to provide educational benefits, services, or opportunities) that
is fully accessible to students who are blind or have low vision;
otherwise schools must provide accommodations or
modifications to ensure that the benefits of their educational
program are provided to these students in an equally effective
and equally integrated manner.”121
At present there are important areas of content in postsecondary
education where accessibility challenges have not been
adequately met. Producers of STEM content are a long way
away from having generally accepted methods to follow for
delivering content accessibly.122 The recent incorporation of
MathML into the DAISY, ePUB3 and HTML5 standards has
provided progress in mathematics but to date MathML is neither
uniformly well-handled by web browsers nor widely used by
authoring faculty. STEM accessibility is very much a persisting
challenge.
In addition, instructional materials in the areas of foreign languages
and music present unique challenges. The conversion of these
materials into accessible formats requires highly specialized
expertise and, with respect to braille in particular, requires
competency in either foreign language braille coding or braille
music code.

As of today, the market model for AIM is in a gestational state.
Publishers recognize that the demand for digital texts is poised
to grow dramatically and are working aggressively to determine
how best to meet the demand. At this time, the significance of
the direct-from-publisher channel cannot be determined without
data documenting the degree to which customers respond to
new publisher offerings. It is anticipated, however, that content
producers and publishers seeking success in the marketplace
will utilize software that supports access for students with
disabilities to deliver a viable reading experience. The ideal
circumstance would be having AIM available through digital
retailers and usable by students with little or no need for DR/S

intervention. The transition to AIM needs to be supported by
training of students and support for students who are not adept
in the use of digital technologies.

Instructional materials range from textbooks and traditional
print-based sources to PowerPoint presentations, course packs,
web pages, videos, animations, audio and e-texts, among others.
These materials may be developed by commercial publishers
other content producers or as open educational resources (OER)
created by course instructors, foundations, U.S. government
agencies, or other content developers.
Increasingly, these products are created and distributed digitally
and more frequently they incorporate multimedia and rich
media interactivity. The incorporation of these media and
dynamics in a single product (a feature-rich electronic book, for
example) complicates accessibility issues, and the technological
complexity of a product may make it impossible for a DR/S
office to transform it into a fully accessible version. In these
instances, a postsecondary institution would, pursuant to the
OCR/DOJ DCL and the OCR FAQ document, have to provide
accommodations and modifications to ensure that the benefits of
the educational program are provided to students with
disabilities in an equally effective and integrated manner.
Given the increasing complexity of feature-rich digital
instructional materials, DR/S offices would seldom have the
ability to make the materials fully accessible. For this reason,
these materials need to be designed from the outset with
accessibility in mind.
Through research and discussion, the Commission determined
that the existing network of AMPs, which includes
organizations as APH, Learning Ally (formerly Recording for
the Blind & Dyslexic) and Bookshare, are not going to be able
to retrofit even a small proportion of the wide variety of mediarich digital materials into accessible, student-ready versions. In
recognition of these increasing needs, the ED recently funded
the DIAGRAM Research and Development Center (in which
several of the national AMPs participate) to develop open
source online tools to make it easier and less costly for
publishers, AMPs, schools and individuals to add accessible
features to inaccessible media in educational content of all
types.123
Providing accessibility in multimedia digital materials may
require text equivalents for images and video, audio equivalents
for text, text equivalents for audio and other transformations
that are technically feasible and often can be economical to
implement as products are being designed and developed. As

an afterthought, however, accessibility features are expensive,
time-consuming and, in some cases, impossible to effect. A
growing number of college textbook publishers and providers of
other types of instructional software for the postsecondary
market are increasingly aware of the need to create materials
that can be used by students with disabilities, and a number of
them are taking steps to adjust their content offerings
accordingly.124
A large number of postsecondary institutions and instructors use
networked and online content management systems (CMS) and
learning management systems (LMS), such as Blackboard,
Elluminate, eCollege, Moodle and approximately 35 other
platforms.125 These systems provide online course access and
most include embedded student-to-student-to-instructor
communication modules, assignments and interactive quizzes
and exams. Attention to accessibility has significantly increased
in this segment of the postsecondary materials market in the
past few years. Still, it is important that these delivery systems
consider accessibility needs to address the considerable
instruction and communication that occurs almost exclusively
online. While the majority of these systems report that their
student components are compliant with the current accessibility
requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and/or
with WCAG Level A requirements of the World Wide Web
Consortium (w3C), two issues should be noted.126 First, the
availability of accessibility features does not guarantee their use
by instructors or other content creators. Second, because the
Section 508 standards were not designed with instructional
materials in mind, 508-conforming accessibility solutions
offered may or may not be appropriate for assuring equal
access.
Outside of the classroom, students may encounter additional
access barriers that impact their classroom performance. For
example, more and more, students interact primarily with digital
systems when they register for classes, financial aid and
educational assistance, as well as for accessing a wide variety of
online and other content. Unfortunately, these systems are often
procured without accessibility in mind, making it is much more
difficult to efficiently accommodate the accessibility needs of
students with disabilities.
Students need to be able to access digital reserve materials from
libraries, course registration and other information from
university web sites and online databases for research. Some
state-affiliated institutions of higher education have adopted
Section 508 accessibility requirements for systems interacting
with users via a web browser, but this is not typical.

Increasing awareness of disability requirements in the
acquisition and operation of IT systems by institutions of higher
education is clearly needed.
As technology continues to advance and instructional materials
become more media-rich, institutions of higher education
increasingly find it more challenging to comply with their
obligation under the law to ensure that qualified students with
disabilities have equal access to educational opportunities and
benefits. In short, they often lack the resources to retrofit
market-quality versions that yield the same quality as the
original works and are therefore challenged to meet the
standards to which postsecondary students are entitled under
disabilities laws. The alternate formats provided by DR/S
offices may not be of equal quality to their commercial
counterparts (e.g., a digital scan of a book is usually not the
same as a book)—but the problem is now more challenging
since digital marketplace works contain more graphics, more
potential for interactive features and more hyperlinks, for
example.
All Commission members agree that the ideal solution for
meeting the instructional and access needs of most students with
disabilities lies in increasing the availability of “universally
designed” digital academic materials and delivery systems:
The term ‘universal design’ means a concept or
philosophy for designing and delivering products and
services that are usable by people with the widest
possible range of functional capabilities, which include
products and services that are directly accessible
(without requiring assistive technologies) and products
and services that are interoperable with assistive
technologies.127
The Commission also agrees that to affect this solution in a
comprehensive manner will require a multifaceted approach.
Many significant technology advances during the past decade
have been introduced with major accessibility defects while, at
the same time, technology has come to play an increasingly
significant role in instructional settings. The difficulties of
circumventing the purchase and implementation of inaccessible
technologies have been articulated before the Commission in
public testimony by postsecondary personnel, and significant
technological barriers were presented by students and faculty
with disabilities from a wide range of postsecondary
institutions. As a digital infrastructure becomes more central to
all aspects of postsecondary education, assuring its usability for
all students is a paramount consideration.

Since the environment for commercially produced AIM is very
much in flux and major changes are occurring that hold promise
for significant, continued improvement in the largest area of
demand—required course materials—major publishers are
migrating from print to digital at a rapid pace and are making
efforts to “build in” accessibility functionality from the start to
conform to Section 508 standards and to WCAG2 Level AA
Guidelines in anticipation that the two will be harmonized in the
“refreshed” Section 508.128 Because these are the publishers of
some ninety percent of the print textbooks and many of the new
digital course materials now sold, this transition will greatly
improve access to digital content available for purchase through
the marketplace.

If the postsecondary marketplace—producers of
instructional materials and delivery systems and institutions
of higher education—does not adequately provide AIM for
students with print disabilities, Congress should consider
appropriate legislation to better address these shortcomings.
The Commission believes that the best way to address the needs
of students with print disabilities is for mainstream instructional
materials to become fully accessible. The current transition
away from printed materials to digital materials creates a new
opportunity for equality, one that can enable students with print
disabilities to utilize the same products as their peers who do
not have disabilities. The goal is for individual students who
purchase their own materials, as well as institutions of higher
education that purchase delivery systems for instructional
materials, to be able to purchase such products and expect them
to be to be accessible. With this accomplished, today’s
specialized approaches to resolving accessibility challenges
would move from being the primary sources of accessible
materials to secondary sources.
In today’s rapidly evolving digital marketplace, the Commission
sees both hopeful signs of an accessible mainstream future as
well as the danger of increased implementation of inaccessible
technologies that provide significant barriers to students with
disabilities in the postsecondary environment. In the future,
progress towards mainstream accessibility to meet the
educational needs of students with print disabilities should be
assessed by Congress.
The Commission believes that Congress should establish a
mechanism within the next three years for evaluating the digital
marketplace to assess the degree to which there is an increase in
the availability and purchase of AIM for postsecondary students
with print disabilities. There is widespread agreement within

the Commission that appropriate metrics and empirical data
need to be developed to form the basis for assessing the success
or failure of either or both sides of the postsecondary
marketplace—producers and consumers.
The Commission’s hope is that during this recommended threeyear time period there will be a major shift towards students
with print disabilities being able to obtain mainstream
instructional materials that are accessible to them and meet their
educational needs. At that point, students with print disabilities
would simply order or use the same digital content being used
by the majority of their peers. This market-based approach
would overcome many of the barriers cited in Appendix E.
The Commission believes that the evaluation mechanism should
be developed to focus on methods of obtaining accessible
instructional materials from mainstream sources. Examples of
useful metrics might include the percentage of materials
obtained through specialized vs. mainstream channels, the
timeliness of obtaining those materials for students with
disabilities compared to the time required to obtain materials for
non-disabled students, the percentage of materials that are
unobtainable in a usable format for students with print
disabilities from any source, and the types of technologies
required to participate in the postsecondary environment as well
as quantitative and qualitative data on their accessibility.
The Commission believes it is the legal responsibility of
institutions of higher education, including administration,
department chairs, deans and faculty to assure appropriate
instructional materials for all of their students, including those
with disabilities. The Commission believes that institutions can
effectively accomplish this goal by leveraging their demand for
instructional materials and related software and hardware
delivery systems that are accessible to all students. This will be
best achieved when clear guidelines for accessibility in adoption
and purchasing, as described in Recommendation 1, are
provided. If accessibility was introduced as a fundamental
requirement for doing business in higher education, vendors
who build accessibility into their products would be in a more
competitive position.
To better segment the issue of instructional materials, the
Commission addressed three categories of academic resources:
(1) print works, (2) digital e-texts and (3) supporting software
and applications (CMSs, LMSs, operating systems, web
browsers, animation engines, digital publishing platforms,
desktop applications, etc.) commonly found in postsecondary
settings.

Regarding DRM issues, we just can't
make all of our content open and free
to everybody … we’re having enough
trouble with piracy already, even
print piracy. So we just want to
encourage commercial digital
distributors to make sure that DRM
used in their systems enhances rather
than limits accessibility features.
Publisher Representative
(2011, May 3)

With respect to the first category, print works, the Commission
noted that print, by its very nature, is and will continue to be
inaccessible to a wide range of students with print disabilities.
For print to be made accessible in the most efficient manner, it
needs to be transformed into a digital file. As digital e-text
products move towards becoming the norm in higher education,
accessibility of these digital products should be a priority.
Many low-incidence and high-cost materials will, however,
continue to be produced by today’s specialized system (i.e.,
non-market-oriented DR/S offices and AMPs).
The growth of the digital e-text industry is beginning to
eliminate many traditional accessibility barriers and is creating
an opportunity for sales of accessible e-text content as the
market for digital files expands. A key concern, however, is
that DRM designed to discourage unauthorized copying often
locks essentially accessible content within an inaccessible
wrapper. Recommendation 11 focuses on the issue of DRM
with the goal of assuring that commercially available e-texts
will be usable by students with print disabilities, thereby
encouraging the purchase of mainstream e-texts. Until issues
surrounding DRM are resolved for students with disabilities, the
goal of making e-texts accessible enough to be purchased by
students with disabilities will continue to depend on rendering
technology beyond the actual e-text content.
The third category, supporting software and applications,
remains a source of many accessibility challenges. Even if
instructional materials are accessible at their core, if the delivery
systems available to sell and render these materials are
inaccessible, students with print disabilities will not be able to
use them. Since the accessibility of these delivery systems is a
prerequisite for the accessibility of digital materials, this area
was identified by the Commission as a significant priority to
enable a functioning market-based approach. The majority of
these delivery systems introduced to date have had significant
accessibility problems when first brought to the marketplace,
resulting in students with print disabilities not being able to use
these products alongside their peers without disabilities.129
Often, accommodations provided have not been equally
effective nor equally integrated, resulting in separate and
unequal educational opportunities.
The OCR’s May 2011 FAQ document regarding emerging
technology (see Appendix G) addresses the need to ensure that
all of these programs and activities at a school, including those
that are online or operate in a “virtual” context, are accessible;
or, alternatively, that functionally equivalent accommodations
are provided.130 Although institutions of higher education
should be recommending and purchasing technology that is

accessible, the Commission heard testimony that the purchasing
requirements of these institutions did not place a sufficiently
high priority on accessibility—a reality that is unacceptable.
Large publishers are reporting, however, that following the
issuance of the DCL in June of 2010, some institutions are
increasingly placing a higher priority on purchasing accessible
materials and supporting software and applications.
The Commission looks forward to a transition from today’s
world of specialized supports for students with print disabilities
to a time when students with print disabilities are able to use the
same products and systems at the same time as all students.
Ideally, a student with a print disability will rely on DR/S
offices and specialized accessibility resources only to provide a
safety net for materials not yet available digitally or for lowincidence accessibility services. If this positive vision of
commercial products does not evolve within the next three
years, and students with print disabilities are still not able to
effectively utilize the mainstream supply of instructional
materials at that time, the Commission believes that it would be
appropriate for Congress to consider legislative action to
expedite this transition to market-based solutions to provide
students with disabilities equal educational opportunities.

Congress should consider incentives to accelerate innovation
in accessibility by publishers and producers of course
materials, hardware and software by offering support and
inducements for the production, sale and consumption of
accessible instructional materials and delivery systems.
The Commission discussed a number of strategies for
encouraging the producers of instructional materials (and, for
digital-only products, their associated rendering or delivery
systems) to design products usable by the widest array of
individuals, including those with disabilities. In a market-based
economy, the most efficient and effective means of affecting the
design of products is via consumer demand. Commercial
vendors respond to needs of their customers, with features and
functionality built to address consumer expectation and to
secure market share. Consumer requirements are also a factor
in the success or failure of non-commercial OERs materials. If
these products cannot meet instructional or institutional needs
the fact that they are freely available will not be sufficient to
warrant their adoption. From this perspective, it is clear that
customer procurement drives product design and development
in both the commercial and the OER sectors.

The Commission supports a concerted approach to increasing
the awareness of consumers—institutions of higher education,
faculty and students—through education about accessibility in
relation to their selection of digital materials. The Commission
details its recommendations to increase postsecondary
institutional accessibility awareness in Chapter 4,
Recommendation 12.
In addition to capacity-building for purchasers of instructional
materials, the Commission references recommendations 1
(Access Board) and 9 (Federated Search) as critical factors
designed to standardize accessibility features of instructional
materials and more efficiently facilitate their discovery and
acquisition. Recommendation 1 (Access Board) is designed to
establish specific functional accessibility guidelines that will
provide guidance and a sense of clarity of expectation that
should benefit all stakeholders. In Recommendation 9
(Federated Search), the Commission recommends federal
encouragement for further development of federated search
capacity to enable DR/S offices, faculty, college/university book
stores and students to utilize a single online search for
commercial and non-commercial course materials that also
permits users to determine the accessibility of those materials.
Finally, the Commission encourages Congress to investigate the
applicability of tax incentives for the developers, publishers and
distributors of postsecondary instructional materials to support
the inclusion of accessibility features into their respective
products. For example, the existing Disabled Access Credit
Form 8826 of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides
some limited tax relief to qualified businesses for measures
taken to comply with the equal access provisions of the ADA.
It may serve as a model for encouraging the development of
accessibility features in the creation of digital materials or
services designed for use in instructional settings.
Beyond targeted incentives for stakeholders in the commercial
instructional materials market, the Commission supports the
exploration and expansion of voluntary licensing arrangements
if doing so will increase the availability of AIM in
postsecondary settings.
Congress should consider means to encourage authors,
publishers, producers and other content providers to
collaborate with a range of organizations, including
postsecondary institutions and alternate media producers,
in developing cost-effective licensing models for the
production and delivery of AIM.

Certain copyright industries already benefit from the existence
of voluntary collective licensing frameworks which continue to
develop for the purpose of licensing the reproduction,
distribution, public performance and public display of works of
authorship, including those produced and/or accessed in digital
forms. Collective licensing models operate on an “opt-in” basis
on the part of rights holders, who enroll to participate and
authorize a collective rights organization to grant licenses to
their works as part of its collective offerings.

The Copyright Clearance Center
licenses all different types of
material. We license text. We
license moving images, video clips.
We license still images. We license
blog contents, e-books, in-print
books, out-of-print books, journal
articles, excerpts, and bits of code
from O’Reilly Media. If you can
create this and you want to license it,
we can help you to do it.
Director, Copyright Clearance
Center
(2011, February 15)

In the context of accessibility and higher education and
specifically targeting materials not presently commercially
available in an accessible form, collective licensing could be an
option. For example, it might enable a rights holders to
negotiate a blanket license with an organization, such as CCC,
that could, in turn, permit an authorized entity such as Learning
Ally (formerly known as Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic),
Bookshare, the NLS, or the Described and Captioned Media
Program (DCMP) to create and deliver licensed works to
educational institutions that have subscribed to one of their
service agreements. A collective or repertory license would
eliminate the sometimes laborious and costly process of
identifying and contacting individual rights holders. Instead, it
would allow organizations to deal with one party that would be
able to license rights for a variety of regularly used materials,
often in advance, through a single agreement.
The Commission recognizes that, in many instances, the rights
holder for a specific instructional work may not have additional
rights beyond print publication allowing them to authorize
digital reproduction and distribution of an entire work without
first obtaining permission from third-party rights holders—
including, for the use of prefatory text, photographs, or other
component parts used by the publishers under agreements from
other publishers, producers, historical societies, authors, or
photographers. Such works will necessarily require special
treatment under a collective rights arrangement.
The licensing concepts discussed may yield strategies that are
applicable to the licensing of AIM. These types of agreements
have the potential to expand the market for AIM simply by
expanding the scope and number of formats available and could
lead to new licensing agreements that provide for additional
sales of accessible commercial products. Similarly, the
licensing approach implemented by rights holders and
publishers under the auspices of the AccessText Network, for
example, provides the kind of federated search capacity that can
lead to the sale of materials and may also serve as a model. A
critical factor is assuring the availability of high-quality
materials for the postsecondary market by combining the
resources and capacities of disparate stakeholders.

Given the certainty of a digital future in postsecondary
instructional materials, the Commission believes that the
underlying technologies supporting them need to be flexible,
harmonized with existing standards, readily discoverable,
readily acquired and supportive of accessibility features.

At this point in time, the educational technology market is
experiencing an explosion of different hardware platforms.
Devices dedicated to specific functions are also proliferating,
such as proprietary e-text readers. The rapid development of
these numerous hardware platforms and devices creates
challenges to accessibility, since access usually requires certain
capabilities of the hardware to allow for accessibility features.

Essentially, technology helps to level
the playing field. And for me and for
many other young people with
learning disabilities, these
innovations are more than just
conveniences. They are difference
makers.
Student with a learning disability
(2011, February 24)

There is a similar explosion in software platforms. Different
vendors are vying to be the leading platform for software on
mobile phones and tablet computers. The growth of the
application market for mobile devices (“apps”) has proliferated
the ways information can be provided to users. Web technology
can also create accessibility challenges.
Not only does content need to be accessible, reading delivery
systems also need to be accessible. The number and kinds of
inaccessible platforms present a challenge because otherwise
accessible content might be rendered inaccessible by a given
software platform. This was clearly illustrated by the OCR and
DOJ complaints against the Kindle, in which the user interface
of the device itself was inaccessible to many students with
disabilities.131 Any solution to address accessibility must,
therefore, not only address content but also content systems that
render the information to the end user.
It used to be that postsecondary institutions, through centralized
technology purchasing decisions, could more easily control the
impact of these platform issues. However, the increasing shift
in society to mobile and personal devices has made the situation
more complex, as students are likely to be accessing the same
content through dozens of different hardware and software
platform combinations.
Historically, the accessibility of new hardware and software
platforms has been addressed as follows: a new innovation
comes out, but accessibility is not built in. Time passes, and
accessibility issues are raised. Advocates file complaints,
generally under civil rights law and against educational
institutions; and gradually the most minimal of access becomes
included, primarily through the efforts of assistive technology

(AT) producers, such as screen reader developers. With the
current proliferation of new technologies, AT vendors must
carefully allocate their development resources and choose the
software they will work with, potentially leaving more
applications without accessibility.
The nature of the postsecondary market is that a very large
percentage (estimates range from 85% to 95% of calculated unit
volume) of printed and digital textbooks sold in the
postsecondary market are produced by approximately 10 large
publishing organizations.132 These publishers, the digital
retailers who distribute electronic versions of their products
under licenses and other e-text vendors are moving to
incorporate accessibility into their products.
Additional instructional materials, including titles from smaller
publishers, trade books, research publications, journals,
reference books, videos and software, are generated by
approximately 6,000 other producers.133 It is not yet possible to
predict the degree to which the producers of these additional
materials will embrace the postsecondary accessibility market
model. Accessibility standards such as Section 508 and
WCAG, as well as increasing adoption of universal design
principles, are beginning to change this paradigm. The
Commission heard testimony from software producer members
of SIIA that many producers of web applications, social media
and productivity software are working to address accessibility
challenges.
The belief that building accessibility into a digital product will
create a potentially unrecoverable incremental cost can be a
deterrent for some publishers who are considering embracing
the market model by creating accessible versions of some of
their titles for the commercial marketplace. If a publisher
deems an incremental cost likely to prove unrecoverable,
content producers are understandably likely to shy away from
incurring that cost. Of course, if accessibility becomes a
requirement of conducting business in the postsecondary market
segment, this incremental cost can be justified as a requirement
to be competitive in the postsecondary market sector.
A major inhibiting concern for the publishing community that
produces AIM is the lack of a clear, authoritative definition of
what constitutes a suitably accessible product or file in the
postsecondary environment.134 Without an explicit, stable
definition of formats and best practices governing AIM
production, publishers are sometimes hesitant to incur the costs
of making workflow changes that would enable them to produce
more accessible products and files. Not only does this impact

the potential for commercially available AIM, it also affects the
likelihood of publishers’ willingness to supply high quality files
to meet the alternate needs of other use cases.
Currently textbook publishers are creating digital products of
primarily three kinds. The first are digital versions of their
print-only works and the second are works that are “born
digital.” In the third category are products that are, from the
outset, expected to be available both in print and in digital form
(typically for incorporation into third-party LMS or proprietary
formats used in such systems as, for example, those provided by
CourseSmart, VitalSource, Café Scribe and others).
For all of these digital products to be simultaneously available
to students with and without disabilities wherever they may be
enrolled, the products must be created with accessibility built in.
Further, providing accessibility in digital learning materials
offers benefits that extend beyond providing supports for
students with disabilities. There is the potential for many
students to take advantage of cross-media representations of
information such as text-to-speech (TTS), captioned videos, text
transcripts of audio and text equivalents for images. Supports
that may provide essential information access for a student with
a disability may offer a non-disabled student an alternative
means of interpreting or acquiring information. For learning
materials, added functionality such as embedded highlighting,
bookmarking and note-taking, as well as built-in progress
monitoring and supports to prompt a student to pay attention to
critical information, are increasingly becoming aspects of
instructional materials designed with both accessibility and
pedagogy in mind.

The portable document format (PDF) was developed as a
uniform way to view, print and distribute print-based
information regardless of a computer’s operating system.135
While the original PDF was designed only to produce a fixedlayout document meant to replicate print—text and graphics—
for digital distribution (eliminating the need to mail or fax paper
documents) on screen, subsequent iterations of PDF have
incorporated hyperlinks, interactive forms, increased levels of
document security (designed to maintain the integrity of an
original publication and/or restrict access to it), and embedded
multimedia. In 2001, “tagging” was added to PDF, which
added limited capacity to identify structural and other elements
of a document (headings, quotations, body text, reading order,
etc.) to facilitate the re-purposing of accessing a PDF document
across multiple devices and platforms.136

While the addition of tagging did provide some capacity to
separate the content of a PDF document from the manner in
which it could be presented, the print foundation of PDF
continues to present significant challenges in the more flexible
and ever-increasing world of digital documents. These
challenges are particularly noticeable in the area of accessibility
for individuals with print disabilities. To make an accessible
PDF document generally means it must be diligently authored
with accessibility in mind, and, often, significant manual
intervention is needed to achieve that outcome. As a result,
most PDF documents remain inaccessible to students with print
disabilities.137

In 2005, a group of stakeholders came together for the purpose
of developing a set of guidelines for the creation and
distribution of PDF documents designed to be more accessible
to and readable by individuals with print disabilities.138 The
guidelines established by the Portable Document Format
Universal Accessibility Group (PDF/UA) have subsequently
entered the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
process and although significant progress has been made
towards developing clear benchmarks for creating accessible
PDF documents, several ongoing challenges remain. Many
PDF documents are not constructed to take advantage of either
the flexibility or the accessibility of available tagging
functionality. In addition, a PDF/UA version closest to
standardization (ISO/DIS 14289:1 [PDF/UA]) does not support
math mark-up (ergo, mathematics would most likely be
represented by an inaccessible picture of the equations).139
PDF documents sometimes contain DRM settings used to
protect the rights holder’s content by locking a document and
this prevents assistive technology from accessing it. Some
documents are constructed to provide access for blind persons
using screen readers, but others include settings that prevent the
use of assistive technology (for example, in order to access its
content via TTS).

Founded in 1996 to facilitate the transition of international
talking book libraries from analog to digital technologies, the
DAISY Consortium actively promotes DAISY specification as
the international, technical foundation for accessible, navigable
publications and documents. Building on a research project that
was begun in 1988 by the Swedish Library of Talking Books
and Braille (TPB) and the first working prototype developed in
1994 by TPB, the original primary goal of the DAISY initiative
was the production of structured, phrase-based, recorded audio
versions of print works. As the project evolved, the following
core functions were added:

•
•
•
•
•

Ability to skim text, phrase by phrase or section by
section, where section is a collection of phrases
Ability to search for different parts using a text-based
table of contents
Ability to search for specific pages in a talking book
Ability to place and search for bookmarks in a book,
and, later
Ability to underline text and create notes in a talking
book140

The original 1996 DAISY Consortium represented six
international talking book libraries. As of 2011, the Consortium
has a membership totaling almost 110, including twenty full
members that provide direction and set policy. The membership
represents an extensive international spectrum of stakeholders.
Bookshare, Learning Ally, the National Federation of the Blind
(NFB) and NLS at the Library of Congress are full members.
The Consortium’s primary focus has been to refine, extend and
promote the international adoption of the DAISY standard for
digital talking books (DTBs). The DAISY Consortium is the
maintenance agency for the National Information Standards
Organization’s (NISO’s) Digital Talking Book Standard
(DTBook), now DAISY3. This technical specification is
undergoing a final revision with a formal update to DAISY
planned for the latter part of 2011.141
The NIMAS, incorporated in 2004 into the re-authorization of
IDEA as the technical standard for K–12 core textbooks and
related instructional materials, is a sub-set of the DAISY
specification. The National File Format (NFF) Technical Panel
that identified the NIMAS unanimously agreed that adoption of
the well-established and actively implemented DAISY Standard
would significantly increase the availability of high-quality
alternate format materials—braille, audio, digital text and large
print—for the nation’s qualifying students with print
disabilities. The NIMAS Standards Board and the NIMAS
Development Center made a formal recommendation to the
DOC in 2009 that MathML be formally included in the NIMAS
(K–12), in order to improve the accessibility of STEM
instructional materials.142

In 1999, the stakeholder community involved in the production,
distribution and consumption of electronic books established the
Open e-Book Publishing Forum, or OEBF. This international
organization saw the need to create a foundation specification,
one based on open and readily usable standards, for the content,
structure and presentation of electronic books.

As this organization evolved, it increasingly came to represent
the interests of e-text producers and developers, and in 2005 its
name was changed to the International Digital Publishing
Forum, or IDPF, to more accurately represent that orientation.
In 2009 the IDPF formally accepted a request by the DAISY
Consortium to support the maintenance of the IDPF standards
and specifications, officially uniting the efforts of trade
organizations, disability advocacy organizations and digital
publishing technology groups in incorporating accessibility
standards into the primary e-text publishing specification,
ePUB3. As the revised DAISY Standard evolves, its
accessibility functionality will be effectively incorporated into
the proposed update to ePUB3. The incorporation of the
accessibility-focused DAISY Standard into the broader ePUB3
specification is designed to ensure that ePUB3-based products
are fully capable of supporting the accessibility requirements
that are the foundation of DAISY.
Simultaneously, this convergence of the two specifications
supports the needs of the DAISY Consortium to attend to the
accessibility challenges that digital materials can create if not
addressed at the development and production stage. In addition,
ePUB3 incorporates modules for the use of rich media—audio,
video, animations and interactivity. It incorporates
sophisticated supports for computer-generated (synthetic)
speech, it incorporates MathML for effectively rendering
mathematics in an accessible manner, and it includes support for
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) which can be used to create
layered and navigable versions of images with embedded text
equivalents which offers a significant boost to the production of
tactile graphics.
Of interest to content producers and publishers, ePUB3 supports
reflowable content, which means it can be deployed on multiple
devices, and can efficiently support in-house publisher
workflows as well as commercial product distribution. In the
twelve years since its initial development, ePUB3 has emerged
as the format of choice for e-text development and distribution.
Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony and many other
vendors support ePUB3 in the provision of digital content.
ePUB3, with its incorporation of DAISY accessibility
requirements, holds significant promise for the increased
availability of commercial products that are useable out of the
box by a wide range of consumers—those with disabilities and
those without. ePUB3 provides a strong example of the
efficiency and effectiveness that can be achieved by the
combined efforts of a stakeholder community. A recent (April,
2011) joint publication by the DAISY Consortium, WIPO, and

also EDItEUR, which is the trade standards body for the global
book and serials supply chains entitled, “Accessible
Publishing—Best Practices Guidelines for Publishers” actively
supports ePUB and points to the increasing awareness within
the publishing community that accessible design and production
is simply good business practice.
The W3C recognized early on the need to make web-based
content, resources and interactions accessible to individuals
with disabilities, and launched the Web Accessibility Initiative
(WAI) to address these needs. In 1999, W3C/WAI published
WCAG1. This was superseded in 2008 by WCAG2, which
serves as a guiding document for creating accessible digital
content and for building accessible delivery mechanisms.
Extensive technical and educational resources support WCAG2,
including Techniques for WCAG 2.0, Understanding WCAG
2.0, and How to Meet WCAG 2.0, which developers can use
throughout their development process. WCAG2 was developed
with multi-stakeholder input from around the world. It has
become the predominant de facto worldwide standard for web
accessibility, as well as for network software applications that
are browser-based, and serves as a foundation for more specific
accessibility standards such as DAISY. Further, it is anticipated
that Level AA of WCAG2 will be congruent with the new
Section 508 standards when they are released.
The WAI, recognizing that not all web content can be produced
in an optimally accessible manner, developed WCAG2
guidelines with three levels: A, AA and AAA. In layman’s
terms, Level A provides the barest minimum of accessibility.
Level AA provides greater accessibility and is the level that is
likely to equate to the refreshed Section 508. AAA provides
optimum accessibility. When assessing WCAG2, it is important
recognize the level that is being employed.
W3C/WAI has also published other standards complementary to
WCAG2. These include the Authoring Tool Accessibility
Guidelines (ATAG), which address the accessibility of user
interfaces for people with disabilities for any authoring tools
used to produce web content and provides support for
production of accessible content; the User Agent Accessibility
Guidelines (UAAG), which addresses accessibility features of
browsers and media players for people with disabilities; and
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA), which
provides accessibility solutions for dynamic and interactive
applications on the web.143

While acknowledging this arena of evolving technology
standards, including a heightened awareness of the need to
create interoperable specifications for the creation of accessible
documents and their delivery systems, the Commission makes
the following recommendations with respect to technology.

The Commission does not recommend a single national file
format solution similar to the (K–12) NIMAS nor a single
centralized clearinghouse, file sharing network, or national
repository similar to the NIMAC. The Commission
recommends that postsecondary students with print
disabilities would be better served by explicit support for a
wide variety and range of different options and suppliers.
The Commission’s charge from Congress included a directive to
examine market model solutions where accessible materials
would simply be purchased. The Commission kept this market
model solution firmly in mind and achieved broad consensus
that it would be the best long-term solution to many
accessibility challenges, including the two key questions
concerning file format and a repository. The Commission also
looked closely at the existing K–12 systems established as part
of IDEA 2004, with the NIMAS file format and the NIMAC
repository.
Technology is rapidly evolving and students with disabilities
have a wide array of needs; therefore, locking accessibility into
a current technology by recommending a single specific
national file format is ill-advised. The Commission felt strongly
that a more functional approach that allows for technical
innovation, while describing functional requirements for
accessibility, was required. Due to the costs and delays
involved in creating and supporting a new technical standard,
the Commission also prefers to influence the accessibilityrelated content of major standards that are already in use or are
expected to become widely used.
The Commission perspective of functionality was driven by this
guiding principle:
Technology developed or deployed to facilitate access
to instructional materials must permit a user with a
print disability the opportunity to acquire the same
information, engage in the same transactions and enjoy
the same services at the same time as the user without a
disability, and with a substantially equivalent ease of
use.

Although the NIMAS format does contribute to accessibility,
and thousands of K–12 textbooks in NIMAS format have been
deposited into the NIMAC repository, the Commission
uniformly agrees that the adoption of a NIMAS-style national
format for postsecondary materials is inadvisable. This
determination was based on a number of factors, including the
volume of instructional materials titles (more than 262,000
postsecondary versus approximately 3,500 in K–12), the fact
that there are fewer than five duplicate requests per title in
postsecondary, and the fact that K–12 purchasing represents an
aggregate market (districts purchase materials) compared to
postsecondary (where every student constitutes a market).
Additionally, the scope of postsecondary materials includes not
only those textbooks developed specifically for that market, but
trade books, scholarly publications, research monographs and an
array of other publications selected at the discretion of the
faculty or institution. These factors, combined with the rapid
move to digital materials, are all contraindications. Finally, a
mandated, disability-specific source file format would be
inconsistent with the goal of encouraging a market environment
within which students with disabilities can buy or legally obtain
accessible content directly.
The Commission is in agreement that the wide range of needs of
students with disabilities cannot be met by any single entity or
organization. Rather than creating a national repository like the
NIMAC that serves K–12 students with print disabilities, it is
preferable to support a system for locating accessible materials.
To the greatest extent practical, students with disabilities should
be able to purchase mainstream accessible materials through the
same channels as non-disabled students. There will, however,
remain a strong need for DR/S offices and AMPs to ensure that
remaining inaccessible materials are converted and lowincidence materials are created (such as braille and tactile
graphics).
When it is necessary for DR/S offices and accessible media
producers to convert inaccessible content with accessibility
augmentations, it should be possible to share this augmented
work with other stakeholders and avoid the costly need to
duplicate the accessibility work. These include such additions
as tactile graphics, image descriptions (including converting text
presented in inaccessible forms), captioning and descriptive
video. For example, postsecondary institutions will need a
mechanism by which to exchange accessible content in a
manner conforming to copyright law. If one institution has
already undertaken to create an accessible version of a work,
other institutions that require the same title should not need to
invest the time and effort to create a new copy. The

Commission notes the existence of several different file-sharing
networks already filling this need in other areas. A federated
search, as described in Recommendation #9, would provide an
important means for easing the discovery of existing accessible
works.
The Commission recommends that publishers, distributors,
content producers and AMPs facilitate the distribution of
new AIM products by including accessibility metadata used
for marketing and discovery. Also, standards organizations
are encouraged to incorporate and further develop
accessibility specifications in their domains based on a
common list of accessibility-focused metadata.
Including accessibility information in bibliographic and
marketing metadata would enable the discovery of accessible
products more easily at publisher web sites, bookstores, libraries
and in the databases of authorized entities and other information
services. Accessibility-focused metadata would also enable
postsecondary institutions to determine comparative
accessibility of potential syllabus materials. One significant
marketing metadata framework that now includes
accessibility focused metadata is ONIX for Books Product
Information Message, a widely implemented XML-based
framework maintained by EDItEUR (see www.editeur.org).
ONIX is in use within most large and many mid-size and small
commercial publishers in North America, as well as in Europe
and increasingly in the Asia-Pacific region. Other metadata
frameworks include, for example, Dublin Core Open Source
Metadata Framework, Bath Profile, MARC and Metadata
Object Description Schema.
EDItEUR is an international metadata standards organization
for the book and serials supply chain, whose standards
incorporate accessibility elements. ONIX for Books 3.0,
published in October 2011, enables publishers to specify that
their products incorporate a range of features which promote
accessibility—logical reading order, alternative textual
descriptions and so on—in a highly granular manner. Optional
extended accessibility information to be carried in ONIX data
would exist alongside other bibliographic information, collateral
data used for discovery and promotion and supply chain
information. Full details of the newest release of ONIX and
best practices guidelines are available at the EDItEUR website,
and an established mechanism for future review and extension
of features that can be specified is in place.
Once such metadata are available to the supply chain, educators
will be able to select curriculum products offering the widest
range of accessibility features. Equally, individual print-

impaired readers will potentially be able to compare their
personal accessibility requirements with the range of features
offered by a product to determine which version, if any, of a
particular product would be suitable for their needs.
The semantics of various codes used within ONIX for Books
ideally should be incorporated in other metadata standards used
for postsecondary materials, including courseware, journals,
OER and learning objects; and in metadata used by libraries,
specifically the Library of Congress. As additional metadata
elements are released, they should be incorporated into the
various product distribution systems. Publishers, distributors,
content producers, libraries and authorized entities should use
the new ONIX accessibility metadata specifications in their
domain-specific metadata standards, e.g., MARC for libraries.
Shared semantics will promote greater interoperability among
the various metadata standards (though of course the exact
syntax each metadata framework uses to deliver information
will vary).

The Commission supports the development of federated
search capabilities that enable individual students and DR/S
offices to make a single online search to locate existing
accessible resources.
Currently, there is no universal national discovery mechanism
for students, DR/S offices, college bookstores, or entities that
create, identify, or acquire accessible materials to learn about
the availability of AIM. The AccessText Network is providing
a partial solution with ATF, a federated search program that is
currently in its beta phase. Still, in some instances, users need
to use multiple web sites in searching for the specific content
they need. There was agreement among Commission members
that the development of federated search capabilities is a core
requirement to make support of multiple sources of content
practical.
Just as a centralized repository is not the Commission’s
recommended answer for this problem, a single centralized
catalog also is not the best solution. Instead, different
companies and organizations that are sources of content should
support ease of discovery by incorporating their AIM holdings
into web-based federated search engines. Such federated search
resources would simultaneously search multiple places on the
Internet find out what is available and return a summary of its
survey to users. Much as a user today can use a search engine
to look for a print book that is often offered for sale by a broad
array of retailers and suppliers, so, also, a search for an
accessible book or source file should also return a list of

available accessible options. Options should include results for
both commercial and non-commercial providers of accessible
materials.
A federated search as described above requires the
implementation of a common set of accessibility-focused
metadata—i.e., consistent code in the records being searched—
such as that proposed by EDItEUR.
This federated search capability should be easily integrated into
different tools. Whether it is a hardware device, software
application, or web site, the capability to search for accessible
content should be widely available. For maximum reach and
effectiveness, a federated search resource needs to be freely
available on the Internet and the search resource itself should be
fully accessible.

The Commission recommends that producers of courseware
management systems, web development software, content
authoring software, word processors and layout programs,
among others, be encouraged to create accessibility wizards
and prompts that launch validation processes to inspect
materials for accessibility as they are created and before
they are distributed to students.

I’ll limit my comments to two
things that I see as mostly
unaddressed on our campus,
which I feel this Commission
might make recommendations on:
These are authoring tools
guidelines and purchasing
recommendations…
Postsecondary AlternateFormat Production Specialist
(2011, May 4)

As more materials used in postsecondary instruction are created
by more and more stakeholders, more and more instructional
materials are being generated in inaccessible ways. Although
tools for authoring content generally support accessibility
features, most authors are unaware of these features and
inadvertently create inaccessible content. To facilitate
accessibility, lower costs and speed delivery, it is best to make
instructional materials accessible at the time they are being
created.144
The Commission unanimously agrees that creators of
instructional content could employ popular authoring tools more
efficiently and effectively if they contained built-in prompts
and/or reminders to address accessibility during content
development. For example, authors are the best people to
describe a graphic (in alternative text) that is part of a textbook
or a learning module because of their subject-specific
understanding of its educational purpose. A person
subsequently trying to make a graphic accessible often lacks the
contextual knowledge possessed by the author. For example, a
“prompt” might be activated by the content that an author is
adding to a document: e.g., “You have added an image to this
document. Have you supplied a text equivalent?” A “wizard”
could guide an author through a specific process: e.g., “To add
a text equivalent to the image just added to the document,

follow this sequence...” By incorporating this type of universal
design approach—currently employed by some vendors—
incremental production costs should be marginal and should
obviate the need for subsequent retro-fitting for accessibility.
The Commission recommends that authoring or content
development software used to create web sites, courseware
management systems, or electronic documents incorporate
active support for ensuring that accessibility is addressed during
the content creation process. Instructional materials containing
STEM content—especially equations and/or scientific notation,
for example—should produce products usable by students with
disabilities. For example, approaches that incorporate MathML
or similar technology could be employed to help ensure that
STEM material is made accessible.

The Commission recommends that content producers,
producers of software applications, supporting device
manufacturers, producers of digital content, providers and
producers of software applications and their DRM suppliers
should ensure that accessible versions of both materials and
delivery systems using DRM are made available without
harming publishers’ established and emerging distribution
channels.
The Commission is unified in its support of ensuring that
mainstream commercial versions of instructional materials are
compatible with adaptive technology used to facilitate
accessibility. The Commission believes device manufacturers,
software applications producers and publishers should
coordinate and cooperate to ensure that DRM will not serve as
an impediment to accessibility.
DRM is sometimes an impediment to accessibility because the
devices or software used by students with print disabilities are
not able to process and/or render the content that is protected by
DRM features. Even if a student with a print disability lawfully
acquires a copy of an accessible work, DRM may inhibit the use
of that work on certain assistive devices or may inhibit certain
features (e.g., TTS, the ability to render the content in braille,
the ability to enlarge font size, etc.) that are required by students
with print disabilities.
It should be possible to have DRM that discourages
unauthorized copying while still enabling content access that
includes a full range of accessibility features.

The postsecondary population of students with disabilities
includes students with a wide variety of physical and mental
disabilities, including sensory, learning, chronic health,
episodic, bodily systemic and cognitive impairments. Under
Section 504 and Title II, the postsecondary process for
obtaining academic adjustments for a disability differs greatly
from the process used in the elementary and secondary
education context. In the elementary and secondary context,
public schools are required to seek out and identify students
with disabilities and to provide a free appropriate public
education (FAPE) that may include services and
accommodations to those students which in turn are then
described in a written plan such as an Individualized Education
Program (IEP) under the IDEA or what is often referred to as a
“504 Plan” under Section 504.145 In contrast, in the
postsecondary setting, there are no 504 Plans or IEPs and
colleges and universities do not have a duty to seek out and
identify students with disabilities. Rather, students may request
services from an institution’s DR/S office or through another
appropriately designated university official.

I am a strong self-advocate. I know
what my needs are, how to ask for them,
how to receive them and where to look.
I am the exception, not the rule. We
need to do a much better job educating
the public about access AND destigmatizing learning disabilities so that
people are not afraid to ask for what
they need and know what to ask for. The
best way to accomplish this is through
universal design and awareness
building. We are once again missing a
population of students who need and
could benefit from accommodations but
they are afraid of the stigma and don’t
know how to ask, what to look for, and
can’t afford the testing.
Student with a learning disability
(2011, February 25)

Postsecondary institutions may set their own policies and
procedures for qualified students with disabilities to apply for
auxiliary aids and services such as AIM, as long as those
policies and procedures are reasonable. At a postsecondary
institution, once a student is determined to be a qualified student
with a disability, adjustments are made on an individualized
basis. A diagnosis of a disability, by itself, may not warrant an
academic adjustment; it is the functional impact of a student’s
impairment that determines whether or not an accommodation is
appropriate.146
Auxiliary aids and services are typically provided by a school’s
DR/S office. This office is an important gateway for
postsecondary students with disabilities, since its role is to
collaborate with a student to identify appropriate
accommodations and to negotiate the appropriateness of these
accommodations with course instructors. A GAO report on
higher education and disability outlines an example of the
process of how these offices might determine, and ultimately
provide, appropriate accommodations to a student with a
disability. To receive accommodations, a DR/S office might
require that students—

•
•
•
•
•
•

Register with the DR/S office
Provide recent and appropriate documentation
of disability
May need to visit a qualified professional for
additional documentation
Work with the DR/S office to determine what
auxiliary aids and services are needed
Request auxiliary aids and services at the DR/S
office
In some cases, take an accommodations letter to
each professor and discuss needed
accommodations147

Though some institutions follow a different sequence, these
steps are representative of the procedure followed by many
schools.
Postsecondary students with disabilities are not required to selfidentify, but if a student would like to receive academic
adjustments for a disability, the responsibility is on that student
to inform the institution of his or her disability (usually by
contacting the DR/S office) so that he or she can receive
services. At times, students are unaccustomed to initiating this
type of self-advocacy and may not initiate this process at the
beginning of a postsecondary experience.148,149 In addition,
some students may be reluctant to disclose their disabilities.
They may not know what to ask for, or where to ask for it; they
may want to avoid the possible stigma of others knowing that
they have disabilities.150
Although filing a grievance with an institution or a complaint
with OCR or DOJ is free of charge, and many students do so
every year, anecdotal reports indicate some students hesitate to
complain due to perceived concerns about being placed in a
potentially adversarial position to the institution where they are
enrolled. As a result of these concerns, some students may be
constrained from objecting to their unmet access needs.
The second wave of the National Longitudinal Transition Study
(NLTS2) found that about two-thirds of postsecondary students
with disabilities receive no academic adjustments from their
schools, often because students have not disclosed their
disabilities.151
Students with disabilities may attempt to undertake a
postsecondary course of study without academic adjustments
and subsequently request services later in the year when they
are already struggling and recovery from potential failure in

courses may be difficult. Alternatively, students with
disabilities who do not request services from their institutions
may drop or change courses mid-year or transfer from one
institution to another due to academic difficulties. In addition, a
student may present documentation that is incomplete,
inconclusive, or out-of-date, necessitating additional
information gathering or assessment. Any of these or other
situations may make it challenging for an institution to arrange
academic adjustments in a timely manner.
The postsecondary enrollment rates for students with disabilities
lags behind that of their non-disabled peers as does the
completion rates for these students once enrolled.152 In order to
facilitate the informed transition of students from secondary to
postsecondary settings, IDEA 2004 requires a secondary-level
SEA or LEA to create a Summary of Performance (SOP) to
provide a student with information related to the diagnosis and
functional impact of their disability.153 As of 2008, the majority
of states indicated that an SOP was made available for each
student exiting special educations services, as required.154
However, many postsecondary DR/S personnel found the
language of a typical SOP, with references to “modifications,”
“success,” and “essential,” did not reflect existing
postsecondary practices and the legal requirements that guide
them.155

Once a student has identified him- or herself as an individual
with a disability and provided appropriate documentation,
institution staff discuss with the student what academic
adjustments are appropriate in light of the student’s individual
needs and the nature of the institution’s programs. Students
with disabilities often possess unique knowledge of their
disabilities and should be prepared to discuss the functional
challenges they face and, if applicable, what has or has not
worked for them in the past. Institution staff should be prepared
to describe barriers students may face in individual classes that
may affect their full participation as well as to discuss academic
adjustments that might enable students to overcome those
barriers. Public institutions are required to give primary
consideration to an auxiliary aid or service that a student
requests but can opt to provide alternative aids or services if
they are equally effective.156
Private institutions have a similar obligation to provide auxiliary
aids or services, and the best practice is to give primary
consideration to an auxiliary aid or service that a student
requests.157 They can also opt to provide an equally effective
alternative if a requested auxiliary aid or service would
fundamentally alter the nature of a service, program, or activity,
or would result in undue financial or administrative burdens.158

DR/S offices strive to provide qualified students with
appropriate auxiliary aids and services in as effective and timely
a manner as possible. Timelines can be affected by a number of
factors, including the date of student course registration, the
date of a student’s notifying DR/S of course enrollment, the
date when instructors identify required course materials, length
of class session and term and class and exam expectations.
With respect to AIM, materials identification and DR/S
notification are crucial variables. DR/S offices need to locate,
acquire and, in most instances, convert materials into
appropriate student-ready formats, and lack of information or a
last minute change can increase delays.159
The Commission notes that section 133 of the HEOA requires,
to the maximum extent practicable, that each institution of
higher education that receives federal financial assistance
disclose information of required and recommended textbooks
and supplemental materials for each course listed in an
institution’s course schedule used for pre-registration and
registration purposes.[ii] Although not designed to address the
provision of AIM to students who require them, this provision,
if consistently adhered to, has the potential to identify required
course materials months before the beginning of class and could
prove to be beneficial to DR/S offices.
Even when the specifics of course materials are known,
acquisition delays often occur. The nature of AIM requests is
cyclical, with the majority of requests occurring just prior to or
during the initial weeks of each term. Many DR/S offices are
understaffed, with some having student-to-staff ratios as large
as 350 to 1.160 In many instances, students have become
accustomed to receiving less than optimal versions of materials
and accept these because having a mediocre version may allow
them to keep pace with the course, whereas having no alternate
format may necessitate withdrawal. The lack of timely delivery
of AIM has even deterred some students from using DR/S to
receive academic adjustments.161 Some DR/S providers lack the
knowledge and skill sets necessary to determine what AIM
might be most appropriate for students and/or the techniques
and capacity to retro-fit print or otherwise produce or acquire
AIM. In the case of digital materials, such as computer-based
tutorial systems or library databases, there may be no way for
DR/S to provide an alternative, and this leads many students to
feel they are not receiving the services they need.162,163

The challenge is to get people to
change about what they should be
doing and taking greater
ownership and responsibility for
themselves as teachers and doing
what they need to do in order to
support all students, including
students with disabilities.
Postsecondary faculty member
(2011, April 12)

Many academic adjustments granted by DR/S offices are
provided in cooperation with course instructors.164 Instructors
and academic departments determine what are essential and
necessary components of a class or a course of study. Research
has indicated that an unaware or unsupportive course instructor
or faculty member can create barriers to students needing
academic adjustments.165,166,167,168 Students with learning or
other “hidden” disabilities, in particular, may encounter
additional problems. It is not unusual for instructors to be
unaware of the needs of students with disabilities or to perceive
academic adjustments for these students (such as extended time
or note takers) as negatively affecting the academic integrity of
the assignment or of the course.169 These supports may be
viewed as offering an “unfair advantage” to a student. This
perception can be magnified by the fact that, in contrast to
physical or sensory challenges, the functional impact of a
hidden disability may fluctuate significantly across different
courses or assignments.170 In most circumstances, however,
instructors do try to support both the DR/S office and students
in crafting academic adjustments.171
Where there is widespread systemic or faculty-based awareness
of the need for accessibility, instructors may select accessible
materials accordingly or pro-actively work with their DR/S
office to acquire alternate versions. In other circumstances
where no institution-wide directives exist, instructors may not
or, in some cases, cannot choose AIM. For example, some
academic departments may select inaccessible print or digital
instructional materials for widespread use in developmental or
large-enrollment survey classes. In those situations, DR/S must
independently advocate for students to receive alternate formats
as an academic adjustment. Instructors may be reluctant to
provide major academic adjustments, such as modified
assignments, but they are generally willing to provide small
academic adjustments and those accommodations whose
necessity is immediately apparent.172
Due to the wide range of attitudes, perceptions and practices
across faculty, students with disabilities will have a range of
experiences, even within the same department. Though
attitudes do appear to be changing, academic adjustments and
disabilities are not necessarily openly discussed, and students
with disabilities still report having varying communication
experiences with faculty.173,174

A prominent theme that has emerged from the recent literature,
stakeholder testimony and Commission deliberation is the need
for formal training of faculty and staff to increase their
understanding of disability in general. This training should
include an overview of disability characteristics, instructor’s
legal rights and responsibilities, the nature and purpose of
auxiliary aids and services, and other disability-related issues,
all of which can have a positive influence on the personal
beliefs and instructional practices of faculty members.175,176

The Commission recommends that federally sponsored
projects and programs encourage and support systematic
faculty and staff professional development with respect to
selection, production and delivery of high-quality AIM to
meet the needs of students with disabilities in postsecondary
settings.
Federally sponsored or competed projects, including grants,
cooperative agreements and contracts that involve the design,
development and/or creation of materials that could be used for
postsecondary instruction need to support accessibility. The
Commission strongly encourages postsecondary institutions to
reference and utilize Section 508 procurement and purchasing
guidelines in their digital product development descriptions and
in their applications for Federal funding.177
Higher education institutions, consistent with the requirements
of the ADA and Section 504, should purchase authoring tools
for use by faculty, staff and students in working with accessible
digital publications. In addition, every postsecondary institution
should offer a mandatory system-wide orientation for faculty,
staff, teaching assistants and administrators concerning
strategies for ensuring accessibility in all aspects of the
education enterprise, including readings, courseware and
instructional technology, assessments and instructor-made
materials. Consideration should be given to establishing
institutional benchmarks for proficiency in disability awareness
and responsiveness to the need for AIM.

The Commission recommends that the Department of
Education re-establish an intra-agency working group on
postsecondary students with disabilities and also create a
cross-agency working group to provide a more unified and
consistent approach to federal initiatives regarding the
provision of AIM at postsecondary institutions.

Of even more concern is the way
in which staff in the disability
service office are reluctant to
provide brailled or otherwise
accessible materials to those
students taking math and science
classes. For example, all course
work for certain statistics classes
is online. The software that is
used is not compatible with
screen reading software, and this
leaves blind students in these
classes unable to read and/or
complete assignments.
Student with visual impairment
(2011, July 11)

A 2009 GAO Study concluded that the Department of
Education could improve access to higher education for students
with disabilities if the Secretary of Education were to develop
and implement a coordinated approach to optimize agency
resources and knowledge in providing technical assistance to
institutions of higher education in supporting students with
disabilities.
The Department of Education reported that it did establish a
staff-level intra-agency working group to carry out GAO’s
recommendations. At this time, however, the staff-level group
in no longer active. The Commission urges the Department to
reestablish the staff-level working group, and asks that senior
level interagency groups at the Department also focus on how to
better provide information to postsecondary institutions
regarding accessible instructional materials.
A number of federal agencies, including the National Science
Foundation (NSF), the departments of Education and Labor and
others have initiatives or funded projects related to the
accessibility of postsecondary instructional materials and
delivery systems. The Commission recommends that the
Department of Education work with other agencies to develop
means to routinely and systematically share information with
institutions of higher education regarding how best to support
postsecondary students with disabilities while avoiding
duplication of Federal effort. This cross-agency working group
would help to ensure better coordination among federal
agencies.

The Commission recommends that the federal government
support the creation and sharing of both embossed and
digital braille, as well as tactile graphics materials, in
postsecondary settings, particularly for STEM, foreign
language and music.
As the Commission determined by stakeholder testimony and
research, the predominant challenges associated with the
delivery of high-cost AIM to students with low-incidence
disabilities are (1) a lack of production/acquisition capacity and
(2) timeliness. These inhibiting factors are amplified
considerably when the materials are technically challenging,
such as those for STEM, foreign language and music. Because
their production requires significant cost and effort, physical
braille and tactile graphics exemplify these challenges.
Only a limited number of DR/S offices produce literary (general
purpose) braille in-house; even fewer have the expertise to
produce Nemeth (STEM) braille, chemistry braille, foreign

language braille, music braille, or tactile graphics and,
consequently, most rely on external agencies for these materials.
Due to the regular revision and updating of core instructional
materials (textbooks and related resources) used in
postsecondary institutions, the enormous number of materials in
circulation, and the limited number of duplicate requests, DR/S
offices can seldom locate the materials they need in existing
repositories. As a result, the majority of these materials need to
be created in highly specialized formats in an ad hoc manner in
order to provide students with equitable access to their courses.
For the foreseeable future, the production of tactile graphics and
braille will fall outside the scope of the commercial market.
The Commission recognizes that high production costs
combined with the limited demand for these materials will
require on-going government support. The goal of this support
would be to lower the cost of developing and producing these
specialized materials and enable greater sharing of those
adaptations being produced.
The Commission believes that federal funding for the
development of open source tools and open content for tactile
graphics is also needed. These freely sharable open content
models should target materials that can be re-used in
postsecondary education as is or with minor edits. For example,
a detailed description and tactile version of a diagram of the
heart could be quickly adapted for many different images that
depict the biology of the heart. Longer term, on-going funding
for provision of sharable braille and tactile materials will be
needed.
The Commission recommends research into affordable methods
to make audio-visual (A/V) materials that cannot be gleaned
from a soundtrack alone available through some other means,
such as audio description, notes included with packaging,
summary information, accompanying commentary, or a simple
synopsis.
Audio description of A/V materials is technically challenging
and expensive. In a postsecondary setting, it is also of limited
usefulness as instructors may not wish to turn on audio
description and the equipment on which a video is shown may
not be capable of playing it.
The Commission believes that, when an understanding of a
video cannot be gleaned from the audio information or narration
contained in the video, some alternative means of understanding
that information be considered. Possible alternatives could
include options such as a brief summary of the action of the film
described in an insert to the packaging.

At higher educational levels, upper-division and graduate
students may require hundreds of books for literature reviews.
Such materials are typically not mainstream textbooks but a
wide array of original materials from particular timeframes,
scholarly works and journal articles. These materials may only
be used by the one student who requested them. Public
testimony to the Commission revealed that campuses may spend
tens of thousands of dollars on such document conversions.
Developing alternate formats is a time- and resource-intensive
process. The Commission suggests that mechanisms—such as
federated search and the use of appropriate metadata—be
encouraged so that these materials can be readily found to
facilitate their timely and copyright-compliant distribution to
other students with print disabilities across the country.
The Commission recommends that producers of
instructional materials for use by postsecondary institutions
(including the postsecondary institutions themselves) who
incorporate synchronized audio and visual formats (e.g.,
VHS tapes, DVDs/CDs, video, web video, etc.) into their
materials should provide closed captions or subtitles for the
Deaf/hard of hearing (SDH).
The issue of captioning is of particular concern for institutions
of higher education. Not only do many students with auditory
disabilities require captioning for access, it is also an excellent
example of universal design. Captioning is a mature technology
that was developed in the 1970s. The Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) has required captioning of most television
programs since 1996. Analog television sets with screens
greater than 13 inches have had captioning decoders built in
since 1993 and digital TVs have had decoders since 2002.
Numerous studies have shown that, in addition to making
materials available to students with disabilities, captioning
improves understanding and retention for mainstream students,
including English language learners (ELL), when discussions of
unfamiliar subjects and new vocabulary can be seen and heard
at the same time via synchronized text and audio.178,179,180,181
There are many reasons for including captions on videos:
search capability, indexing and translation, as well as many
viewing scenarios such as learning English as a second language
(ESL) and use of captions in both quiet and loud environments..
From a market perspective, captioning is an important emerging
issue. Some campuses are developing policies of purchasing
videos for classroom use only if they are closed captioned, and

vendors, in recognition of this fact, are beginning to caption
their materials. Given these trends, the Commission
recommends that reasonable captioning requirements applying
to materials created after a date certain, be negotiated between
the producer(s) and/or rights holder(s) of A/V content and
postsecondary institutions.
Some states, including California, have existing requirements
which may be used as models in creating a unified standard of
broader application. Extending these kinds of models to foster
cooperation and reduce redundancy (i.e., preventing multiple
campuses performing the duplicative process of creating the
same captioned materials) is a key objective of the Commission.
Ideally, these converted materials might be included within the
scope of a federated search as envisioned in Recommendation 9
and the Sources of AIM section.

I think that the demonstration
projects have been doing
phenomenal work across the
country. In our particular area,
we have been working hard on
issues of how to train campus
personnel. We have been working
with faculty, administrators and
service people, virtually everyone
on campus, to increase the
accessibility on our campus. We
have departmental accessibility
resource coordinators. It’s our
way to ensure that universal
design is attended to on all levels
of the university.
Postsecondary Alternate-Format
Production Specialist
(2011, July 12)

The HEOA includes a charge to the Commission to develop
recommendations to support the model demonstration programs
authorized under Section 773 of the Higher Education Act.182
In carrying out this charge, the Commission recommends the
three model demonstration projects described in this chapter.
To ensure quality and successful implementation of the
demonstration projects, the Commission recommends that the
Department of Education address the following points in the
development of the applications for new awards created as a
part of these demonstration projects and in the process of
reviewing grants awarded through these demonstration projects:
•
•
•

Include specific content experts in the pool of proposal
reviewers,
Include high standards for evaluation, replication and
scalability in the requirements in all priorities, and
Include two-year colleges and four-year institutions of
higher education, both public and private, as eligible
applicants under recommendations 16, 17 and 18.

The Commission recommends that the goal of the
demonstration projects be replicable models that can be
referenced, modified and implemented across other
postsecondary settings to advance the effective provision of
AIM and its delivery systems. This report will be an important
resource to be consulted during the development of the request
for proposals.

The Commission recommends that Congress appropriate
funds to the Department of Education for the development
of a discretionary priority to fund model demonstration
projects designed to identify, validate and disseminate
project results regarding best practices in the provision of
AIM as part of a project candidate’s campus-wide delivery
system for auxiliary aids and services. The purpose of the
demonstration projects will be to develop best practice
models for implementing AIM and its delivery systems
campus-wide.
I do not think that universities
should be able to utilize software
products, things that they
purchased from an outside agency
or developed internally, that are
inaccessible and provide a barrier,
as it were, to this important field,
like STEM.
Student with a visual
impairment
(2011, February 24)

The Commission understands that the effective provision of
AIM is a process that crosses major segments of postsecondary
institutions including administration, departments, bookstores,
student affairs and academic affairs. To that end, it is
recommended that the proposed priorities be differentiated from
more typical demonstration projects by requiring the
involvement and endorsement of institution-level leaders from
each segment area. At a minimum, these would include the
president and/or chancellor, provost, dean(s), university library
and student affairs and auxiliary affairs divisions.
The Commission urges the Department to compete these
projects at a variety of different types and sizes of
postsecondary institutions. Further, the Commission
recommends that the goal of these demonstration projects be
replicable models that can be referenced, modified and
implemented across other postsecondary settings to advance the
effective provision of AIM and its delivery systems.

The Commission recommends that Congress appropriate
funds for the Department of Education to support faculty
professional development demonstration projects to develop
and validate effective practices in the creation and provision
of universally designed instructional materials in STEM
courses and laboratory classes.
As reflected in testimony heard by the Commission and
referenced elsewhere in this report, STEM is an area where
instructional materials, practices and the systems that facilitate
their delivery and use are more challenging than other curricular
areas. Enrollment and graduation rates in STEM fields for
students with disabilities are remarkably low due to the complex
nature of relevant instructional materials and the associated
challenges in the accessible presentation of those materials.183

Moreover, this area is complicated by the variety of teaching
and learning styles and instructional contexts inherent in many
STEM disciplines.
The Commission notes that Congress has supported STEM
efforts recently, both at the Department of Education and at
other agencies.184 Notwithstanding this existing federal
financial support, more effort is needed in this area. The
Commission received expert testimony that affirmed the
extraordinarily critical role that faculty in the STEM field play
in creating, providing and maintaining instructional materials,
activities and methodologies central to effective STEM
education. While expert in specific content areas,
postsecondary STEM faculty are not routinely educated or
expert in the application of universal design or strategies for
meeting the needs of diverse learners in their specific academic
discipline. Given these two very important and interdependent
factors, the Commission believes that Congress should
appropriate funds to support the Department’s effort to develop
additional prototypes that will enhance the capacity of STEM
faculty to support students with disabilities.

The Commission recommends that the Department of
Education fund postsecondary demonstration projects that
model how to improve the quality, efficiency and timeliness
of the acquisition and provision of AIM in postsecondary
education and reduce duplication of effort in accordance
with Section 773 of the HEOA.
Congress specifically charged the Commission with making
recommendations regarding the best ways to implement
demonstration projects as described in Section 773 of the
HEOA. The goal of these demonstration projects is to advance
new directions for systems change and improvement around the
provision of AIM. The Commission has addressed this charge
in several of its preceding recommendations. Recommendation
7, for support of provision options, argues against the
establishment of a centralized repository and describes how
several networks have already been developed to share
accessibility improvements made to existing works.
Recommendations 8 and 9 related to metadata and federated
search are designed both to both promote the market model as
well as to improve the efficiency of specialized services for
provision of AIM. Demonstration projects could build upon and
extend these early prototype solutions.

1

Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-315, 122 Stat. 3078 (codified as amended at 20 U.S.C. §
1001 et seq.).
2
20 U.S.C. § 1140l(b)(1)(A).
3
Knapp, L. G., Kelly-Reid, J. E., & Ginder, S. A. (2011). Enrollment in postsecondary institutions, fall 2009;
graduation rates, 2003 & 2006 cohorts; and financial statistics, fiscal year 2009. (No. NCES 2011-230).
Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
4
Knapp, L.G., Kelly-Reid, J.E., Ginder, S.A., and Miller, E. (2007). Postsecondary Institutions in the United States:
Fall 2006 and Degrees and Other Awards Conferred: 2005-06 (NCES 2007-166). National Center for Education
Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC. Retrieved 10/20,
2010, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch.
5
Hussar, W. J. & Bailey, T. M. (2011). Projections of educational statistics to 2019. (No. NCES 2011-017).
Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of
Education.
6
United States Government Accountability Office. (2009). Higher education and disability: Education needs a
coordinated approach to improve its assistance to schools in supporting students. (No. GAO-10-33). Washington,
D.C.: US Government Accountability Office. Retrieved 10/20, 2010, from http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-1033.
7
Greenbaum, B., Graham, S., & William, S. (1995). Adults with learning disabilities: Educational and social
experiences during college. Exceptional Children, 61(5), 460-471.
8
Trammell, J. (2009). Postsecondary students and disability stigma: Development of the postsecondary student survey
of disability-related stigma (PSSDS). Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 22(2), 106-116.
9
Wilcox, P., Winn, S., & Fyvie-Gauld, M. (2005). ‘It was nothing to do with the university, it was just the people’: The
role of social support in the first-year experience of higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 30(6), 707-722.
doi:10.1080/03075070500340036
10
Hadley, W. M. (2007). The necessity of academic accommodations for first-year college students with learning
disabilities. Journal of College Admission, 195, 9-13.
11
Raue, K. & Lewis, L. (2011). Students With Disabilities at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions (NCES
2011-018). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office.
12
Kasnitz, D. (2011). The 2010 biennial AHEAD survey of disability services and resource professionals in higher
education. Huntersville, NC: The Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD).
13
Newman, L., Wagner, M., Knokey, A.-M., Marder, C., Nagle, K., Shaver, D., Wei, X., with Cameto, R., Contreras, E.,
Ferguson, K., Greene, S., & Schwarting, M. (2011). The Post-High School Outcomes of Young Adults With
Disabilities up to 8 Years After High School. A Report From the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2
(NLTS2) (NCSER 2011-3005). Menlo Park, CA: SRI International. Available at www.nlts2.org/reports/
14
Ibid.
15
Getzel, E. E. (2008). Addressing the persistence and retention of students with disabilities in higher education:
Incorporating key strategies and supports on campus. Exceptionality, 16(4), 207-219.
doi:10.1080/09362830802412216
16
Troiano, P. F., Liefeld, J. A., & Trachtenberg, J. V. (2010). Academic support and college success for postsecondary
students with learning disabilities. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 40(2), 35-44.
17
Braille Production Summary. (2011). Retrieved 11/06, 2011, from
http://www.atpc.net/index.php?Page=ProductionSummary&Action=SetToDefault.
18
California State Auditor. (2008). Affordability of College Textbooks: Textbook Prices have Risen Significantly in the
Last Four Years, but Some Strategies May Help to Control These Costs for Students. (Report 2007-116).
Sacramento, CA: California State Auditor. Retrieved 11/8, 2011, from http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2007116.pdf.
34 C.F.R. § 104.4(b)(1)(ii).
20
34 C.F.R. § 104.44(d); 28 C.F.R. §§ 35.104 and 35.160; 28 C.F.R. § 36.303.
21
Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 558 (1985).
22
Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 588. See also Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 219 (1954).
23
American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 882 F. Supp. 1, 27 (S.D.N.Y. 1992), aff’d, 60 F.3d 913 (2d Cir. 1994).
24
Siwek, S. E., Int’l Intellectual Prop. Alliance, Copyright Industries in the U.S. Economy: The 2003-2007 Report 13
(2009), http://www.iipa.com/pdf/IIPASiwekReport2003-07.pdf.
19

25

17 U.S.C. § 121.
Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, Public Law 110-315.
27
17 U.S.C. § 107.
28
17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C).
29
Pub. L. No. 105-304, Title I, § 103(a), 112 Stat. 2863 (1998) (codified at 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C)).
30
Id.
31
76 Fed. Reg. 60,398, 60, 398 (Sept. 29, 2011).
32
4 C.F.R. § 104.44(a).
33
28 C.F.R. § 35.104.
34
42 U.S.C. § 12102(2); see also 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(g); 29 U.S.C. § 794; 29 U.S.C. § 705(20).
35
Beck, Robert J. (2009), “What Are Learning Objects?”, Learning Objects, Center for International Education,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Retrieved 9/21, 2010, from
http://www4.uwm.edu/cie/learning_objects.cfm?gid=56.
“…a collection of content items, practice items and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning
objective.”
36
Verstegen, D. A. & Jordan, T. S. A Fifty-State Survey of School Finance Policies and Programs: An Overview.
Journal of Education Finance, 34:3 (Winter, 2009), 212-230.
37
28 C.F.R. § 35.104; see also 34 C.F.R. § 104.3(l).
38
Assistive Technology Act, 2004, Section 3(19).
39
29 U.S.C. § 794; 34 C.F.R. 104.3(h).
40
The Department of Health and Human Services also has enforcement responsibilities under Title II with respect to
health-related schools. 28 C.F.R. § 35.190(b)(3).
41
42 U.S.C. §§ 12131 et. seq.; 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(a); 29 U.S.C. § 794; 34 C.F.R. § 104.4(a).
42
42 U.S.C. §§ 12181, et seq.; 28 C.F.R. § 36.104. Title III does not apply to religious entities, 28 C.F.R. § 36.102(e).
43
28 C.F.R. § 35.104; see also 34 C.F.R. § 104.3(j).
44
28 C.F.R. § 35.104; see also 34 C.F.R. § 104.3(l).
45
34 C.F.R. §104.4(b)(1)(iv); 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(1)(iv).
46
28 C.F.R. § 35.160(b)(1); see also 34 C.F.R. § 104.44(a).
47
34 C.F.R. § 104.44(a); see also 28 C.F.R. 35.160(b)(1).
48
Id.
49
28 C.F.R. § 35.160(b)(2).
50
Id.
51
28 C.F.R. § 35.160(a)(1); see also 34 C.F.R. 104.4(b)(1)(iii).
52
Joint “Dear Colleague” Letter: Electronic Book Readers. (2010). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100629.html.
53
Frequently Asked Questions About the June 29, 2010, Dear Colleague Letter. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-e-text-faq-201105.html.
54
Dear Colleague Letter. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201105-ese.html.
55
34 C.F.R. § 104.7(b); 28 C.F.R. § 35.107(b).
26

57

Questions and Answers on OCR’s Complaint Process. (2008). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/qa-complaints.html.
58
Information about filing a complaint with the DOJ is available at DOJ’s ADA web site, at www.ada.gov.
59
OCR Electronic Complaint Form. (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html.
60
Contact OCR. (n.d.) Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/OCR/contactus.cfm.
61
Eldred, 537 U.S. at 219 (citing Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 560).
62
See United States Copyright Office, The Licensing Division of the Copyright Office (Circular 75) (last visited Oct. 26,
2011) [http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ75.pdf] (citing 17 U.S.C. § 111 (statutory license for secondary
transmissions by cable systems); 17 U.S.C. § 112 (statutory license for making ephemeral recordings); 17 U.S.C. §
114 (statutory license for public performance of sound recordings by means of a digital audio transmission); 17
U.S.C. § 115 (compulsory license for making and distributing of phonorecords); 17 U.S.C. § 118 (compulsory
license for use of certain works in connection with non-commercial broadcasting); 17 U.S.C. § 119 (statutory

license for secondary transmissions of distant television programming by satellite carriers); 17 U.S.C. § 122
(statutory license for secondary transmissions of local television programming by satellite carriers); 17 U.S.C. §
1003 (statutory obligation for distribution of digital audio recording devices and media)).
63
17 U.S.C. §§ 111, 112, 114, 115, 118, 119, 122, 1003.
64
See United States Copyright Office, The Licensing Division of the Copyright Office (Circular 75) (last visited Oct. 26,
2011) [http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ75.pdf] (citing 17 U.S.C. § 111 (statutory license for secondary
transmissions by cable systems); 17 U.S.C. § 112 (statutory license for making ephemeral recordings); 17 U.S.C. §
114 (statutory license for public performance of sound recordings by means of a digital audio transmission); 17
U.S.C. § 115 (compulsory license for making and distributing of phonorecords); 17 U.S.C. § 118 (compulsory
license for use of certain works in connection with noncommercial broadcasting); 17 U.S.C. § 119 (statutory
license for secondary transmissions of distant television programming by satellite carriers); 17 U.S.C. § 122
(statutory license for secondary transmissions of local television programming by satellite carriers); 17 U.S.C. §
1003 (statutory obligation for distribution of digital audio recording devices and media)).
65
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, Sept. 9, 1886, as revised at Paris on July 24, 1971
and amended in 1979, S. Treaty Doc. No. 99-27 (1986) [The 1979 amended version does not appear in U.N.T.S. or
I.L.M.] Article 9(2) Article 9(2).
66
17 U.S.C. §§ 502, 503.
67
17 U.S.C. §§ 412, 505.
68
17 U.S.C. §§ 412, 504.
69
See Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 159-60 (1908); Woelffer v. Happy States of America, Inc., 626 F. Supp. 499, 505
(N.D. Ill. 1985); Rainey v. Wayne State University, 26 F. Supp. 2d 973, 976 (E.D. Mich. 1998).
70
17 U.S.C. § 110.
71
17 U.S.C. § 108.
72
17 U.S.C. § 121.
73
17 U.S.C. § 107.
74
17 U.S.C. § 121.
75
17 U.S.C. § 121(a).
76
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(1).
77
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(4)(A).
78
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(4)(B).
79
2 U.S.C. 135a; 46 Stat. 1487
80
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(2).
81
Pub. L. No. 89-522, §1, 80 Stat. 330 (July 30, 1966) (current version at 2 U.S.C. § 135a).
82
39 Fed. Reg. 20203 (June 7, 1974).
83
36 C.F.R. § 701.6(b)(1).
84
36 C.F.R. § 701.6(b)(2)(i).
85
36 C.F.R. § 701.6(b)(2)(ii).
86
Pub. L. No. 104-197, Title III, § 316(a), 110 Stat. 2416 (Sept. 16, 1996).
87
Pub. L. No. 104-197, Title III, § 316(a), 110 Stat. 2416 (Sept. 16, 1996).
88
7 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C).
89
Id.
90
37 C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(6).
91
76 Fed. Reg. 60,398, 60, 398 (Sept. 29, 2011).
92
For instance, potential market harm is a factor that must be weighed in determining whether a use is a fair use under
Section 107. See 20 U.S.C. § 107(4).
93
Authors Guild, (2009), E-Book Rights Alert: Amazon’s Kindle 2 Adds “Text to Speech” Function, retrieved November
11, 2011 from http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/e-book-rights-alert-amazons-kindle-2.html.
94
Aptara Corporation (2010), Survey: E-Books—A second Look, Falls Church, VA.
95
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Pub. L. No. 93-112, Title V, § 508, as added Pub. L. No. 99-506, Title
VI, § 603(a), 100 Stat. 1830 (Oct. 21, 1986).
96
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, enacted as Title IV of the Workforce Investment Act of
1998, Pub. L. No. 105-220, Title IV, § 408(b), 112 Stat. 1203 (Aug. 7, 1998), codified at 29 U.S.C. § 794d.
97
29 U.S.C. § 794d(a)(2)(A).
98
See Status of 508 Refresh, Secton508.gov: Opening Doors to IT (An Official web site of the U.S. Government) (Oct.

24, 2011) [http://buyaccessible.net/blog/?p=191].
See ARK. CODE ANN. §§ 6-68-101–6-68-108; CAL. EDUC. CODE §§ 67302, 67302.5; KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 164.477;
MD. CODE ANN., EDUC. § 11-903; MICH. COMP. LAWS § 390.1543; MO. ANN. STAT. § 170.132; NEV. REV. STAT.
ANN. § 396.546; N.M. STAT. ANN. § 22-15-29; N.Y. EDUC. LAW § 715; OR. REV. STAT. §§ 337.511-337.524; TEX.
EDUC. CODE ANN. § 51.970; UTAH CODE ANN. § 53A-25a-105; WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 28B.10.916.
100
See Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-446, §§ 612(a)(23), 674(e),
118 Stat. 2647, 2688, 2794 (Dec. 3, 2004).
101
20 U.S.C. §§ 1412(a)(23)(A), 1413(a)(1), (6); 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.172(a), 300.201, 300.210.
102
20 U.S.C. § 1474(e)(3)(B).
103
20 U.S.C. § 1474(e)(3)(D) (referencing 17 U.S.C. 121(d)(3), current version at 17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(4)).
104
20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(23)(B), 1413(a)(6)(A).
105
17 U.S.C. § 121(c).
106
In 2006 the Access Board directed its staff to revise and update the accessibility standards for E&IT covered under
Section 508 and the accessibility guidelines for telecommunications equipment and customer premises equipment
covered under Section 255 and to harmonize the updated standards with international accessibility standards.
107
Technology Roundtable Presentation, textbook and software producers (2011, May 3), Testimony given at
Postsecondary AIM Commission meeting.
108
Hilderley, S. (2011) Accessible Publishing—Best Practices Guidelines for Publishers, EDItEUR, London, UK.
Retrieved 10/10, 2011, from http://www.editeur.org/files/Collaborations/Accessibility/WIPO.html.
109
Stanford University Medical Center. (2011, September 30). “Brain Imaging Study Shows Physiological Basis Of
Dyslexia.” Medical News Today. Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/235222.php.
110
Hoeft, F., Hernandez, A, McMillon, G., Taylor-Hill, H. Martindale, J. L., Meyler, A, Keller, T. A., Siok, W. T.,
Deutsch, G. K., Just, M. A, Whitfield-Gabrieli, S, & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2006). Neural basis of dyslexia: A
comparison between dyslexic and non-dyslexic children equated for reading ability. The Journal of Neuroscience,
26, 10700-10708. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/marcel_just_cmu/33.
111
Shaywitz, S.E. & Shaywitz, B. A. (2005) Dyslexia (specific reading disability). Biological Psychiatry, 57, 13011309. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.01.043.
112
Best Practices Resources. (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.ahead.org/resources/best-practicesresources.
113
Transition of Students with Disabilities to Postsecondary Education: A Guide for High School Educators. (2011).
Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/transitionguide.html.
114
Smythe, I., Everatt, J., & Salter, R. (Eds.) (2004) International book of dyslexia: a guide to practice and resources.
Chilchester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
115
Transition of Students with Disabilities to Postsecondary Education: A Guide for High School Educators. (2011).
Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/transitionguide.html.
116
AHEAD (2008). Disability Documentation Guidelines to Determine Eligibility for Accommodations at the
Postsecondary Level. Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from http://www.ahead.org/aff/ctahead/docguidelines.htm.
117
Hildebrand, J. B. (2006) The Higher Education textbook market. Washington, DC: Association of American
Publishers.
118
Ibid.
119
Joint “Dear Colleague” Letter: Electronic Book Readers. (2010). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100629.html.
120
Joint “Dear Colleague” Letter: Electronic Book Readers. (2010). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100629.html.
121
Frequently Asked Questions About the June 29, 2010, Dear Colleague Letter. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-e-text-faq-201105.html.
122
Technology Roundtable Presentation, textbook and software producers (2011, May 3), Testimony given at
Postsecondary AIM Commission meeting
123
DIAGRAM Center. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from http://diagramcenter.org/index.php.
124
Technology Roundtable Presentation, textbook and software producers (2011, May 3), Testimony given at
Postsecondary AIM Commission meeting.
125
Edutools. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from www.edutools.info.
126
Edutools. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from www.edutools.info.
99

127

Assistive Technology Act, 2004, Section 3(19).
Technology Roundtable Presentation, textbook and software producers (2011, May 3), Testimony given at
Postsecondary AIM Commission meeting.
129
Burgstahler, S. (2011, July 11), Testimony given at Postsecondary AIM Commission meeting.
130
Frequently Asked Questions About the June 29, 2010, Dear Colleague Letter. (2011). Retrieved 11/9, 2011, from
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-e-text-faq-201105.html.
131
In June 2009,the OCR and DOJ received several complaints relating to pilot programs using Amazon.com, Inc.’s
“Kindle” electronic book reader at postsecondary institutions. These complaints are referenced in the OCR and
DOJ’s June 2010 Dear Colleague Letter, http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague20100629.html.
132
Hildebrand, J.B. (2006) The higher education textbook market. Washington, DC: Association of American
Publishers.
133
Ibid.
134
Technology Roundtable Presentation, textbook and software producers (2011, May 3), Testimony given at
Postsecondary AIM Commission meeting.
135
Portable Document Format (PDF) The Global Standard for Trusted Electronic Documents and Forms. (2011).
Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.adobe.com/pdf/.
136
PDF Standards: PDF/UA. (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://pdf.editme.com/pdfua.
137
Higher Education Roundtable (20111, May 3), industry analysts, testimony given at Postsecondary AIM Commission
meeting.
138
PDF/UA: Universal Accessibility. (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from
http://www.aiim.org/Resources/Standards/Committees/PDFUA.
139
MathML (2011) Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://pdf.editme.com/pdfua-mathml.
140
History: The DAISY Project. (2011). Retrieved 7/22, 2011 from http://www.daisy.org/history.
141
DAISY: About Us. (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.daisy.org/about_us.
142
Creating NIMAS Files (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from
http://aim.cast.org/learn/practice/production/creatingnimas.
143
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. (2008). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/.
144
Higher Education Roundtable (20111, May 3), industry analysts, testimony given at Postsecondary AIM Commission
meeting.
145
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, et seq. See further discussion of IDEA at the
Accessible Instructional Materials in K–12 Schools section.
146
Aase, S. & Larsen, N. (2004) From screening to accommodation: Providing services to adults with learning
disabilities, a manual for service providers. Charlotte, NC: AHEAD.
147
United States Government Accountability Office. (2009). Higher education and disability: Education needs a
coordinated approach to improve its assistance to schools in supporting students. (No. GAO-10-33). Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Accountability Office. Retrieved 10/20, 2010, from http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO10-33.
148
Janiga, S. J. & Costenbader, V. (2002). The transition from high school to postsecondary education for students with
learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35(5), 463-470. doi:10.1177/00222194020350050601.
149
Lynch, R. T. & Gussel, L. (1996). Disclosure and self-advocacy regarding disability-related needs: Strategies to
maximize integration in postsecondary education. Journal of Counseling & Development, 74(4), 352-357.
150
Burgstahler, S. & Moore, E. (2009). Making student services welcoming and accessible through accommodations
and universal design. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 21(3), 155-174.
151
Wagner, M., Newman, L., Cameto, R., Garza, N., & Levine, P. (2005). After high school: A first look at the postschool experiences of youth with disabilities. A report from the national longitudinal transition study-2 (NLTS2).
Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.
152
Getzel, E. E. (2008) “Addressing the Persistence and Retention of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education:
Incorporating Key Strategies and Supports on Campus’, Exceptionality, 16: 4, 207 — 219.
153
IDEA Regulations, Section 602, Part B, Number ii:
(ii) SUMMARY OF PERFORMANCE – For a child whose eligibility under this part terminates under circumstances
described in clause (i), a local education agency shall provide the child with a summary of the child’s academic
achievement and functional performance, which shall include recommendations on how to assist the child in
meeting the child’s postsecondary goals.
128

154

Sopko, K. M. (2008, March). inForum: Summary of Performance. Alexandria, VA: Project. Forum at NASDSE.
Retrieved 5/23, 2011, from http://www.projectforum.org/docs/SummaryofPerformance.pdf.
155
Transition Wheel, Transition Education Network (2009, December). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from
http://www.project10.info/files/TW.SummaryofPerformance12.09L.doc.
156
28 C.F.R. § 35.160(b)(2).
157
34 C.F.R. 104.44(a)-(d); 104.4(b)(1)(iii)(iv).
158
Office of Civil Rights (1998) Auxiliary aids and services for postsecondary students with disabilities: Higher
education’s obligations under Section 504 and Title II of the ADA. Retrieved 10/25, 2010, from
www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/auxaids.html.
159
CAAR NIU e-text Survey (2007), Division of Student Affairs & Enrollment Management. DeKalib, IL: Center for
Access-Ability Resources, Northern Illinois University.
[ii]
HEOA, Section 133.
160
Kasnitz, D. (2011) Preliminary Report & Chartbook: The 2010 Biennial AHEAD Survey of Disability Services and
Resource Professionals in Higher Education. Charlotte, NC: AHEAD.
161
Marshak, L., Van Wieren, T., Ferrell, D. R., Swiss, L., & Dugan, C. (2010). Exploring barriers to college student
use of disability services and accommodations. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 22(3), 151165.
162
Burgstahler, S. & Moore, E. (2009). Making student services welcoming and accessible through accommodations
and universal design. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 21(3), 155-174.
163
Burgstahler, S & Moore, E. (2009). Making student services welcoming and accessible through accommodations and
universal design. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 21(3), 155-174.
164
AHEAD (2008). Disability Documentation Guidelines to Determine Eligibility for Accommodations at the
Postsecondary Level. Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.ahead.org/aff/ctahead/docguidelines.htm.
165
Barga, N. K. (1996). Students with learning disabilities in education. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 29(4), 413421.
166
Beilke, J. R. & Yssel, N. (1999). The chilly climate for students with disabilities in higher education. College
Student Journal, 33(3), 364-371.
167
Denhart, H. (2008). Deconstructing barrier: Perceptions of students labeled with learning disabilities in higher
education. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41(6), 483-497. doi:10.1177/0022219408321151.
168
Greenbaum, B., Graham, S., & Scales, W. (1995). Adults with learning disabilities: Educational and social
experiences during college. Exceptional Children, 61(5), 460-471.
169
Bourke, A. B., Strehorn, K. C., & Silver, P. (2000). Faculty members’ provision of instructional accommodations to
students with LD. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33(1), 26-32. doi:10.1177/002221940003300106 .
170
Beilke, J. R. & Yssel, N. (1999). The chilly climate for students with disabilities in higher education. College
Student Journal, 33(3), 364-371.
171
AHEAD (2008). Disability Documentation Guidelines to Determine Eligibility for Accommodations at the
Postsecondary Level. Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.ahead.org/aff/ctahead/docguidelines.htm.
172
Murray, C., Wren, C. T., & Keys, C. (2008). University faculty perceptions of students with learning disabilities:
Correlates and group differences. Learning Disability Quarterly, 31(3), 95-113.
173
Bruder, M. B. & Mogro-Wilson, C. (2010). Student and faculty awareness and attitudes about students with
disabilities. Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 6(2), 3-13.
174
Frymier, A. B. & Wanzer, M. B. (2003). Examining differences in perceptions of students’ communication with
professors: A comparison of students with and without disabilities. Communication Quarterly, 51(2), 174-191.
doi:10.1080/01463370309370149.
175
Zhang, D., Landmark, L., Reber, A., Hsu, H. Y., Kwok, O., & Benz, M. (2010). University faculty knowledge,
beliefs and practices in providing reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities. Remedial and Special
Education, 31(4), 276-286. doi:10.1177/0741932509338348.
176
Murray, C., Lombardi, A., & Wren, C. T. (2010). The effects of disability-focused training on the attitudes and
perceptions of university staff. Remedial and Special Education, 32(4), 290-300. doi: 10.1177/0741932510362188.
177
FIRMR, 41 CFR Chapter 201.
178
Bean, R.M. & Wilson, R.M. (1989). Using closed-captioned television to teach reading to adults. Reading Research
and Instruction, 28(4), 27-37. doi: 10.1080/19388078909557984.
179
Price, K. (1983). Closed-captioned TV: An untapped resource. MATSOL Newsletter, 12(2).

180

Smith, J .J. (1990). Closed-captioned television and adult students of English as a second language. Arlington, VA:
Arlington Refugee Education and Employment Program.
181
Garza, T.J. (1991). Evaluating the use of captioned video materials in advanced foreign language learning. Foreign
Language Annals, 24(3), 239-258.
182
Higher Education Opportunity Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1140l(b)(1)(C)(i)(II).
183
SciTrain University (2011). Retrieved 11/10, 2011, from http://www.catea.gatech.edu/scitrainU/login.php.
184
For example, the Office of Postsecondary Education at the Department has funded the SciTrain University (SciTrain
U) grant. This grant supports both research and dissemination to enhance the capacities of postsecondary teachers
to provide effective learning in science and mathematics for students with disabilities. SciTrain U provides
extensive training to teachers, teaching assistants, mentors and tutors; and conducts research to investigate the
efficacy of its training efforts. As noted in Recommendation 13, the NSF recently awarded Georgia Tech a fiveyear grant in 2010. The NSF project provides accessible STEM resources for high school and college teachers.
The project focuses on using online social networking (including virtual worlds), making accessible teaching
materials, and connecting mentors to students with disabilities.

Appendix A:
Appendix B:
Appendix C:
Appendix D:
Appendix E:
Appendix F:
Appendix G:
Appendix H:
Appendix I:

Resignation Letter—Maria Pallante
Biographies of Commission Members
The Higher Education Act as Amended
The Legal Background
AIM Barriers
Joint “Dear Colleague” Letter
Joint “Dear Colleague” Letter FAQ
The Commission’s Process
Glossary

Appendix A: Resignation Letter—Maria
Pallante
A letter regarding resignation from the Commission, dated
September 22, 2011, is appended.

AIM Commission Report 94

Russlynn H. Ali
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
United States Department of Education
Russlynn Ali was appointed assistant secretary for civil rights at
the U.S. Department of Education by President Barack Obama
on March 18, 2009, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on
May 1, 2009. As assistant secretary, Ali is U.S. Secretary of
Education Duncan’s primary adviser on civil rights and is
responsible for enforcing U.S. civil rights laws as they pertain to
education—ensuring the nation’s schools, colleges, and
universities receiving federal funding do not engage in
discriminatory conduct related to race, sex, disability, or age.
Prior to joining the department, Ali served as vice president of
the Education Trust in Washington, D.C., and as the founding
executive director of the Education Trust—West in Oakland,
California, since 2001. She was a member of the review board
of the Broad Prize in Urban Education, was appointed by
Governor Schwarzenegger to the Governor’s Advisory
Committee on Education Excellence, the Curriculum and
Instruction Committee of the Los Angeles Unified School
District Board of Education, and received the Aspen Institute’s
New Schools Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education
Fellowship.

Previously, Ali was a teacher, served as the liaison for the
president of the Children’s Defense Fund, as assistant director of
policy and research at the Broad Foundation, and as chief of staff
to the president of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s
Board of Education. She has also taught at the University of
Southern California Law Center and the University of California
at Davis.
In the legal field, Ali was a contract attorney at Bird, Marella,
Boxer, and Wolpert, deputy co-director and counsel at the
Advancement Project at English, Munger, & Rice, and an
attorney at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter, & Hampton, all in Los
Angeles. Ali is a member of the California State Bar.
Ali received her J.D. from Northwestern University School of
Law, where she was awarded the Lowden-Wigmore Prize for
Trial Advocacy and was a Julius Miner Moot Court Finalist.
She received her bachelor’s degree in law and society from the
American University. She also attended Spelman College.

Lizanne DeStefano, Ph.D.
Fox Family Professor of Education
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
Lizanne DeStefano received her Ph.D. from the University of
Pittsburgh in 1986. Dr. DeStefano is a former special education
teacher. She holds a doctorate in educational psychology, and
trained and practiced as a clinical and school psychologist.
Currently, she is the director of the Illinois STEM Education
Initiative, the Fox Family Professor of Education, Professor of
Educational Psychology. Dr. DeStefano recently served as
Executive Associate Dean for Research and Administration, and
Director of the Bureau of Educational Research at University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. DeStefano’s research
interests include the evaluation and sustainability of innovative
programs, multi-site initiatives, and programs serving special
populations such as students with disabilities or those at risk for
academic failure. Her work has been funded by numerous
agencies and foundations, including the U.S. Department of
Education, the National Science Foundation, the National
Academy of Education, the Joyce Foundation, the Lilly
Foundation,
Chicago Community Trust, and the Illinois State Board of
Education. She has conducted many large-scale evaluations of
programs serving children and youth, including evaluations of
the implementation of IDEA, Illinois Learning Standards, and
early literacy professional development initiatives such as the
Reading Excellence Act in Illinois and the Reading First
Evaluation.

Gaeir Dietrich (Commission Chair)
Director of the High Tech Center Training Unit
California Community Colleges
Gaeir Dietrich is the director of the High Tech Center Training
Unit (HTCTU) of the California community colleges, located at
De Anza College in Cupertino, California. Gaeir is a member
of the AHEAD Board and the AHEAD Instructional Materials
Access Group (IMAG). She is a trainer for the two-day
AHEAD E-text Institute.
Gaeir serves on the advisory board for Bookshare, the Alternate
Text Production Center (ATPC), and the Silicon Valley
Independent Living Center (SVILC). She also leads the
Veterans Resource Center (VRC) project for the California
Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. In 2010–2011, she
served as the chair for the national Advisory Commission on
Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education.

Chester A. Finn
Council Member
National Council on Disability
Mr. Finn is a Special Assistant with the New York State Office
for People With Developmental Disabilities (NYSOPWDD),
providing services, supports, and advocacy to individuals with
development disabilities and their families; in October 2009 he
was appointed to the NYSOPWDD’s Leadership Team. He is
also the former President of the national board of SelfAdvocates Becoming Empowered, Board Advisor to the Self
Advocacy Association of New York State (SANYS), and a
member of the Justice for All Action Networking Steering
Committee. Mr. Finn is also a former member of the Board of
Directors for the ARC of the United States, the world's largest
community-based organization of and for people with
intellectual and developmental disabilities. Mr. Finn is blind
and a person with a developmental disability and is committed
to fighting for the civil rights of all people with disabilities.

Andrew Friedman
President and CEO
Learning Ally
Andrew Friedman was appointed President & CEO of Learning
Ally, formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, on January
23, 2011 after serving as Acting CEO since May 11, 2010.
Andrew joined Learning Ally in January 2009 as its Chief

Financial Officer. In November 2009, after leading Learning
Ally’s finance integration and demonstrating his passion for
operational excellence, Andrew was promoted to Chief
Operating Officer.
Prior to joining Learning Ally, Andrew was founder and partner
of iFOS Publishing/ParentingTeensNetwork, where he raised
capital to launch the company and run all operations, also
building distribution partnerships with large not-for-profit
associations. He was also financial partner and chief financial
officer for Rosetta LLC and SimStar Inc., a marketing services
agency and professional services company, from 2000 through
2007, where he defined and implemented ongoing corporate
strategy and managed the organization’s P&L.
In his earlier experience, Andrew took on roles of escalating
responsibility with Petersen Publishing Company, where he
served as general manager; Primedia Directories Inc., where he
served as CFO and director of financial services; and ADP,
where he served as finance director. Andrew received his B.S.
degree in business administration from Tulane University.

Jim Fruchterman
CEO of Benetech
MacArthur Fellow, Technology and Social Entrepreneur
Jim Fruchterman is social entrepreneur and CEO of Benetech, a
nonprofit technology company based in Palo Alto, California. A
technology entrepreneur and engineer, Fruchterman has been a
rocket scientist, founded two of the foremost optical character
recognition companies, and created numerous technology social
enterprises. Fruchterman co-founded Calera Recognition
Systems and RAF Technology, Inc., both of which were based
on optical character recognition technology. In 1989,
Fruchterman founded Benetech as a nonprofit social enterprise,
to produce reading machines based on the Calera technology,
for people who are blind.
Benetech expanded its focus in 2000 and began creating new
technology for people with disabilities, as well as the human
rights and environmental movements. Benetech’s programs
include Martus, software for tracking human rights violations;
and Miradi, project management tools for conservationists.
Bookshare, Benetech’s largest program, is the largest online
library for people with print disabilities, serving more than
150,000 people in the United States with more than 125,000
books available for accessible downloading. The U.S.

Department of Education has funded Bookshare to provide its
services for free to all American students with qualifying print
disabilities.
Fruchterman has received numerous awards, including the
MacArthur Fellowship and the Skoll Award for Social
Entrepreneurship. In 2003, Fruchterman was named an
Outstanding Social Entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation.
Fruchterman has received the American Library Association’s
Francis Joseph Campbell award for his outstanding contribution
to the advancement of library services for the blind and
physically handicapped. The American Council of the Blind
awarded Fruchterman the Robert F. Bray Award in recognition
of his efforts to make literary works accessible to people who
are blind or visually impaired. Fruchterman believes that
technology can be the ultimate leveler, allowing disadvantaged
people achieve more equality in society.

Peter Givler
Executive Director
Association of American University Presses
Peter Givler is the Executive Director of the Association of
American Publishers, a position he has held since 1997. Before
that he was Director of the Ohio State University Press, and has
held a variety of jobs in textbook and scholarly publishing. He
is also President of the International Federation of Scholarly
Publishers and is a member of the Executive Committee of the
International Publishers Association, whose Copyright
Committee he chairs. He is on the Board of Directors of the
Book Industry Study Group, and has served on a number of
other governing, advisory, and editorial Boards. He was a
member of the Section 108 Study Group for the Library of
Congress. He has been a speaker at many scholarly and
professional meetings, both domestic and international, and his
articles about scholarly publishing have appeared in, among
others, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, The
Journal of Scholarly Publishing, and Publishing Research
Quarterly.

Stephan J. Hamlin-Smith
Executive Director
Association on Higher Education And Disability
(AHEAD)
Following five years in event management and public relations,
Stephan began his career in the field of higher education and
disability in 1994 when he joined the staff of AHEAD as their
director of communications and marketing. He became their

director of operations in 1996 and executive director in 2001.
Through his work with AHEAD, in addition to serving as the
chief staff officer, he has taken on increasingly influential roles
in local, state, and national arenas advocating for the total and
equitable inclusion of people with disabilities in education and
the workplace. In 2010 Stephan also became the executive
officer for the Society for Disability Studies.
Currently Stephan serves on the executive councils for the
Institute on Community Inclusion in Boston, MA; the National
Council on Disability and Exchange; Career Opportunities for
Students with Disabilities; and the advisory boards of numerous
national and international research and development initiatives
related to transition to and involvement in higher education by
people with disabilities.
His passion for social justice and human rights combined with
his educational background in management and rhetoric serve
as a fitting foundation for his leadership in this field. Stephan’s
educational history at Muskingum College for his
undergraduate and Ohio Dominican University for his postbaccalaureate study provides a unique experiential perspective
from which to orient his work with AHEAD.
In his personal life, Stephan is involved in a volunteer capacity
with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and Amnesty
International. He and his partner reside in Charlotte, North
Carolina where they are both actively involved in the region’s
fine arts community.

Kurt Herzer
Medical and Doctor of Philosophy Student
The Johns Hopkins University
Kurt R. Herzer is an M.D.-Ph.D. student at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine. In 2010 he completed an MSc
in social policy at the University of Oxford on a Marshall
Scholarship awarded by the British Government. In 2009, he
received a BA in public health from Johns Hopkins University.
Mr. Herzer’s research has included vitamin A
supplementation’s role in the reduction of childhood mortality
and blindness as well as national assessments of healthcare
quality standards. He has authored/co-authored several journal
papers and a book chapter, and spoken at international
conferences. Mr. Herzer has previously worked in the
Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC
as a Harry S. Truman Scholar and at the World Health

Organization in Geneva. As a legally blind individual, Mr.
Herzer has been involved with several organizations, including
the National Federation of the Blind, the Helen Keller
Foundation, and Learning Ally.

Bruce Hildebrand
Executive Director for Higher Education
Association of American Publishers
Bruce Hildebrand is Executive Director for Higher Education
for the Association of American Publishers (AAP). He has
been with AAP since mid-2004. Bruce is a former print and
radio journalist who was active in campaign politics from 1972
until 1985 and served in the administrations of three presidents.
For 10 years, he was president and CEO of an international
consulting and development firm and served for six years as a
Senior Vice President at Hill and Knowlton International Public
Relations.
As Executive Director for Higher Education at the AAP, Bruce
manages all member, public, and government relations activities
at the federal level and in the 50 states. His activities include
development of the AccessText Network for print disabled
students and the Cost Effective Solutions for Student Success
Program to improve student success while lowering student
spending and institutional instructional costs. Bruce’s ongoing
functions include design and implementation of multimedia
communications programs and providing in-person and written
testimony for legislative and academic hearings, commissions,
and task forces. His direct media and public outreach has
included more than 1,500 newspaper, radio, and television
interviews, and speeches while with AAP.

Ashlee Kephart
Student at Hamline University
Founder of Kids For A Better World, USA
and a Liberian Chapter and Child Development Center in
Africa
Ms. Kephart is the founder of a nonprofit organization
providing opportunities for local and global youth to get
involved in addressing the needs of individuals, children, and
families within local and global communities. She encourages
the empowerment of youth through community initiatives and
spreads the volunteer spirit internationally by connecting youth
in America with youth in other parts of the world.
She established a Liberian chapter of Kids For A Better World
and a Child Development Center in a remote area of Africa,

serving over 400 vulnerable street children who call her Mother.
She’s touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in
need. She inspired, encouraged, and motivated others to see
what is possible, to share their skills and talents, to take what
they have and make their dreams a reality. She believes
everyone has something important to contribute to society, that
there is no contribution too small or insignificant. She’s a
mentor/role model for children and adults. She encouraged girl
scouts, classmates, teachers, community leaders, churches, etc.,
to personally get involved.
Whether the focus is music, bandages, books, shoes, etc., all of
her programs promote a sense of community between those who
give to the program and those who receive from it. She’s raised
over $100,000.00, recycled 10,000+ cans, distributed over
15,000 Caring Bags of personal-care products to the homeless,
65,000 shoes to underprivileged families, 10,000 books to
children in hospitals and orphanages, 4,000 stuffed animals and
backpacks to victims of disasters, and reached hundreds of
thousands through her nonprofit organization
(www.kidsforabetterworld.com), a true champion of positive
living.

George Kerscher, Ph.D.
Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium
President of International Digital Publishing Forum
George Kerscher began his IT innovations in 1987 and coined
the term “print disabled.” George is dedicated to developing
technologies that make information not only accessible, but also
fully functional in the hands of persons who are blind or who
have a print disability. He believes properly designed
information systems can make all information accessible to all
people and is working to push evolving technologies in this
direction.
As Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium and President
of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), Kerscher
is a recognized international leader in document access. In
addition, Kerscher is the Senior Officer of Accessible
Technology at Learning Ally in the USA. He chairs the
DAISY/NISO Standards committee and the W3C’s Steering
Council for the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). George is
one of the authors of the ePUB3 Standard and also serves on the
National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard
(NIMAS) Board.

Eduardo M. Ochoa, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary, Office of Postsecondary Education
United States Department of Education
Dr. Eduardo Martín Ochoa is Assistant Secretary for
Postsecondary Education. As such, he serves as the principal
advisor to the Secretary on Departmental matters related to
postsecondary education. The Office of Postsecondary
Education (OPE) directs, coordinates, and recommends policies
for 79 programs totaling over $2.6 billion that provide financial
assistance to eligible students enrolled in postsecondary
educational institutions, improve postsecondary educational
facilities and programs through the provision of financial
support to eligible institutions, recruit and prepare
disadvantaged students for the successful completion of
postsecondary educational programs, and promote the domestic
study of foreign languages and international affairs and support
international educational research and exchange activities.
Notable among them are the TRIO and GEAR UP programs,
institutional development programs for minority institutions,
teacher development programs, international education
programs, and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary
Education (FIPSE). OPE also certifies all regional and national
accreditation agencies eligible to qualify institutions for Federal
financial aid and Pell grants.
Prior to his appointment as Assistant Secretary, Dr. Ochoa was
a faculty member and an administrator in higher education for
twenty-nine years, most recently having been Provost and Vice
President for Academic Affairs at Sonoma State University in
California. He received his B.A. in Physics from Reed College,
his M.S. in Nuclear Science and Engineering from Columbia
University, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the New School
for Social Research.

Alexa E. Posny, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary for Special Education and
Rehabilitative Services
United States Department of Education
Alexa E. Posny is the Assistant Secretary for Special Education
and Rehabilitative Services at the U.S. Department of
Education. In her role, Alexa oversees the Office of Special
Education Programs (OSEP), the Rehabilitation Services
Administration (RSA), and the National Institute on Disability
and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). She previously served
as the Commissioner of Education for the state of Kansas. As
Commissioner, she was responsible for helping over 475,000
students meet or exceed high academic standards, licensing over

45,000 teachers, and overseeing a state education budget of over
$4.5 billion dollars. Prior to this, Posny was appointed as the
Director of OSEP, a position in which she assisted state and
local efforts to effectively educate all children and youth with
disabilities.
Other positions that Posny has held include the Kansas Deputy
Commissioner of Education, Kansas State Director of Special
Education, Director of Special Education for the Shawnee
Mission School District, Director of the Curriculum and
Instruction Specialty Option as part of the Title 1 Technical
Assistance Center (TAC) network of TACs across the United
States, and a Senior Research Associate at Research and
Training Associates in Overland Park, KS. Posny earned her
Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Psychology from the
University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, a Master’s degree in
Behavioral Disabilities from the University of Wisconsin at
Madison, and a Ph.D. in Educational Administration with a
minor in Special Education also from the University of
Wisconsin at Madison.

Mark A. Riccobono
Executive Director,
Jernigan Institute, National Federation of the Blind
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mark Riccobono was
diagnosed with glaucoma and aniridia at age five. Nonetheless,
Mark attended public schools, graduating with honors while
active in debate and track.
Mark earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He became a member of
its Iron Cross honor society and was the founding president of
the Wisconsin Association of Blind Students. During his senior
year, Mark was elected president of the National Federation of
the Blind (NFB) of Wisconsin.
After graduation, Mark joined the Sears executive trainee
program and spent his free time advocating for the blind. Then
he was appointed to the Wisconsin State Superintendent’s Blind
and Visual Impairment Education Council, and was made the
first director of the Wisconsin Center for the Blind and Visually
Impaired, an agency responsible for statewide services to blind
children. Afterward, he took a position in Baltimore with the
NFB and earned a Masters of Science in Educational Studies
from the Johns Hopkins School of Professional Studies in
Business and Education.

Mark is currently executive director of the NFB Jernigan
Institute—the only research and training institute developed and
directed by the blind. Its NFB Blind Driver Challenge initiative
is building an interface that would permit the blind to drive
independently. In January 2011, at the Daytona International
Speedway, Mark navigated a car equipped with nonvisual
technology for 1.5 miles, demonstrating the first time a blind
individual has driven a street vehicle in public without the
assistance of a sighted person. In early 2011, the University of
Wisconsin Alumni recognized Mark’s accomplishments by
naming him as one of their Forward Under 40 Award recipients.
Mark is married to Melissa, who is president of the NFB of
Maryland. They have two children, Austin and Oriana.

Linda Tessler, Ph.D.
Psychologist and Learning Disabilities Specialist
Dr. Linda Tessler is a licensed psychologist and author who has
earned national recognition for her pioneering work in raising
awareness and treatment of learning disabilities. Severely
dyslexic herself and undiagnosed until age 32, Dr. Tessler
specializes in helping patients understand and use life-long
accommodation techniques to reach their fullest potential. In
her active private practice, she also helps patients overcome a
variety of emotional difficulties including self-esteem issues,
traumatic experience, and relationship concerns.
In 2008, Dr. Tessler celebrated the release of her new book, One
Word at a Time: A Road Map for Navigating Through Dyslexia
and Other Learning Disabilities. The book not only chronicles
Tessler’s lifelong struggle with dyslexia but also provides
compassionate advice and practical strategies which are culled
from her professional experience and personal experience as the
parent of a son who struggles with dyslexia.
Dr. Tessler is a frequent speaker at academic institutions and
local and national conferences on dyslexia, including the
International Dyslexia Association’s conferences. In addition,
she has made numerous radio and television appearances and
has been published in various newspapers.
Tessler is a past board member of the Philadelphia Branch of
the International Dyslexia Association and of Learning Ally.
She also served on Learning Ally’s National Advisory Council.
Dr. Tessler is a fellow of the Pennsylvania Psychological
Association, a long-standing member of the American
Psychological Association, and an invited member of the Phi
Kappa Phi Honor Society.

Tuck Tinsley III, Ed. D.
President
American Printing House for the Blind
Tuck Tinsley is the President of the American Printing House
for the Blind (APH), the oldest company in the United States
dedicated to creating products for blind people and the largest
organization of its kind in the world. He received his
undergraduate and Master's degrees from the Florida State
University, majoring in education of the visually impaired and
special education, and subsequently earned a doctorate in
educational administration from the University of Florida.
In 1968, Dr. Tinsley began his career as a mathematics teacher
in the Department for the Blind of the Florida School for the
Deaf and the Blind (FSDB) in St. Augustine, Florida. He
served as principal of the Department for the Blind from 1981
until 1989. At that
time he accepted the position of president of APH. During his
twenty-one year tenure at FSDB, he also served as assistant
principal and interim president.
Dr. Tinsley has been active in several professional
organizations. He has served as a board member of the
Association for the Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind
and Visually Impaired (AER), the Kentucky School for the
Blind Charitable Foundation (KSBCF), and APH; presently
continuing that role with KSBCF and APH. He is also currently
a North American delegate to the World Blind Union and the
International Council of Education of the Visually Impaired,
and has written seventeen professional monographs and articles
regarding the blind and visually impaired.
In 2004, Dr. Tinsley received the William H. English
Leadership Award, presented by the Council of Schools for the
Blind. He also received the 1997 Distinguished Alumni Award
in Business and Industry, presented by the Florida State
University College of Education; the 2001 Exceptional Service
Award, presented by the Kentucky Association for Education
and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired; the 2008
Robert Bray Distinguished Service Award, presented by the
American Council of the Blind; the 2009 Excellence in
Leadership Award, presented by VisionServe Alliance; and in
2010, Dr. Tinsley was the recipient of the prestigious Migel
Medal, presented by the American Foundation for the Blind.

James H. Wendorf (Commission Vice-Chair)
Executive Director
National Center for Learning Disabilities
James H. Wendorf is executive director of the National Center
for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), which seeks to ensure
success for all individuals with learning disabilities in school, at
work, and in life. He directs NCLD’s efforts to connect parents
with resources, guidance, and support so they can advocate
effectively for their children; deliver evidence-based tools,
resources, and professional development to educators to
improve student outcomes; and develop policies and engage
advocates to strengthen educational rights and opportunities.
NCLD’s multi-year initiative promoting the implementation of
Response to Intervention strategies in schools nationwide—the
RTI Action Network—is the largest single program in this
effort.
For the past two decades, Mr. Wendorf has worked in the notfor-profit sector to build national and international partnerships
supporting learning and literacy programs. Prior to joining
NCLD in 1999, Mr. Wendorf served as vice president and chief
operating officer of Reading Is Fundamental, Inc., the nation’s
largest nonprofit children’s literacy organization, based in
Washington, D.C.
Mr. Wendorf currently serves on the advisory board of the
National Center on Educational Outcomes (University of
Minnesota), the National Association for the Education of
African American Children with Learning Disabilities, the
Education Policy and Leadership Center (Southern Methodist
University), and previously with a variety of civic and education
organizations. He currently serves as vice chair of the
Congressionally authorized Advisory Commission on
Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education
for Students with Disabilities.
Mr. Wendorf is frequently called upon by the news media to
comment on policies and programs affecting individuals who
struggle to read and learn. He earned a B.A. degree from Yale
College, and graduate degrees in English Language and
Literature from the University of Cambridge and Cornell
University.

a) ESTABLISHMENT.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary shall establish a
commission to be known as the Advisory Commission on
Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education
for Students with Disabilities (in this section referred to as the
‘Commission’).
(2) MEMBERSHIP.—
(A) TOTAL NUMBER OF MEMBERS.—The Commission
shall include not more than 19 members, who shall be appointed
by the Secretary in accordance with in subparagraphs (B) and
(C).
(B) MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION.—The Commission
members shall include one representative from each of the
following categories:
(i) The Office of Postsecondary Education of the
Department.
(ii) The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services of the Department.

(iii) The Office for Civil Rights of the Department.
(iv) The Library of Congress National Digital
Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program
Copyright Working Group.
(v) The Association on Higher Education and
Disability.
(vi) The Association of American Publishers.
(vii) The Association of American University Presses.
(viii) The National Council on Disability.
(ix) Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.
(x) National organizations representing individuals with
visual impairments.
(xi) National organizations representing individuals
with learning disabilities.
(C) ADDITIONAL MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION.—
The Commission members shall include two representatives
from each of the following categories:
(i) Staff from institutions of higher education with
demonstrated experience teaching or supporting
students with print disabilities, including representatives
from both two-year and four-year institutions of higher
education of different sizes.
(ii) Producers of accessible materials, publishing
software and supporting technologies in specialized
formats, such as Braille, audio or synthesized speech
and digital media.
(iii) Individuals with visual impairments, including not
less than one currently enrolled postsecondary student.
(iv) Individuals with dyslexia or other learning
disabilities related to reading, including not less than
one currently enrolled postsecondary student.
(D) TIMING.—The Secretary shall appoint the members of the
Commission not later than 60 days after the Commission is
established under paragraph (1).
(3) CHAIRPERSON AND VICE CHAIRPERSON.—The
Commission shall select a chairperson and vice chairperson
from among the members of the Commission.
(4) MEETINGS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—The Commission shall meet at the call of
the Chairperson.
(B) FIRST MEETING.—Not later than 60 days after the
appointment of the members of the Commission under
paragraph (2)(D), the Commission shall hold the Commission’s
first meeting.

(5) QUORUM.—A majority of the members of the Commission
shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number of members may
hold hearings.
(b) DUTIES OF THE COMMISSION.—
(1) STUDY.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—The Commission shall conduct a
comprehensive study to—
(i) assess the barriers and systemic issues that may
affect, and technic al solutions available that may
improve, the timely delivery and quality of accessible
instructional materials for postsecondary students with
print disabilities, as well as the effective use of such
materials by faculty and staff; and (ii) make
recommendations related to the development of a
comprehensive approach to
improve the opportunities for postsecondary students
with print disabilities to access instructional materials in
specialized formats in a timeframe comparable to the
availability of instructional materials for postsecondary
nondisabled students.
(B) EXISTING INFORMATION.—To the extent practicable,
in carrying out the study under this paragraph, the Commission
shall identify and use existing research, recommendations, and
information.
(C) RECOMMENDATIONS.—
(i) IN GENERAL.—The Commission shall develop
recommendations—
(I) to inform Federal regulations and legislation;
(II) to support the model demonstration programs
authorized under section 773;
(III) to identify best practices in systems for
collecting, maintaining, processing, and
disseminating materials in specialized formats to
students with print disabilities at costs comparable
to instructional materials for postsecondary
nondisabled students;
(IV) to improve the effective use of such materials
by faculty and staff, while complying with
applicable copyright law; and
(V) to modify the definitions of instructional
materials, authorized entities, and eligible students,
as such terms are used in applicable Federal law, for
the purpose of improving services to students with
disabilities.

(ii) CONSIDERATIONS.—In developing the
recommendations under subparagraph (C), the
Commission shall consider—
(I) how students with print disabilities may obtain
instructional materials in accessible formats—
(aa) within a timeframe comparable to the availability
of instructional materials for nondisabled students; and
(bb) to the maximum extent practicable, at costs
comparable to the costs of such materials for
nondisabled students;
(II) the feasibility and technical parameters of
establishing standardized electronic file formats,
such as the National Instructional Materials
Accessibility Standard as defined in section
674(e)(3) of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act, to be provided by publishers of
instructional materials to producers of materials in
specialized formats, institutions of higher
education, and eligible students;
(III) the feasibility of establishing a national
clearinghouse, repository, or file-sharing network
for electronic files in specialized formats and files
used in producing instructional materials in
specialized formats, and a list of possible entities
qualified to administer such clearinghouse,
repository, or network;
(IV) the feasibility of establishing market based
solutions involving collaborations among publishers
of instructional materials, producers of materials in
specialized formats, and institutions of higher
education;
(V) solutions utilizing universal design; and
(VI) solutions for low-incidence, high-cost requests
for instructional materials in specialized formats.
(2) REPORT.—Not later than one year after the Commission’s
first meeting, the Commission shall submit a report to the
Secretary and the authorizing committees detailing the findings
and recommendations of the study conducted under paragraph
(1).

(3) DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION.—In carrying out
the study under paragraph (1), the Commission shall
disseminate information concerning the issues that are the
subject of the study through—
(A) the National Technical Assistance Center established under
subpart 4; and
(B) other means, as determined by the Commission.
(c) TERMINATION OF THE
COMMISSION.—
The Commission shall terminate on the date that is 90 days after
the date on which the Commission submits the report under
subsection (b)(2) to the Secretary and the authorizing
committees.

Appendix D: Legal Background—
Copyright
The authority for U.S. copyright law is found in Article I,
Section 8 of the U.S Constitution, which empowers Congress to
enact laws “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,
by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
To the framers of the Constitution, “Science” meant knowledge
or learning.1 Copyright serves as “an engine of free
expression.”2
The duration of copyright protection is meaningful but not
perpetual. For example, for works created on or after January 1,
1978, copyright protection endures for the period of the life of
the author plus 70 years.3 An author is some who creates an
original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of
expression, now known or later developed.4 Such works
include many categories of works and genres, such as literary
works, musical compositions, pictorial works, motion pictures,
and architectural works. As a legal matter, the term author is
therefore a broad one. Works also can be created jointly,
meaning there may be co-authors with equal rights; and such
rights may be transferred to others, including by will. In
addition, under certain circumstances where the doctrine of
work-made-for-hire is implicated, an author may be a
corporation or one’s employer.

Copyright is much more than a right of remuneration. As a
general rule, whether and how a work is made available to the
public, under what conditions, whether and how an author will
be compensated, and whether and how others may reproduce,
distribute or otherwise use a work are decisions that legally
belong to an author. By establishing a marketable right to the
use of one’s own expression, copyright supplies an economic
incentive to create and disseminate ideas.”5 As the Supreme
Court has explained,
The economic philosophy behind the clause
empowering Congress to grant patents and
copyrights
is
the
conviction
that
encouragement of individual effort by
personal gain is the best way to advance the
public welfare through the talents of authors
and inventors in “Science and the useful
Arts.”6
Ensuring that authors and publishers can profit from their
creative efforts is central to the U.S. system of copyright:
The attempt to depreciate the interest of the
copyright owner by reason of profits it has
realized through its copyrights is directly
contrary to the theory on which copyright
law is premised.
The copyright law
celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that
the incentive to profit from exploitation of
copyrights will redound to the public benefit
resulting in the proliferation of knowledge.7
In comparison to the copyright laws of some other nations, a
hallmark of U.S. copyright law is that it balances the intellectual
property rights of authors and publishers with the needs of a
democratic society. It promotes freedom, open communication,
and diversity of thought and is an alternative to patronage or
government support. While the “immediate effect of our
copyright law is to secure a fair return for an author’s creative
labor,” its ultimate goal is “to stimulate artistic creativity for the
general public good.”8
The U.S. copyright system has multiple independent dimensions
and its benefits include economic advantages. A key element is
the contribution of publishers and other rights holders to the
U.S. economy and particularly to U.S. trade. The protections
provided by Copyright law support the creative industries—
including the millions of people engaged in the production,
marketing, and distribution of creative works9—and at the same
time expands the country’s knowledge base.

Collectively, copyright protections and exceptions support both
a vital economy of trade in copyrighted goods and services as
well as a “knowledge economy” of education and expertise.
These two economies are interdependent: the trade in creative
content and the fertile environment for creativity and knowledge
provided in part by libraries and archives work together to
produce significant economic and other benefits for the nation
as a whole.
The “exclusive right” provided to copyright owners is actually
a “bundle” of rights that only the author, or those authorized by
the author, may engage in during the term of copyright, subject
to the applicability of fair use or another express exception or
limitation in the Copyright Act. These are—
•

The reproduction right (the right to make copies or
phonorecords). As defined in Section 101, a “copy” of a
work may be any material object in which a work is
fixed or embodied and from which it can be perceived,
reproduced, or communicated, either directly or with the
aid of a machine.10 In a digital context, “copies” include
reproductions on a hard drive of a computer (such as
those that reside on network servers) or on a physical,
removable medium (such as copies on DVDs, CDs, etc.)
as well as reproductions stored in the RAM of a
computer when a user views a work.11 A work may also
be reproduced across formats; for example, a book may
be reproduced by reading it aloud into a tape recorder.

•

The right to prepare derivative works (e.g., adaptations).
A “derivative work” is a work that is based on a
copyrighted work but which contains new material that
is “original” in the copyright sense. A movie version of
a novel, for instance, is a derivative work. The
dramatization of a work, including a dramatic reading of
a book complete with music and other sound effects,
would implicate the right to make derivative works.
Merely scanning a work to digitize it, on the other hand,
involves no original authorship, and so the resulting
digital version is considered a reproduction and not a
derivative work.

•

The right to distribute copies or phonorcords of the work
to the public. The right of distribution encompasses
distribution of copies to the public “by sale or other
transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending.”12
Making copies of a work available for public
downloading over an electronic network has been held to
qualify as public distribution and therefore implicates an

•

exclusive right of the rights holder.13 The distribution
right is limited by the “first sale doctrine,” which allows
the owner of a particular copy of a copyrighted work to
give or lend that copy to someone else—such as a library
lending a book to a patron or a private citizen giving or
selling a used book to another person. The first-sale
doctrine does not, however, authorize the owner of a
copy to make another copy. Since “transferring” a work
electronically entails making a new copy, the first-sale
doctrine does not apply.14

•

The right to perform the work publicly. The Copyright
Act states that to perform a work means to recite, render,
play, dance, or act it with or without the aid of a
machine. The meaning of the term “publicly” is
discussed below. A dramatic reading of a play on
Broadway or through a webcast would implicate the
public performance right. The right does not extend to
sound recordings, which have their own narrowly
tailored right of public performance, also discussed
below.

•

The right to display the work publicly. To display a
work means to show a copy of it, either directly or with
the aid of a device or process. Posting a journal article
or a photograph on a public web site would implicate the
public display right, for example.

•

Performance right in sound recordings. Copyright
owners of sound recordings do not have the same right
of public performance that attaches to most other works.
Instead, they have a more limited right to perform the
work publicly “by means of a digital audio
transmission.”15

To perform or display a work “publicly” under Section 101 of
the Copyright Act means to perform or to display it anywhere
that is open to the public or anywhere that a “substantial number
of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social
acquaintances is gathered.” As a matter of law, it is a public
performance “to transmit or otherwise communicate a
performance or display of the work to a place (specified above)
or to the public.

The exclusive rights set forth above are not absolute. Copyright
is limited in time and scope, is subject to a number of
exceptions and limitations, and contains “built-in First
Amendment accommodations.”16 Only creative expression is

protectable; ideas, facts, systems, processes, and procedures are
not.17 Works created by U.S. government employees are public
domain works; they are not subject to copyright.18
The first listed and best known of the exceptions listed in the
Copyright Act is fair use, codified in Section 107 of the
Copyright Act. Fair use allows for the use of copyrighted
expression without permission from the rights holder in certain
circumstances prescribed by statute and developed by the
courts. In all, Sections 107–122 of the Act provide specific
exceptions to and limitations on the exclusive rights of authors.
These various exceptions and limitations cover many different
kinds of uses, such as exceptions for distance education,19 for
libraries and archives,20 and, notable for this Report, exceptions
for the blind and disabled21 (discussed further below). In
addition, some types of works—musical compositions and
sound recordings, for example—are subject to “compulsory” or
“statutory” licenses for certain uses. Such a license provides a
specific legal authorization (in other words, the copyright owner
cannot deny permission) to use a copyrighted work in certain
ways or for certain purposes as long as the user pays the
required fee and otherwise meets the conditions in the law.
Not all uses that are in the public interest automatically warrant
an exception. In some cases, the constitutional goal of
copyright is better served if the cost of certain uses is borne by
society generally, rather than by the authors and other rights
holders of works that would be affected.22

Congress and the courts have long recognized that allowing
some reasonable uses of copyrighted works without permission
or compensation is fully consistent with and sometimes required
by the ultimate goal of copyright: to promote the progress of
knowledge. Creative works inspire new creations, which in turn
inspire others; but this “engine of free expression” does not
function unless the works so created are made available to the
public.
There are certain public interests that, on balance, outweigh
copyright rights in certain circumstances. Where Congress has
found that public policy concerns warrant exceptions or
limitations, it has tried to circumscribe the exception or
limitations so that it complements the fundamental aims of
copyright law and preserves the incentives to create or to invest
in the creation of new works. For instance, potential market
harm is a factor that must be weighed in determining whether a
use is a fair use under Section 107.

In this vein, the drafters of the 1976 Copyright Act determined
that certain services provided by libraries and archives should
be permitted within the copyright law with more certainty than
is provided by fair use. They also determined that some acts
that might not qualify as fair use were still desirable and should
be allowed. Examples of exceptions in the Copyright Act that
have been carefully circumscribed to avoid unreasonable harm
to creators and other rights holders include the following:
•

•

•

Making back-up copies of computer programs,
according to Section 117, requires that all such copies be
made for archival purposes and that they be transferred
when the original copy is transferred, so that copies of
the program do not proliferate.
Performance and display of copyrighted works for
online distance education, according to Sub-Section
110(2), is limited to accredited nonprofit educational
institutions and requires, among other things, that works
so used be accessible only to enrolled students and
protected by technological measures from redistribution
or retention for longer than the class term.
As discussed more fully below, privileges to reproduce
and distribute copies of protected works for the visually
impaired and others with disabilities, as described in
Section 121, are extended only if the copies are in
specialized formats “exclusively for use by blind or
other persons with disabilities.”

U.S. copyright law provides no definitive legal standard for the
acceptable scope of copyright exceptions and limitations. The
fair use doctrine and surrounding case law provide some
guidance on how exceptions can be crafted to permit beneficial
and reasonable uses without causing undue harm to rights
holders. The legislative history of the 1976 Act and its
amendments illustrates that Congress, in creating exceptions, is
influenced by notions of what is fair and reasonable, and is
mindful that an exception should not undermine the affected
right nor interfere with the incentive to create and disseminate
original works of authorship.23 Typically, copyright law’s
limitations and exceptions have been confined to those
circumstances where there is evidence of a market failure, or
where a culturally desirable purpose requires such an exception.

In considering exceptions and limitations to copyright, Congress
navigates within the confines of relevant treaty obligations. The
principal international copyright treaty is the Berne Convention
for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Article 9(2)
of the Berne Convention limits the nature and scope of
exceptions to copyright rights that members (including the
United States) may create. Article 9(2) provides—
It shall be a matter for legislation in the
countries of the Union to permit the
reproduction of such works in certain special
cases, provided that such reproduction does
not conflict with a normal exploitation of the
work and does not unreasonably prejudice
the legitimate interests of the author.
Exceptions and limitations must thus satisfy a three-step test:
(1) they must relate to “certain special cases,” (2) they may not
conflict with a normal exploitation of the work, and (3) they
must not unreasonably prejudice the author’s legitimate
interests. Berne Article 9(2) refers only to reproduction rights,
but the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms
Treaty, to which the United States has also adhered, provide that
all rights granted under those treaties will be governed by the
Berne Article 9(2) standard.24
While the Berne Convention itself has no enforcement
mechanism, the requirements of Berne were incorporated into
the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on TradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)25 and
are now subject to WTO dispute resolution procedures.
Accordingly, the United States is subject to sanctions arising
from WTO enforcement proceedings if its copyright exceptions
exceed what is permitted under the three-step test.26
Licensing is one of the legal mechanisms by which the owner of
a copyright grants permission to another party to exploit one or
more exclusive rights described above. Licenses can take many
forms and vary widely based on the type of authorship at issue
and the nature of the exclusive rights being licensed. Licenses
may be granted on an exclusive or nonexclusive basis. Broadly,
licenses fall into three general categories: individual, collective,
and statutory.

An individual license is the most straightforward example of a
license arrangement, where two or more parties voluntarily
negotiate an agreement for certain exploitations of exclusive
rights to all or part of a particular copyrighted work or
collection of works. Individual licenses are typically narrowly
tailored to allow only certain, specific intended uses, and
include a variety of terms, including the following:
Geographic territory (e.g., worldwide, the United
States)
Exclusivity
Term
Compensation (e.g., flat-fee, running royalty,
minimum guarantees)
Sub-license rights
Right to prepare certain derivative works
A typical book contract between an author and a publisher
provides an example of a typical individual copyright license.
Such an agreement implicates the reproduction and distribution
rights, and will permit a publisher to print and distribute books,
within a particular geographic territory, for a certain period of
time. More recent publishing contracts may also grant a
publisher the right to prepare and distribute electronic versions
of a book, or to sub-license others to do so (e.g., publisher has
the right to license Amazon.com® to sell books for its Kindle®
device). It is also not uncommon for a book to contain the
product of authorship of multiple copyright owners.
One of the drawbacks of direct licensing is the high cost of
identifying and negotiating with individual copyright owners.
To enhance the efficiency of the licensing process, in certain
limited circumstances it has become possible to license broad
catalogs of works for certain limited uses. This is the primary
structure of collective licensing. Perhaps the most common
examples of collective licensing are music performance rights
organizations (PROs)—such as the American Society of
Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast
Music, Inc. (BMI), and the Society of European Stage Authors
and Composers (SESAC)— as well as the Copyright Clearance
Center (CCC), which licenses groups of print materials. These
organizations collectively license the copyrighted content of
their members.
Through the PROs, music users such as radio stations,
restaurants, and retail establishments can obtain blanket licenses
to perform broad, diverse repertories of musical works in their
establishments. Though the licenses granted by each of the
three main PROs are broad in terms of number of works

available, they are narrow in the sense that they cover only the
public performance right. The PRO model allows music users
to safely use a diverse array of musical works without the high
costs associated with identifying and negotiating with thousands
of music publishers and composers.
The CCC, which began as a licensing agent for reproduction
(photocopying) rights, performs a similar function with respect
to books, journal articles, and other print materials. CCC offers
licensing services for publishers and authors and serves as a
source for those seeking licenses to reproduce such materials; it
conducts both blanket and pay-per-use (or “transactional”)
licensing. Most countries have a similar organization, and most
of these are members of the International Federation of
Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFFRO). It is worth noting
that courts have previously looked to the presence of licensing
mechanisms in finding against fair use.27
Another form of collective licensing, called extended collective
licensing (ECL), has recently gained traction as a possible
mechanism by which to enhance the efficiency of certain
licensing transactions. Originally conceived in the Nordic
countries in the 1960s, ECL is a copyright management scheme
in which an organization represents owners of particular types
of works (e.g., literary or musical works) and enters into license
agreements with third parties for the use of the owners’
protected works. ECL operates on an opt-out basis rather than
on a voluntary opt-in basis. In other words, rights holders can
opt out, but if they don’t, their works may be available for
certain uses at certain set rates. By operation of law, these
agreements extend to all copyright owners of the specified types
of works, even those owners who are not members of the
organization. (Non-members, however, usually have the right
to opt out of the licensing scheme and receive individual
remuneration.)
As mentioned in the context of copyright law’s limitations and
exceptions, statutory (or compulsory) licenses are sometimes
used in circumstances where the marketplace failed at the time
the license was adopted to provide an efficient mechanism to
bring licensors and licensees together. Statutory licenses
guarantee users’ access to certain types of works, under certain
circumstances, in exchange for a statutorily or administratively
set fee. Traditionally, statutory licenses are only appropriate
where there exists a true market failure—that is, where market
participants are unable to enter into licensing arrangements
efficiently.

Statutory licenses are structured carefully and deliberately and
are properly crafted to address a particular market failure
without interfering with the rest of the marketplace. Moreover,
statutory licenses are a limitation on copyright owners’
exclusive rights, and therefore must comply with United States
international treaty obligations; specifically, statutory licenses
must be sufficiently limited in scope to fit within the provisions
for copyright exceptions found in international copyright
treaties.
There are currently eight statutory licenses in U.S. copyright
law, covering the re-transmission of television programming via
cable and satellite, certain reproductions and transmissions of
recorded music, reproduction of musical works, certain
reproductions and performances by public broadcasters, and the
sale of digital audio recording devices.
Remedies for civil copyright infringement can be significant.
Such remedies include temporary and permanent injunctions
and impoundment and destruction of infringing materials.28 A
court may award attorneys’ fees and costs to the prevailing
party in an infringement suit, but only if the copyright at issue
in the suit was registered in a timely manner.29 Timely
registration also entitles a plaintiff to opt for statutory damages
rather than actual damages. Statutory damages usually granted
by a court range from $750 to $30,000 per work (and up to
$150,000 for willful infringement). The court may reduce this
amount to $200 for an innocent infringer, and may abate the
amount altogether against certain individuals, including
employees or agents of nonprofit libraries, archives, or
educational institutions who have reproduced copyrighted
materials in the scope of their employment, believing it to be a
fair use.30
Finally, the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
provides that “the Judicial power of the United States shall not
be construed to extend to any suit ... commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by any Citizen of another
State.” The Supreme Court has held that Congress may not act
pursuant to the Commerce Clause or the Intellectual Property
Clause to subject the states to suits for money damages.
Accordingly, state universities and other state entities are
immune from copyright damages.

Enacted as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), Section 1201 of Title 17 prohibits anyone from
circumventing a “technological measure that effectively
controls access to a work.” There is no ban on circumventing a
technological measure that protects a right of a copyright owner,
such as reproduction or distribution, without controlling access
to the work. Circumventing a copy control in and of itself, for
example, is not prohibited.31
Section 1201 also prohibits manufacturing, providing, or
trafficking in devices or services primarily designed to
circumvent either access controls or rights controls. There are a
number of statutory exemptions to these anti-circumvention
provisions, but none of them apply specifically to the creation
or distribution of accessible materials.
Beyond the statutory exemptions, Section 1201 provides for a
rule-making proceeding to be conducted every three years by
the Register of Copyrights on behalf of the Librarian of
Congress. The purpose of the proceeding is to determine
whether users of any particular class of copyrighted works are,
or are likely in the ensuing three years to be, adversely affected
by the prohibition against circumventing technological access
controls in their ability to make non-infringing uses of those
works. When adverse effects are present or are likely to arise
with respect to one or more particular classes of works, the
DMCA exempts those classes of works from the prohibition
against circumventing technological access controls for the next
three years. Any exemptions remain in effect until the next
rule-making proceeding, at which time a new application must
be filed demonstrating a continued or likely adverse impact if an
exemption is to be renewed.
The most recent rule-making process was completed in 2010.
Of particular relevance to this report is the current exemption
for electronic books, which permits circumvention of access
controls on such books “when all existing e-book editions ...
contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the
book’s read-aloud function or [the functioning] of screen
readers that render the text into a specialized format.”32
The authority to create additional exemptions does not extend to
Section 1201’s ban on manufacturing, providing, or trafficking
in circumvention devices and services.

Fair use is a well-known limitation on a copyright owner’s
exclusive rights. Originally created by the courts, fair use was
codified in the Copyright Act of 1976.33, 34 Fair use is very factintensive, and the outcome of a fair use analysis can vary
substantially depending on the facts and circumstances related
to a particular use of copyrighted material. A fair use analysis
requires the court to balance at least four factors set forth in the
statute:
1)
2)
3)
4)

purpose and character of the use,
nature of the copyrighted work,
amount and substantiality of the portion used, and
effect upon the market for the copyrighted work.

Because of its judicial origins, the case-by-case nature of fair
use will likely remain a staple of the fair use doctrine for the
foreseeable future. Although the four-factor analysis renders
the fair use doctrine inherently flexible, the virtues of its
flexibility come at the cost of uncertainty. The case-by-case
applicability of the doctrine leads to litigation risk, making it
difficult to craft institutional policies based on fair use. Thus,
fair use is typically used in attempts to “fill the gap” where a
particular use of copyrighted material is not covered by a clear
statutory limitation or exception.
Section 121 of the Copyright Act the Chafee Amendment)
provides that,
it is not an infringement of copyright for an
authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute
copies or phonorecords of a previously
published, nondramatic literary work if such
copies or phonorecords are reproduced or
distributed in specialized formats exclusively
for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities.35
Prior to the Chafee Amendment, organizations devoted to
supplying accessible materials to individuals with print
disabilities were required to seek permission from individual
copyright owners on a work-by-work basis.
The statute defines an “authorized entity” as a “nonprofit
organization or a governmental agency that has a primary
mission to provide specialized services relating to training,
education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of

blind or other persons with disabilities.”36 “Specialized
formats,” is defined to mean “braille, audio, or digital text
which is exclusively for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities,” and, in the case of “print instructional materials,
includes large print formats when such materials are distributed
exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.”
37, 38
Finally, “blind or other persons with disabilities,” is
defined through a related statute, as “the blind and other
physically handicapped residents of the United States” who are
“certified by [a] competent authority as unable to read normal
printed material as a result of physical limitations.” 39, 40
The Chafee Amendment was heavily negotiated at the time of
its preparation by the relevant stakeholders and is narrow on its
face. In enacting Chafee in 1996, Congress stated a defined
population of beneficiaries; implicated nondramatic literary
works only; addressed reproduction and distribution rights only;
and, in terms of technological developments, froze the provision
in time by limiting its application to specialized formats used
exclusively by the blind—or, put another way, formats which
have no application to the general population or marketplace.
Chafee was further amended in 2004 to accommodate the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act
(IDEA) and to facilitate K–12 education standards. The 2004
amendment authorizes publishers of print instructional materials
to create electronic files containing print instructional materials
according to certain technical standards, and to distribute those
files to a national repository, which then reproduces or
distributes the materials in specialized formats for use by
elementary or secondary school students.41

The publishing industry relies heavily on copyright law and
licensing transactions. Indeed, virtually every stage of the
publishing value chain is connected to some type of copyright
license relationship:
Author to publisher—reproduction, distribution,
derivative works rights, and the right to sub-license
those rights, as well as public performance and
public display rights.
Publisher to ancillary product producers (including
producers of audio books)—sub-licenses to prepare
derivative works, reproduction, distribution, public
performance, and public display rights (rights
packages vary with licensed uses).

Publisher to distributors—sub-licenses of
distribution, public performance, and public display
rights.
Often there are numerous copyright owners involved in any one
particular work which raises significant challenges for rights
clearance. A typical textbook, for example, may be comprised
of several separately licensed components, such as prefaces,
introductions, forwards, chapters, as well as images, graphics,
charts, and diagrams.
Contract language is often outpaced by technology which can
lead to confusion about who owns, or is licensed to exploit,
certain rights. In the publishing industry, many older book
contracts are silent on terms and conditions relating to digital
product offerings. Although the phenomenon is not new, a
recent instance of confusion over rights as a result of emerging
technology is that illustrated by text-to-speech technology,
where there are significant questions about whether such
technology is an exploitation of reproduction rights and whether
traditional publishing contracts cover such technology or
whether these rights remain with the author.
Despite the challenges with rights management, technological
evolution has spurred the development of new markets. The
Internet has become a viable distribution mechanism for digital
content and electronic reading devices, such as Amazon.com’s
Kindle® and Apple’s iPad®, and electronic books are now a
rapidly growing market. According to the Association of
American Publishers, electronic book sales reached $441.3
million in 2010, up approximately 164% over 2009 sales
figures.42
Moreover, there appears to be a trend towards standardization of
formats for digital content, allowing certain content to be used
across multiple devices, including, perhaps, adaptive
technologies. For example, the ePUB3® technical specification
for electronic book production, which has been promulgated but
not yet formally adopted as a standard, incorporates standards
for accessible books as set forth by the Digital Accessible
Information SYstem (DAISY) Consortium.
A final trend in digital publishing that raises implications for the
development of accessible materials is the widespread use of
digital rights management (DRM) technologies. Such
technologies are technologically based protection measures that
allow publishers to control access to their content. DRM
typically imposes restrictions on the number and type of devices
that can access protected content.

1

Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 242-243 (2003) (Breyer, J., dissenting) (citing EDWARD C. WALTERSCHEID,
THE NATURE OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CLAUSE: A STUDY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 125-126
(William S. Hein & Co. 2002)).
2
Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 558 (1985).
3
Chapter three of the U.S. Copyright Act governs the duration of copyright protection. See generally 17 U.S.C. §§
301-305. See also Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States by Peter Hirtle, Cornell
University, available at http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm.
4
17 U.S.C. § 102.
5
Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 588.
6
Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 219 (1954).
7
American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 882 F. Supp. 1, 27 (S.D.N.Y. 1992), aff’d, 60 F.3d 913 (2d Cir.
1994).
8
Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975). Put another way, “the monopoly created by
copyright thus rewards the individual author in order to benefit the public.” Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 546.
9
Stephen E. Siwek, Int’l Intellectual Prop. Alliance, Copyright Industries in the U.S. Economy: The 2003-2007
Report 13 (2009), http://www.iipa.com/pdf/IIPASiwekReport2003-07.pdf.
10
Technically, a copy of a sound recording is known as a “phonorecords,” but for purposes of this Report, all
reproductions of copyrighted works will be referred to as “copies.”
11
E.g., MAI Sys. Corp. v. Peak Computer, 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993), cert. dismissed, 510 U.S. 1033 (1994); see
also THE REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS, DMCA SECTION 104 REPORT 107-123 (2001), available at
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/sec-104/report-vol-1.pdf.
12
17 U.S.C. § 106(3).
13
See, e.g., A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1014 (9th Cir. 2001); Playboy Enter., Inc. v. Russ
Hardenbugh Inc., 982 F. Supp. 503, 513 (N.D. Ohio 1997).
14
17 U.S.C. § 109(a); See the Register of Copyrights, supra note 11, at 78-80 (discussing the inapplicability of the
first sale doctrine to digital transmissions that involve making a copy rather than merely transferring an
existing physical copy).
15
17 U.S.C. § 106(6).
16
Eldred, 537 U.S. at 219 (citing Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 560).
17
See 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).
18
See, e.g., 17 U.S.C. § 105 (no copyright protection for works of the U.S. government). See also Banks v.
Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888) (no copyright protection for laws).
19
17 U.S.C. § 110.
20
17 U.S.C. § 108.
21
17 U.S.C. § 121.
22
Thus, for example, there is no blanket exception that allows schools to copy textbooks rather than purchase them,
despite the beneficial role of schools in society.
23
The general principle is that courts should resort to legislative history only if the statute is not clear on its face.
See, e.g., Ardestani v. INS, 502 U.S. 129, 135-36 (1991) (“The strong presumption that the plain language of
the statute expresses congressional intent is rebutted only in rare and exceptional circumstances . . . when a
contrary legislative intent is clearly expressed.”) Reference to legislative history is, however, prevalent in
copyright cases. See, e.g., Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 743-49 (1989); Bonneville
Int’l Corp. v. Peters, 347 F.3d 485, 496-99 (3d Cir. 2003).
24
WIPO Copyright Treaty art. 10, Dec. 20, 196, S. Treaty Doc. No. 105-12, 36 I.L.M. 65, 83 (1997); WIPO
Performances and Phonograms Treaty art. 16, Dec. 20, 1996, S. Treaty Doc. No. 105-17, 36 I.L.M. 76, 85-86
(1997). These treaties technically do not preclude the U.S. from imposing broader exceptions with respect to
works of its own authors, but in this case such a distinction would likely be unworkable, as providers of
accessible instructional materials could not easily determine whether a work is a United States work or a Berne
Convention work.
25
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Apr. 15, 1994, Marrakech Agreement
Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex 1C, Legal Instruments – Results of the Uruguay Round vol.
31, 33 I.L.M. 81 (1994).
26
A WTO panel ruling that § 110(5) of the U.S. Copyright Act violates the three-step test is currently the
authoritative interpretation of component parts of that test. Panel Report, United States – Section 105(5) of the

U.S. Copyright Act, WT/DS160/R (June 15, 2000). See also 1 SAM RICKETSON & JANE C. GINSBURG,
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT AND NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS 759-778 (Oxford Univ. Press 2006). For a
condensed description of the ruling, see THE REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS, REPORT ON ORPHAN WORKS 61-65
(2006), available at http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-reportfull.pdf.
27
See, e.g., American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 60 F.3d 913, 930 (2d Cir. 1994) (“it is appropriate that
potential licensing revenues for photocopying be considered in a fair use analysis”).
28
17 U.S.C. §§ 502, 503.
29
17 U.S.C. §§ 412, 505.
30
17 U.S.C. §§ 412, 504.
31
If the circumventor goes on to make an infringing use of the protected work, he or she will be liable under
copyright law. With current technologies, however, there is not always a clear line between access controls
and rights controls. See, e.g., Memorandum from Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights, to James H.
Billington, Librarian of Congress, 44-45 (Oct. 27, 2003) (setting forth the Register’s recommendations related
to the rulemaking on exemptions
32
37 C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(6).
33
See Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F. Cas. 342 (1841).
34
17 U.S.C. § 107.
35
17 U.S.C. § 121(a).
36
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(1).
37
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(4)(A).
38
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(4)(B).
39
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(2); 2 U.S.C. § 135a.
40
17 U.S.C. § 121(d)(2); 2 U.S.C. § 135a.
41
This standard is known as the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard and the repository is the
National Instructional Materials Access Center. 17 U.S.C. § 121(c).
42
Association of American Publishers, AAP Publishers Report Strong Growth in Year-to-Year, Year-End Book
Sales, Feb. 16, 2011, available at http://publishers.org/press/24/.

Appendix E: AIM Barriers
•

Legal limits on individual’s use of content protected by
copyright; requires working with DSS office or with
authorized entities to obtain alternate formats

•

Copyright for some embedded content may permit
inclusion only in the original work and thereby limit
publisher’s ability to provide complete files or to grant
complete permissions

•

Copyright for some embedded content may permit
inclusion only in the original work and thereby limit
publisher’s ability to provide complete files or to grant
complete permissions

•

DSS must abide by copyright law, while also honoring
civil rights
Lack of knowledge (possible fear) of copyright law

•

•
•
•
•
•

Need to receive materials quickly
Unclear lines of communication (i.e., process, procedure,
timing, who-does-what)
Accessible materials not always available
Lack of clarity in how to order materials
Faculty don’t identify materials in time

•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Large number of requests in peak periods
Uninformed requests
Short-notice requests
Variety of copyrights within a single textbook
Number of versions and variations of a single title
Willingness of students to settle for non-current editions
Older works lack digital files

•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Limited number of requests
Uninformed requests
Short-notice requests
Variety of copyrights within a single textbook
Number of versions and variations of a single title
Willingness of students to settle for non-current editions
Older works lack digital files

•
•

Variety of requests
Requests occur on short notice from both faculty and
students
Institutional issues of adjunct faculty/timeliness
Discrepancy between “required” and “recommended”
materials

•
•

•
•
•

Cannot convert files individually
Reliant on DSS office or publisher
Students often cannot purchase a book in a timely
manner for alternative production

•
•

Need to modify basic production workflows
Increased production costs when fulfilling request
happens outside production flow
Varying difficulty in reproducing images and graphics
Lack of copyright for embedded materials
Cost and difficulty of producing accessible STEM
content

•
•
•

•
•
•
•
•
•

Need to modify basic production workflows
Increased production costs when fulfilling request
happens outside production flow
Lack of technical knowledge or skill in production
Difficulty in reproducing images and graphics
Lack of copyright for embedded materials
Cost and difficulty of producing accessible STEM
content

•
•
•
•
•

Lack of capacity (e.g., staff, technology, funding)
Increased production times
Increased cost of retro-fitting
Files are difficult to reproduce
High cost of technology required for production

•
•
•
•

Files not in preferred formats
Dependent on device/software that will play the file
Varying skill levels with specific assistive technologies
Students outside of vocational rehabilitation (sometimes
within) lack necessary technology
Equitable access to technology that is institutionally
owned

•

•
•

Creation of STEM materials
Cost of developing the ability to produce an additional,
special-purpose standardized file format

•
•

Creation of STEM materials
Cost of developing the ability to produce an additional,
special-purpose standardized file format
Lack of knowledge about possible formats
Lack of knowledge of how to create accessible content

•
•

•
•

•
•

•
•
•
•
•
•

Creation of STEM materials
Materials must be in a student’s preferred medium
(uncertain legal basis: “must give consideration ... but
are not bound by it”)
Knowing how to make materials accessible and the
meaning of “student-ready”
Publisher-supplied files are not typically student-ready
files

People who do not see the utility in accessibility
Lack of knowledge about possible formats
Lack of self-advocacy ability/knowledge
Lack of understanding of the functional impact of one’s
disability
Lack of knowledge of how to use assistive technology
Prefer what they like vs. what is “best” for them

•

Lack of agreement on a set of default formats for DSS
inhibits the development of efficient publisher
production system

•
•

People who do not see the utility in accessibility
Lack of knowledge of how to serve DSS/student needs
efficiently

•
•

People who do not see the utility in accessibility
Lack of knowledge about what is “accessible” and what
is not
Lack of knowledge regarding accessibility of CMs’s
Preferences for what DSS supports or is familiar with
rather than what a student requests or is “best” for them

•
•

•

Strong concern that content provided for altewrnate
formats could be redistributed without authorization,
resulting in economic and legal damage to publisher and
content creators

•

Strong concern that content provided for altewrnate
formats could be redistributed without authorization,
resulting in economic and legal damage to publisher and
content creators

•

A perception on the part of institutions that accessibility
of materials, systems, and operations is not an overall
institutional responsibility but rather one of a select
office or individual

Appendix F: Joint “Dear Colleague”
Letter
A letter from the U.S. Department of Justice, dated June 29,
2010, is appended.

U.S. Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Education
Civil Rights Division
Office for Civil Rights

June 29, 2010
Dear College or University President:
We write to express concern on the part of the Department of Justice and the Department of Education
that colleges and universities are using electronic book readers that are not accessible to students who are
blind or have low vision and to seek your help in ensuring that this emerging technology is used in
classroom settings in a manner that is permissible under federal law. A serious problem with some of
these devices is that they lack an accessible text-to-speech function. Requiring use of an emerging
technology in a classroom environment when the technology is inaccessible to an entire population of
individuals with disabilities—individuals with visual disabilities—is discrimination prohibited by the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
(Section 504) unless those individuals are provided accommodations or modifications that permit them to
receive all the educational benefits provided by the technology in an equally effective and equally
integrated manner.
The Departments of Justice and Education share responsibility for protecting the rights of college and
university students with disabilities. The Department of Justice is responsible for enforcement and
implementation of title III of the ADA, which covers private colleges and universities, and the
Departments of Justice and Education both have enforcement authority under title II of the ADA, which
covers public universities. In addition, the Department of Education enforces Section 504 with respect to
public and private colleges and universities that receive federal financial assistance from the Department
of Education. As discussed below, the general requirements of Section 504 and the ADA reach equipment
and technological devices when they are used by public entities or places of public accommodation as
part of their programs, services, activities, goods, advantages, privileges, or accommodations.
Under title III, individuals with disabilities, including students with visual impairments, may not be
discriminated against in the full and equal enjoyment of all of the goods and services of private colleges
and universities; they must receive an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from these goods and
services; and they must not be provided different or separate goods or services unless doing so is
necessary to ensure that access to the goods and services is equally as effective as that provided to others.1
Under title II, qualified individuals with disabilities may not be excluded from participation in or denied
the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of, nor subjected to discrimination by, public
universities and colleges.2
Both title II and Section 504 prohibit colleges and universities from affording individuals with disabilities
with an opportunity to participate in or benefit from college and university aids, benefits, and services that
is unequal to the opportunity afforded others.3 Similarly, individuals with disabilities must be provided

with aids, benefits, or services that provide an equal opportunity to achieve the same result or the same
level of achievement as others.4 A college or university may provide an individual with a disability, or a
class of individuals with disabilities, with a different or separate aid, benefit, or service only if doing so is
necessary to ensure that the aid, benefit, or service is as effective as that provided to others.5
The Department of Justice recently entered into settlement agreements with colleges and universities that
used the Kindle DX, an inaccessible, electronic book reader, in the classroom as part of a pilot study with
Amazon.com, Inc. In summary, the universities agreed not to purchase, require, or recommend use of the
Kindle DX, or any other dedicated electronic book reader, unless or until the device is fully accessible to
individuals who are blind or have low vision, or the universities provide reasonable accommodation or
modification so that a student can acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and
enjoy the same services as sighted students with substantially equivalent ease of use. The texts of these
agreements may be viewed on the Department of Justice's ADA Web site, www.ada.gov. (To find these
settlements on www.ada.gov, search for "Kindle.") Consistent with the relief obtained by the Department
of Justice in those matters, the
As officials of the agencies charged with enforcement and interpretation of the ADA and Section 504, we
ask that you take steps to ensure that your college or university refrains from requiring the use of any
electronic book reader, or other similar technology, in a teaching or classroom environment as long as the
device remains inaccessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision. It is unacceptable for
universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all
students.
Congress found when enacting the ADA that individuals with disabilities were uniquely disadvantaged in
American society in critical areas such as education.6 Providing individuals with disabilities full and equal
access to educational opportunities is as essential today as it was when the ADA was passed. In a
Proclamation for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, President Obama underscored the
need to "strengthen and expand the educational opportunities for individuals with disabilities," noting
that, "[i]f we are to build a world free from unnecessary barriers ... we must ensure that every American
receives an education that prepares him or her for future success." http://www.whitehouse.gov/thepressoffice/presidential-proclamation-national-disability-employment-awareness-month (September
30,2009) (emphasis added).
Technology is the hallmark of the future, and technological competency is essential to preparing all
students for future success. Emerging technologies are an educational resource that enhances learning for
everyone, and perhaps especially for students with disabilities. Technological innovations have opened a
virtual world of commerce, information, and education to many individuals with disabilities for whom
access to the physical world remains challenging. Ensuring equal access to emerging technology in
university and college classrooms is a means to the goal of full integration and equal educational
opportunity for this nation's students with disabilities. With technological advances, procuring electronic
book readers that re accessible should be neither costly nor difficult.
We would like to work with you to ensure that America's technological advances are used for the benefit
of all students.
The Department of Justice operates a toll-free, technical assistance line to answer questions with regard to
the requirements of federal laws protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities. For technical
assistance, please call [phone] (voice) or [phone] (TTY). Specialists are available Monday
through Friday from 9:30 AM until 5:30 PM (ET) except for Thursday, when the hours are 12:30 PM
until 5:30 PM. These specialists have been trained specifically to address questions regarding accessible

electronic book readers. Colleges, universities, and other stakeholders can also contact the Department of
Education's Office for Civil Rights for technical assistance by going to OCR's Web site at
http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/OCR/contactus.cfm.
We appreciate your consideration of this essential educational issue and look forward to working with
you to ensure that our nation's colleges and universities are fully accessible to individuals with
disabilities.
Sincerely,
[Signature]
Thomas E. Perez, Assistant
Attorney General
Civil Rights Division
U.S. Department of Justice

1

[Signature]
Russlynn Ali
Assistant Secretary
for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Education

28 C.F.R. § 36.201(a); 28 C.F.R. § 36.202(a); and 28 C.F.R. § 36.202(c) (2009).
28 C.F.R. § 35.130(a) (2009).
3
28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(1)(ii) and 34 C.F.R. § 104.4(b)(1)(ii) (2009).
4
Cf. 28 C.F.R.§ 35.130(b)(1)(iii) and 34 C.F.R. § 104.4(b)(1)(iii) (2009).
5
28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(1)(iv) and 34 C.F.R. § 104.4(b)(1)(iv) (2009).
6
42 u.s.c. § 12101(a) (1990).
2

Appendix G: Joint “Dear Colleague”
Letter Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ)
A frequently asked questions document regarding the June
2010 joint “dear colleague” letter, dated May 26, 2011, is
appended.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY
May 26, 2011

Frequently Asked Questions about the June 29, 2010, Dear Colleague Letter1
General Issues
1. Does the June 29, 2010, Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) on access to electronic book
readers impose new legal obligations?
A: No. The DCL discusses long-standing law. Specifically, it addresses key principles of Federal
disability discrimination law: the obligation to provide an equal opportunity to individuals with
disabilities to participate in, and receive the benefits of, the educational program, and the obligation to
provide accommodations or modifications when necessary to ensure equal treatment. Under Section 504
of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), these legal standards apply to entities that receive
Federal financial assistance, including elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions. (In this
FAQ, the term “schools” refers to all these types of institutions.) Under Title II of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 (Title II), these obligations apply to entities of state and
local government, including public schools.2
The DCL outlines concerns on the part of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of
Education (Department), raised in the context of their resolution of several cases, regarding compliance
with these long-standing requirements.
Specifically, some postsecondary institutions were using electronic book readers that are inaccessible to
students who are blind or have low vision. As explained by the DCL, application of our long-standing
nondiscrimination requirements means that schools must provide an electronic book reader (i.e., the
technology that the school uses to provide educational benefits, services, or opportunities) that is fully
accessible to students who are blind or have low vision; otherwise schools must provide
accommodations or modifications to ensure that the benefits of their educational program are provided to
these students in an equally effective and equally integrated manner.
For the purposes of assessing whether accommodations or modifications in the context of emerging
technology, and, more specifically, electronic book readers, meet the compliance requirements, the DCL
provides a functional definition of accessibility for students who are blind or have low vision. Under this
definition, these students must be afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in
the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as sighted students. In addition, although this might
not result in identical ease of use compared to that of students without disabilities, it still must ensure
equal access to the educational benefits and opportunities afforded by the technology and equal
treatment in the use of such technology. The DCL uses the term “substantially equivalent ease of use” to
describe this concept. For more information and for examples that meet this standard, see Questions 11,
12, and 14.

2. Does the DCL apply in the context of students with other disabilities that affect the ability to
use printed materials?
A. Yes. Other disabilities, such as specific learning disabilities, may make it difficult for students to get
information from printed sources (often called “print disabilities”). In its provision of benefits, services,
and opportunities, a school must ensure that these students are not discriminated against as a result of
inaccessible technology.
Example: A student has a learning disability in reading but does not have impaired vision. The student is
currently receiving audiobooks on cassette tape for her history class because she cannot readily process
printed information. The school is replacing the history textbooks with electronic book readers as the
principal means of conveying curriculum content, including all homework assignments. In this example,
the electronic book readers provide greater functionality than audiobooks provide, with the result that an
audiobook would not afford the benefits of the educational program in an equally effective and equally
integrated manner. For this reason the school may not continue to rely on audiobooks to provide equal
access to the curriculum. For more information on the differences between traditional alternative media,
such as audiobooks, and emerging technology, such as electronic book readers, see Question 12.
3. Does the DCL mean that schools cannot use emerging technology?
A. No. On the contrary, the Department encourages schools to employ innovative learning tools.
Because technology is evolving, it has the capability to enhance the academic experience for everyone,
especially students with disabilities. Innovation and equal access can go hand in hand. The purpose of
the DCL is to remind everyone that equal access for students with disabilities is the law and must be
considered as new technology is integrated into the educational environment.
4. Does the DCL apply to elementary and secondary schools?
A. Yes. The DCL grew out of complaints filed with the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and
DOJ that concerned postsecondary education. However, the principles underlying the DCL — equal
opportunity, equal treatment, and the obligation to make accommodations or modifications to avoid
disability-based discrimination — also apply to elementary and secondary schools under the general
nondiscrimination provisions in Section 504 and the ADA. The application of these principles to
elementary and secondary schools is also supported by the requirement to provide a free appropriate
public education (FAPE) to students with disabilities. For more information, see Question 13.
5. Does the DCL apply to all school operations and all faculty and staff?
A Yes. All school operations are subject to the nondiscrimination requirements of Section 504 and the
ADA. Thus, all faculty and staff must comply with these requirements.
Section 504 and the ADA require that covered entities designate at least one person to coordinate their
compliance efforts, and that they adopt and publish grievance procedures to resolve complaints of
noncompliance. In addition, postsecondary schools often designate certain staff or offices (sometimes
referred to as disability student-services offices) to assist students with disabilities.
The law applies to all faculty and staff, not just a Section 504 or ADA coordinator or staff members
designated to assist students with disabilities. All faculty and staff must comply with the
nondiscrimination requirements of Section 504 and the ADA in their professional interactions with

students, because these interactions are part of the operations of the school. So, for example, if an
adjunct faculty member denies a student who is blind an equal opportunity to participate in a course by
assigning inaccessible course content, the school can be held legally responsible for the faculty
member’s actions. Therefore, schools should provide, and faculty and staff should participate in,
professional development about accessibility and emerging technology, and about the role of faculty and
staff in helping the school to comply with disability discrimination laws.
Applying the DCL in Different Contexts
6. Does the DCL apply beyond electronic book readers to other forms of emerging technology?
A. Yes. The core principles underlying the DCL — equal opportunity, equal treatment, and the
obligation to make modifications to avoid disability-based discrimination — are part of the general
nondiscrimination requirements of Section 504 and the ADA. Therefore, all school programs or
activities — whether in a “brick and mortar,” online, or other “virtual” context — must be operated in a
manner that complies with Federal disability discrimination laws.
7. Does the DCL apply to online courses and other online content, such as online applications for
admission, class assignments, and housing?
A. Yes. The principles in the DCL apply to online programs that are part of the operations of the school,
i.e., provided by the school directly or through contractual or other arrangements.
8. Does the DCL apply to pilot programs or other school programs that are of short duration?
A. Yes. The complaints discussed in the DCL were based on pilot programs that were part of the
schools’ operations. As noted in Question 5 above, all school programs and activities are subject to the
nondiscrimination requirements of Section 504 and the ADA.
9. Does the DCL apply when planning to use an emerging technology in a class or school where no
students with visual impairments are currently enrolled?
A: Yes. Schools that are covered under Section 504 and the ADA have a continuing obligation to
comply with these laws. Therefore, the legal obligations described in the DCL always apply. Just as a
school system would not design a new school without addressing physical accessibility, the
implementation of an emerging technology should always include planning for accessibility. Given that
tens of thousands of elementary, secondary, and postsecondary students have visual impairments and
that the composition of the student body at a given school may change quickly and unexpectedly, the use
of emerging technology at a school without currently enrolled students with visual impairments should
include planning to ensure equal access to the educational opportunities and benefits afforded by the
technology and equal treatment in the use of such technology. The planning should include identification
of a means to provide immediate delivery of accessible devices or other technology necessary to ensure
accessibility from the outset.

Putting the DCL’s Principles into Practice
10. What questions should a school ask in determining whether emerging technology is accessible,
or can be made accessible, to students with disabilities?
A: Schools should begin by considering accessibility issues up front, when they are deciding whether to
create or acquire emerging technology and when they are planning how the technology will be used. To
that end, schools should include accessibility requirements and analyses as part of their acquisition
procedures. Schools should keep in mind their obligation to ensure that students with disabilities receive
the benefits of the educational program in an equally effective and equally integrated manner. Among
the questions a school should ask are:
• What educational opportunities and benefits does the school provide through the use of the technology?
• How will the technology provide these opportunities and benefits?
• Does the technology exist in a format that is accessible to individuals with disabilities?
• If the technology is not accessible, can it be modified (see Question 11 below about additional
questions related to modifications), or is there a different technological device available, so that students
with disabilities can obtain the educational opportunities and benefits in a timely, equally effective, and
equally integrated manner?
Example: A school intends to establish a Web mail system so that students can: communicate with each
other and with faculty and staff; receive important messages from the school (e.g., a message about a
health or safety concern); and communicate with individuals outside the school. The school must ensure
that the educational benefits, services, and opportunities provided to students through a Web mail system
are provided in an equally effective and equally integrated manner. Before deciding what system to
purchase, the school should make an initial inquiry into whether the system is accessible to students who
are blind or have low vision, e.g., whether the system is compatible with screen readers and whether it
gives users the option of using large fonts. If a system is not accessible as designed, the school must take
further action to determine whether an accessible product is available, or whether the inaccessible
product can be modified so that it is accessible to students who are blind or have low vision.
11. The DCL states that where accessible technology is not available, a school can comply with
Section 504 and the ADA if it provides students with disabilities “accommodations or
modifications that permit them to receive all the educational benefits provided by the
technology in an equally effective and equally integrated manner.” From a practical standpoint,
what questions should schools ask to determine if this standard can be met?
A: In making this determination, the questions a school should ask include:
• What educational opportunities and benefits does the school provide through the use of this
technology?
• What can the school do to provide students with disabilities equal access to the educational benefits or
opportunities provided through the use of the technology?

• How will the educational opportunities and benefits provided to students with disabilities compare to
the opportunities and benefits that the technology provides to students without disabilities? Three
relevant questions are:
• Are all the educational opportunities and benefits that are available through the use of the technology
equally available to students with disabilities through the provision of accommodations or modifications
(i.e., do students with disabilities have the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the
same interactions, and enjoy the same services as sighted students)?
•Are the educational opportunities and benefits provided to students with disabilities in as timely a
manner as those provided to students without disabilities (i.e., do the time frames under which
opportunities and benefits are received by students meet the requirement that students with disabilities be
provided benefits and opportunities in an equally effective and equally integrated manner)?
• Will it be more difficult for students with disabilities to obtain the educational opportunities and
benefits than it is for students without disabilities (i.e., does ease of use for students with disabilities
meet the requirement that students with disabilities be provided benefits and opportunities in an equally
effective and equally integrated manner)?
Example: A high school teacher creates an online course that includes instruction, posting of
assignments and other course content, and a forum where students can discuss their course work with the
teacher and each other. The teacher would like to incorporate video clips into the course, but is unable to
obtain the video clips with audio descriptions. As a modification, the teacher creates separate audio
descriptions for each video clip that narrate what is taking place in the video, and places them in a
separate section of the online course. The online course includes links that enable persons who use
screen readers to bypass the video clips completely and instead listen to the audio descriptions. Here, the
use of detailed audio descriptions that are a part of the online course would provide students with
disabilities access to the same opportunities and benefits in an equally effective and equally integrated
manner. Schools should also think about whether other accommodations may be needed to provide equal
access. For example, a student who uses a screen reader may need extra time to take an online
examination because it may take time for the screen reader to process information displayed on a screen
and provide that information to the student.
12. Are there circumstances under which it would be appropriate for a school to provide
traditional alternative media, such as books on tape, to a student who is blind or has low vision?
A. Yes. Traditional alternative media can still be used as an accommodation under appropriate
circumstances. For example, if a school provides printed books to students in a class, books on tape may
be an appropriate accommodation for a blind student. The DCL does not require schools to use emerging
technology. If, however, a school chooses to provide emerging technology and proposes traditional
alternative media as an accommodation or modification to provide equal access to the educational
opportunities and benefits provided to all students, the alternative media must provide access to the
benefits of technology in an equally effective and equally integrated manner. Some forms of emerging
technology may readily offer students educational opportunities and benefits that traditional alternative
media cannot replicate.

13. If a student who is blind or has low vision makes a request for a particular emerging
technology, and that technology currently is not used for all students, must the school provide
it?
A. Not necessarily, because such decisions are individualized. The DCL does not change the
requirements and processes by which elementary and secondary schools must provide a free appropriate
public education, or FAPE, to students with disabilities; nor does the DCL change the processes by
which postsecondary schools provide academic adjustments and auxiliary aids to students with
disabilities. Rather, the DCL discusses the issue of how Section 504 and the ADA apply if schools
choose to incorporate emerging technology into their instruction or other programs or activities for all
students.
At the elementary and secondary school levels, if parents believe that their child with a disability
requires a particular emerging technology as part of the child’s right to FAPE, even though that
technology currently is not used for all students, an individualized decision about providing a specific
technology should be made through the processes used by the school district to make educational
decisions consistent with Section 504 or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as applicable. At
the postsecondary level, a decision about whether to provide a particular emerging technology as an
auxiliary aid or service, even though such technology currently is not used for all students, is an
individualized one that should be made through any procedure that the school may have established to
consider students’ requests for auxiliary aids or services. Postsecondary institutions’ procedures must
comply with Section 504 and the ADA.
14. Must a school always provide the same form of emerging technology to a student who is blind
or has low vision as it provides to all other students?
No: The legal duty imposed by Section 504 and Title II is to provide equal opportunity—that is, to
provide the student who has a disability with access to the educational benefit at issue in an equally
effective and equally integrated manner. As described more fully in Question 1, a school must apply this
standard in determining whether the use of a particular technological device for a student with a visual
impairment is appropriate.
Example: A school library plans to make electronic books available to students by loaning electronic
book readers. The school does not, prior to purchase, make necessary inquiries about whether the book
readers are accessible to students who are blind or have low vision.
The school subsequently determines that the book readers are not accessible. In an effort to ensure that
the educational benefits, i.e., the same library books, are available in an equally effective and equally
integrated manner to students with visual impairments, the school purchases a few small, light-weight
tablet computers for the library. These tablet computers are designed to serve as a platform for electronic
books, as well as other visual and audio media. If the tablet computers can access those electronic books
and have accessible text-to-speech3 functions that allow users to hear the on-screen content read aloud,
navigate device controls, and select menu items with the same ease of use afforded by the electronic
book readers to sighted students, the tablet computers will then provide the same content and
functionality to students with visual impairments.4 In this example, the tablet computers have those
features. As a result, the accommodation or modification would meet the standards articulated in the
DCL because it provides the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same
interactions, and enjoy the same services as sighted students, as well as meet the standards in the DCL
for ease of use.

In addition, the school purchases the tablet computers in sufficient numbers to loan them to students with
visual impairments under the same terms and conditions as it provides the electronic book readers to
sighted students. Here, the timely provision of electronic books on accessible tablet computers provides
students with visual impairments access to the same educational opportunities and benefits in an equally
effective and equally integrated manner.
An accommodation that would not be appropriate in this example would be simply providing a student
with an aide to read an electronic book to the student. An aide who is available to read the electronic
book to the student only at the school during designated times would not be equivalent to the access
provided to sighted students using electronic book readers who would be able to read their library books
any time and at any location.
Other Federal Guidance
15. Is there any other information available from the Federal government that offers additional
guidance about accessibility and emerging technology?
A. Yes. Additional sources of guidance and information include:
U.S. Department of Education
• U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, National Education Technology
Plan, http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010.
• Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students
with Disabilities, http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/aim/index.html.
U.S. Department of Education Grantees
Accessible Media Production and Dissemination
• National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC), http://www.nimac.us.
• Bookshare for Education, http://www.bookshare.org.
• Described and Captioned Media Program, http://www.dcmp.org.
• Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic), http://www.learningally.org.
• National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard Center (NIMAS Center),
http://aim.cast.org/collaborate/NIMASCtr.
• The American Printing House for the Blind (APH), http://www.aph.org.
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), http://www.w3.org/standards/.
• The Center for Implementing Technology in Education (CITEd), http://www.cited.org.
• The Family Center on Technology and Disability (FCTD), http://www.fctd.info.

Technical Assistance and Training
• National Center on Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM Center), http://aim.cast.org.
U.S. Department of Justice
• Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability: Accessibility
of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities and Public Accommodations,
75 Fed. Reg. 43,460 (July 26, 2010), available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOJCRT-2010-0005-0001.
• ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments, Chapter 5: Website Accessibility
Under Title II of the ADA, http://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm.
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (U.S. Access Board)
• Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Accessibility
Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities; Telecommunications Act Accessibility Guidelines; Electronic
and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (regarding Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act),
75 Fed. Reg. 13,457 (March 22, 2010), available at http://www.accessboard.gov/sec508/refresh/notice.htm. (Note: Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act applies only to the
Federal government.)
U.S. General Services Administration
• Section 508.gov website, www.Section508.gov.

1

The Department of Education has determined that this document is a “significant guidance document” under the
Office of Management and Budget’s Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices, 72 Fed. Reg. 3432
(Jan. 25, 2007), available at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/regulatory_matters_pdf/012507_good_guidance.pdf.
OCR issues this and other policy guidance to provide recipients with information to assist them in meeting
their obligations and to provide members of the public with information about their rights under the civil rights
laws and implementing regulations that we enforce. OCR’s legal authority is based on those laws and
regulations. This document does not add requirements to applicable law, but provides information and
examples to inform recipients about how OCR evaluates whether covered entities are complying with their
legal obligations. If you are interested in commenting on this guidance, please send an e-mail with your
comments to [e-mail], or write to us at the following address: Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of
Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20202.
2
The Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing Title III of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination on the
basis of disability by private schools, among other entities.
3
A text-to-speech function is software that provides audio for the printed words, enabling a person to hear instead
of having to see the printed material.
4
The text-to-speech function of the tablet computers provides, for example: electronic book text that is accurate and
presented in proper reading order; descriptions of graphical and other non-textual material (e.g., a narrative
description of a photograph); and proper presentation of material contained in tables (e.g., properly associating
row and column headers with their respective cell data).

Appendix H: The Commission’s Process
The Higher Education Opportunity Act (2008) charged the
Commission to make recommendations to Congress in five
distinct areas: (I) to inform federal regulations and legislation;
(II) to support model demonstration programs authorized under
section 773; (III) to identify best practices in systems for
collecting, maintaining, processing, and disseminating materials
in specialized formats to students with print disabilities at costs
comparable to instructional materials for postsecondary nondisabled students; (IV) to improve the effective use of such
material by faculty and staff, while complying with applicable
copyright law; and (V) to modify the definitions of instructional
materials, authorized entities, and eligible students, as such
terms are used in applicable federal law, for the purpose of
improving services to students with disabilities.

The Commission held five in-person open meetings and four
full-Commission teleconferences. The meeting dates and
locations are as follows:
September 26 & 27, 2010; In Person; US Department of
Education, Washington, DC.
December 9, 2010; Full Commission; Teleconference.
January 7, 2011; Full Commission; Teleconference.

February 24 & 25, 2011; In Person; Learning Disabilities
Association of America National Conference, Jacksonville,
FL.
April 1, 2011; Full Commission; Teleconference.
May 3 & 4, 2011; In Person; Multiple Perspectives on
Access, Inclusion & Disability: Policy to Practice National
Conference, Columbus, OH.
June 24, 2011; Full Commission; Teleconference.
July 11 & 12, 2011; In Person; Association on Higher
Education and Disability National Conference, Seattle, WA.
August 12, 2011; Full Commission; Teleconference.
September 8 & 9, 2011; In Person; Library of Congress,
Washington, DC.
October 31, 2011; Full Commission; Teleconference.
All Commission meetings were open to the public, in person
and remotely via webinar, and all documents distributed to the
Commission were made available to the public in print,
digitally, and in braille. The Commission established two
listservs, one for internal Commission communication and one
for distribution and commentary to its list nearly two hundred
subscribers.
At the inaugural September 2010 Commission meeting, Gaeir
Dietrich, a Special Government Employee (SGE) named to the
Commission to represent two-year colleges, was elected
Commission Chair, and James Wendorf, the member
representative from the National Center for Learning
Disabilities, was elected Commission Vice Chair.
Additionally, to gain the perspective of public stakeholders, the
Commission held fifteen hours of public hearings; five hours of
public hearings in each of the Jacksonville, Columbus, and
Seattle meetings; and recorded public testimony from fifty-six
witnesses. Testimony was also submitted remotely via text,
audio, and video from twenty-four individuals and
organizations.

The Commission maintained two Commission web sites:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/aim/index.html
and http://aim.cast.org/collaborate/p-s_commission as well as
two email addresses for public testimony and inquiries.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act (2008) required the
Commission to address six considerations in its final
recommendations. The six considerations are—
(I) how students with print disabilities may obtain instructional
materials in accessible formats—
(aa) within a timeframe comparable to the availability
of instructional materials for non-disabled students; and
(bb) to the maximum extent practicable, at costs
comparable to the costs of such materials for nondisabled students;
(II) the feasibility and technical parameters of establishing
standardized electronic file formats, such as the National
Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) as
defined in section 674(e)(3) of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA), to be provided by publishers of
instructional materials to producers of materials in specialized
formats, institutions of higher education, and eligible students;
(III) the feasibility of establishing a national clearinghouse,
repository, or file-sharing network for electronic files in
specialized formats and files used in producing instructional
materials in specialized formats, and a list of possible entities
qualified to administer such clearinghouse, repository, or
network;
(IV) the feasibility of establishing market-based solutions
involving collaborations among publishers of instructional
materials, producers of materials in specialized formats, and
institutions of higher education;
(V) solutions utilizing universal design; and
(VI) solutions for low-incidence, high-cost requests for
instructional materials in specialized formats.
To facilitate the recommendation development process and
ensure that all six considerations were addressed within its final
recommendations, the Commission established four task forces.

The Technology, Best Practices, and Market task forces each
approached the six considerations in detail, while a fourth task
force, Legal, was established to provide background information
and guidance on existing statutory and regulatory requirements.
The work of the task forces began following the inaugural
Commission meeting in the Fall of 2010. Research and
document development was completed by the Commission's
supporting grantee, the Center for Applied Special Technology
(CAST) and staff at the Office of Special Education and
Rehabilitative Services (OSERS). Approximately forty research
analyses, summaries, and survey compilations were generated to
support task force deliberations and a bibliography of three
hundred ninety-seven citations was compiled.
The task force summaries that follow provide a snapshot of the
work of each Task Force and the primary considerations that the
task force focused on during the course of its study.

The work of the Legal Task Force, led by Maria Pallante of the
United States Copyright Office, took place from the early fall of
2010 through the spring of 2011. Maria Pallante resigned from
the Commission in September, 2011 (see Appendix A).
Additional Legal Task Force members were Jim Fruchterman,
Peter Givler, Bruce Hildebrand, Mark Riccobono, James
Wendorf, and Elizabeth Wiegman (representative for Assistant
Secretary Russlyn Ali). The Legal Task Force addressed the
existing legal landscape that facilitates, prevents, or otherwise
affects the creation, conversion, and/or distribution of accessible
instructional materials (AIM) for postsecondary students with
print disabilities. During its ten teleconferences, the Task Force
researched and supported the creation of a detailed overview
and discussion of copyright law, associated licensing, and
disability-related exemptions; and incorporated discussions of
civil rights law, state higher education e-text laws, and relevant
K–12 legal aspects related to AIM.
The section below delineates the six considerations the
Commission was asked to address in the context of the three
remaining task forces.

The Best Practices Task Force was led by Tuck Tinsley of the
American Printing House for the Blind (APH) and was
comprised of Lizanne DeStefano, Gaeir Dietrich, Andrew
Friedman, and Ashlee Kephart, with technical assistance
provided by Julia Myers at APH. This Task Force focused on
considerations one and six.

After considerable information gathering and discussion, the
Task Force identified two types of specialized formats: braille
(especially Nemeth math braille) and tactile graphics. The Task
Force also focused on two content-area instructional materials
as being the most labor-intensive and expensive to produce: (1)
STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and
(2) foreign language resources. In addition, this Task Force
crafted definitions for the terms “low-Incidence/high cost”,
“timely delivery”, and “instructional materials,” which are
included in the Glossary section of this Report.

This Task Force was led by Jim Fruchterman. The membership
of the Technology Task Force consisted of Gaeir Dietrich,
Stephan Hamlin-Smith, Kurt Herzer, Bruce Hildebrand, Chester
A. Finn, and Mark Riccobono. During its nine teleconferences
and document and email exchanges, the Technology Task Force
examined technical issues related to the Commission’s
Congressional charge. This Task Force perceived the
Commission’s work as deeply intertwined with both specific
technical issues around accessibility and general technology
trends in society that affect everyone, including students with
disabilities. The Technology Task Force discussions and
recommendations addressed considerations two and three.
The Task Force reached consensus on their two considerations
rapidly. First, the Task Force recommended against a single,
NIMAS-style source file format. Second, the members of this
Task Force recommended against establishing a single,
NIMAC-style national repository for accessible files for higher
education.
In addition, the Technology Task Force recommended
approaches for making science, engineering, technology, and
mathematics (STEM) content more accessible and for how to
take advantage of established specifications such as MathML;
strongly supported a recommendation that digital rights
management (DRM) technical protection measures should not
interfere with assistive technologies; and regarding digital
authoring applications for content creation—namely, that these
should include built-in accessibility prompts and features that
would facilitate accessible product development.
The Task Force further recommended a mandate to ensure that
instructional materials are supplied to students in formats that
permit a user with a print disability the opportunity to acquire
the same information, engage in the same transactions, and
enjoy the same services at the same time as users without
disabilities.

With respect to accessible materials identification, location, and
acquisition, the Technology Task Force was unanimous in its
belief that a single repository solution was unlikely to address
the scope of the challenge presented by postsecondary
environments and that multiple sources of content are required.
To facilitate content identification, the Task Force
recommended that content metadata (information about the
nature, structure, and intended use of content material) include a
uniform set of accessibility information and that online
“federated search” resources be established to locate content
available from all sources: commercial vendors, accessible
media producers (AMPs), and postsecondary institutions.

The Market Task Force was led by George Kerscher, and its
membership consisted of Andrew Friedman, Bruce Hildebrand,
Ashlee Kephart, Maria Pallante, Linda Tessler, and James
Wendorf. This Task Force addressed considerations four and
five throughout its study, which consisted of nine
teleconferences and a considerable amount of research and
document development.
The focus of discussions within the Market Task Force
identified recommendations to guide instructional materials
development towards universal design. This Task Force was
united in the belief that instructional materials should be
accessible to a wide range of persons with disabilities at the
time of sale, i.e., that products delivered to market should be
accessible. With respect to print works, and initiatives underway
to digitize the libraries of the world, universal design standards
are essential to make digital libraries accessible to persons with
disabilities.
In its study, the Task Force found that, with respect to
instructional materials that are available in digital-only (“born
digital”) formats, disability/resource services offices (DR/S) and
other providers used to acquire or create accessible versions of
print works are unable to similarly retro-fit digital materials.
While Task Force members unanimously agreed that all
postsecondary instructional materials should have accessibility
designed into them, members disagreed on how best to achieve
this outcome. Some Task Force members believe that
accessibility should be a legislated mandate, while others
believe that such would stifle the still-emerging market and
drive up costs for all involved.
Overlapping with the Technology Task Force findings, the
Market Task Force also recommended that authoring tools

contain embedded features to guide the production of accessible
materials and that training be made available to all users of such
products, including postsecondary faculty.

While the task forces were essential for ensuring that the
Commission addressed its six key considerations within the
body of its recommendations, the majority of recommendations
development occurred during full Commission meetings and
deliberations. Following the July 2011 full Commission
meeting in Seattle, the work of the task forces was essentially
complete. Each Task Force had submitted draft
recommendations and the full Commission then began
developing recommendations that reflected the view of the
entire Commission. To help facilitate this process, the Chair
and the Vice Chair established an editorial group. The editorial
group members consisted of Lizanne DeStefano, Jim
Fruchterman, Stephan Hamlin-Smith, Bruce Hildebrand, and
George Kerscher. The editorial group was responsible for
reviewing all members’ comments and for preparing
recommendations that reflected consensus from all members.
The final draft of the Commission report was presented to the
entire Commission on Friday, November 18, 2011 and all
Commission members approved the report on Monday,
November 22, 2011.

Glossary
Academic Adjustments
Such modifications to the academic requirements as are
necessary to ensure that such requirements do not discriminate,
or have the effect of discriminating, on the basis of disability
against a qualified applicant or student with a disability.
Modifications may include changes in the length of time
permitted for the completion of degree requirements,
substitution of specific courses required for the completion of
degree requirements, and adaptation of the manner in which
specific courses are conducted.
Source: 4 C.F.R. § 104.44(a).
AccessText Network
The AccessText Network is a membership exchange network
that facilitates and supports the nationwide delivery of
alternative files for students with diagnosed print-related
disabilities. AccessText serves as the national nucleus for
postsecondary distribution of approved alternative textbook file
exchanges, training, and technical support.
Source: http://www.accesstext.org/about.php
Accessible Media Access Center (AMAC)
AMAC is an initiative of the Board of Regents University
System of Georgia and is committed to removing barriers for
individuals with disabilities by improving the human condition
through technology in academic and workplace environments.
The AMAC team is charged with research and development of

products and services to support individuals with disabilities
and their circle of support to become more independent and
productive in their academic and workplace environments.
Source: http://www.amacusg.org/about.php
Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM)
Accessible instructional materials are specialized formats of
curricular content that can be used by and with print-disabled
learners and include braille, audio, large print, and electronic
text.
Source: http://aim.cast.org/glossary#aim
Accessible Textbook Finder (ATF)
ATF searches multiple sources of accessible books and provides
the results in a combined format. The ATF search includes
eight accessible media producers and libraries. Search results
and materials are provided by the individual sources.
Source: http://www.accesstext.org/fedsearch.php
Alternative Text Production Center (ATPC)
The ATPC is the first publicly funded, system-wide resource
dedicated to serving the alternate media needs of the largest
postsecondary educational system in the world. There are 112
community colleges in California and each of them has equal
access to the media services provided by the ATPC.
From existing print or electronic documents, the ATPC creates
alternate media products for use by California Community
College students with print-related disabilities. These products
consist of: electronic text files, electronic braille files, braille
books and documents, and tactile graphics.
Source: http://www.atpc.net/
American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
(ASCAP)
ASCAP is a membership association of more than 410,000 U.S.
composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers of every
kind of music. Through agreements with affiliated international
societies, ASCAP also represents hundreds of thousands of
music creators worldwide. ASCAP is the only U.S. performing
rights organization created and controlled by composers,
songwriters and music publishers, with a Board of Directors
elected by and from the membership.
Source: http://www.ascap.com/about/
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance
Board (Access Board)
The Access Board is an independent Federal agency devoted to
accessibility for people with disabilities. Created in 1973 to
ensure access to federally funded facilities, the Board is now a

leading source of information on accessible design. The Board
develops and maintains design criteria for the built environment,
transit vehicles, telecommunications equipment, and for
electronic and information technology. It also provides
technical assistance and training on these requirements and on
accessible design and continues to enforce accessibility
standards that cover federally funded facilities.
Source: http://www.access-board.gov/about.htm
Assistive Technology
The term assistive technology means technology designed to be
utilized in an assistive technology device or assistive technology
service.
Source:
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?fuseAction=AssistAct
Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD)
AHEAD is a professional membership organization for
individuals involved in the development of policy and in the
provision of quality services to meet the needs of persons with
disabilities involved in all areas of higher education.
Source: http://www.ahead.org/about
Authoring tool
Any software (or collection of software components) that can be
used by authors (alone or collaboratively) to create or modify
web content for use by other people (other authors or end users).
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/#glossary
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
This specification provides guidelines for designing web
content authoring tools that are both (1) more accessible to
authors with disabilities and (2) designed to enable, support, and
promote the production of accessible web content by all
authors.The “Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0”
(ATAG 2.0) is part of a series of accessibility guidelines
published by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/
Authorized Entity
The statute defines an “authorized entity” as a “nonprofit
organization or a governmental agency that has a primary
mission to provide specialized services relating to training,
education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of
blind or other persons with disabilities.”
Source: From the Report

Auxiliary aids and services
Auxiliary aids and services include the following:
Qualified interpreters, on-site or through video remote
interpreting (VRI) services; note takers; real-time
computer-aided transcription services; written materials;
exchange of written notes; telephone handset amplifiers;
assistive listening devices; assistive listening systems;
telephones compatible with hearing aids; closed caption
decoders; open and closed captioning, including realtime captioning; voice, text, and video-based
telecommunications products and systems, including text
telephones (TTYs), videophones, and captioned
telephones, or equally effective telecommunications
devices; videotext displays; accessible electronic and
information technology; or other effective methods of
making aurally delivered information available to
individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing;
(2) Qualified readers; taped texts; audio recordings;
brailled materials and displays; screen reader software;
magnification software; optical readers; secondary
auditory programs (SAP); large print materials;
accessible electronic and information technology; or
other effective methods of making visually delivered
materials available to individuals who are blind or have
low vision;
(3) Acquisition or modification of equipment or devices;
and
(4) Other similar services and actions.
Source: 28 C.F.R. § 35.104.
braille
braille is a tactile system of reading and writing made up of
raised-dot patterns for letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
This format is used almost exclusively by people with visual
impairments. braille may be either embossed (a permanent
printed document) or refreshable (electronically generated and
accessed via a braille display device).
Source:
http://aim.cast.org/learn/accessiblemedia/allaboutaim/what
BRF
A BRF file type, also known as a braille intermediate format
file, uses Grade II braille and can be used with common braille
devices or braille printers.
Source: http://aim.cast.org/glossary#brf

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
BMI collects license fees on behalf of the more than 475,000
songwriters, composers, and music publishers it represents and
distributes those fees as royalties to members whose works have
been publicly performed.
Source: http://www.bmi.com/about/entry/538061
Captioning
Captions display spoken dialogue as printed words on a
television screen. Captions are specifically designed for viewers
who are deaf and hard of hearing; however, they allow anyone
to follow along through carefully placed words that identify
speakers, on- and off-screen sound effects, music, and laughter.
Source: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/mag/captioning.html
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC)
The (CCC) is a global rights broker for the world’s most sought
after print and online content, from books, journals, and
newspapers to blogs and images.
Source:
http://www.copyright.com/content/cc3/en/toolbar/aboutUs.html
Course packs
Course packs may include an article, chapter, citation, image, or
other limited portion of a resource in a print collection of
material for student use in a specific course. A for-profit charge
for a course pack is not permissible.
Source:
http://www.lib.jmu.edu/about_us/policies/glossary.aspx
CourseSmart
CourseSmart is a venture supported by leading publishers in
North American higher education. Founded in 2007,
CourseSmart provides e-textbooks and digital learning tools to
millions of student and faculty users.
Source: http://www.coursesmart.com/overview
Courseware management and delivery systems
CMSs, such as Blackboard, Elluminate, eCollege, Moodle, and
approximately thirty-five other platforms provide online course
access. Most include embedded student-to-student-to-instructor
communication modules, assignments, quizzes, and exams.
Source: From the Report
DAISY
NISO/DAISY3 is the global digital talking book standard,
supported by many leading libraries, assistive technology
software and hardware manufacturers worldwide that serve
those with disabilities. It provides the capability to distribute

books digitally with powerful indexing and bookmarking to
easily move quickly from one part of a book to another.
Source:
http://www.bookshare.org/_/help/faq/downloadingBooks
DAISY Consortium
The DAISY Consortium is an international association that
develops, maintains and promotes international DAISY (Digital
Accessible Information SYstem) standards. It is managed by a
Board made up of representatives from all full member
organizations. The Consortium is constituted as a not-for-profit
association under Swiss law and is governed by its articles of
association.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/about_us
Developer
Any entities or individuals responsible for programming an
authoring tool can be referred to as a developer. This includes
the programmers of any additional software components
included by the Claimant in a conformance claim. In some
cases, development of an authoring tool is complete before
authors can use it to publish web content. However, in other
cases (e.g., some web-based authoring tools), a developer may
continue to modify an authoring tool even after content has been
published, such that the content experienced by the end user is
modified.
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/#glossary
Digital rights management (DRM)
DRM normally refers to the technological measures applied to
digital content that grant specific rights. DRM refers broadly to
any strategy or tool that is used to control who can access digital
content and how they can use it. DRM might be as simple as
putting a copyright notice on a document, or it might go much
farther and encrypt a document with a special code or key
required to access the content. Encryption is an example of a
technological protection measure (TPM) which is a kind of
DRM, but the terms are often used interchangeably.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
Digital text (e-text)
Digital text is electronic text that can be delivered via a
computer or by another device. A key accessibility
consideration is that digital text is malleable and can be easily
transformed in many different ways depending upon student
needs and the technology being used for rendering. To
accommodate the needs and preferences of a user, various
features of the technology which control how the content is
presented to the user can be manipulated such as size, fonts,

colors, contrast, highlighting, and text-to-speech, etc. When
text-to-speech is used, there are both visual and audio outputs
which may be displayed individually or together.
Source:
http://aim.cast.org/learn/accessiblemedia/allaboutaim/what
Disability
With respect to an individual, the term "disability" means (A) a
physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or
more of the major life activities of such individual; (B) a record
of such an impairment; or (C) being regarded as having such an
impairment. A person must meet the requirements of at least
one of these three criteria to be an individual with a disability
under the ADA and Section 504.
Source: 42 U.S.C. § 12102(2); see also 29 C.F.R. § 1630.2(g);
29 U.S.C. § 794; 29 U.S.C. § 705(20).
Disability Resources/Services Office (DR/S)
A DR/S office collaborates with students, faculty, staff,
administrators, and external professional service providers to
ensure students with disabilities are afforded equal and
equitable access to all aspects of their postsecondary experience
through—
• Implementation of universal environmental and
instructional design;
• The coordination of appropriate auxiliary aids and
services; and
• Advocacy, outreach, and education within the campus
community.
DR/S offices are also referred to as disability support services,
disability services, student disability services, disability
resources, disability support office, and office of accessibility.
Source: http://ahead.org/resources
E-book
An electronic publication or electronic book, usually (but not
necessarily) a digital media version of a print publication.
There are many e-book formats, some of which have DRM and
some of which must be read on a specific e-book reader.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
EDItEUR
EDItEUR is an international group coordinating development of
the standards infrastructure for electronic commerce in the
book, e-book, and serials sectors. EDItEUR provides its
membership with research, standards, and guidance in such
diverse areas as—
• EDI and other e-commerce standards for book and serial
transactions
• Bibliographic and product information

•
•
•

The standards infrastructure for digital publishing
Rights management and trading
Radio frequency identification tags
Source: http://www.editeur.org/2/About/#Intro

ePUB
ePUB is the name and -.epub is the file extension of an XML
format for reflowable digital books and publications. ePUB is
composed of three open standards, the open publication
structure (OPS), open packaging format (OPF) and open
container format (OCF), produced by the IDPF.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
Federated search
Federated search is the process of performing a simultaneous
real-time search of multiple diverse and distributed sources
from a single search page, with a federated search engine acting
as intermediary.
Source: http://deepwebtechblog.com/a-federated-searchprimer-part-ii-of-iii/
HTML
“HTML is the language for describing the structure of web
pages. HTML gives authors the means to—
• Publish online documents with headings, text, tables,
lists, photos, etc.
• Retrieve online information via hypertext links, at the
click of a button.
• Design forms for conducting transactions with remote
services, for use in searching for information, making
reservations, ordering products, etc.
• Include spreadsheets, video clips, sound clips, and other
applications directly in HTML documents.
• With HTML, authors describe the structure of pages
using mark-up. The elements of the HTML language
label pieces of content such as “paragraph,” “list,”
“table,” and so on.
Source: http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/htmlcss
Individual Education Program (IEP)
An IEP is a written plan that is individually developed for
students identified as having a disability under IDEA. The plan
is developed, reviewed, and revised in accordance with IDEA
regulations by a duly constituted IEP team of educators, parents,
and student (when appropriate). An IEP is based on
achievement, assessment, and evaluation data and contains the
goals that will guide the delivery of special education and
related services.
Source: http://aim.cast.org/glossary#iep

Institution of Higher Education
The term “institution of higher education” means an educational
institution in any state that—
“(1) admits as regular students only persons having a
certificate of graduation from a school providing
secondary education, or the recognized equivalent of
such a certificate, or persons who meet the requirements
of section 1091 (d)(3) of this title;
“(2) is legally authorized within such state to provide a
program of education beyond secondary education;
“(3) provides an educational program for which the
institution awards a bachelor’s degree or provides not
less than a 2-year program that is acceptable for full
credit toward such a degree, or awards a degree that is
acceptable for admission to a graduate or professional
degree program, subject to review and approval by the
Secretary;
“(4) is a public or other nonprofit institution; and
“(5) is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting
agency or association, or if not so accredited, is an
institution that has been granted pre-accreditation status
by such an agency or association that has been
recognized by the Secretary for the granting of preaccreditation status, and the Secretary has determined
that there is satisfactory assurance that the institution
will meet the accreditation standards of such an agency
or association within a reasonable time.”
The term “institution of higher education” also includes—
“(1) any school that provides not less than a 1-year
program of training to prepare students for gainful
employment in a recognized occupation and that meets
the provision of paragraphs (1), (2), (4), and (5) of subsection (a) of this section; and
“(2) a public or nonprofit private educational institution
in any state that, in lieu of the requirement in subsection (a)(1), admits as regular students individuals—
“(A) who are beyond the age of compulsory school
attendance in the State in which the institution is
located; or
“(B) who will be dually or concurrently enrolled in
the institution and a secondary school.
Source:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/20/usc_sec_20_00001001---000-.html

Instructional Materials
Instructional materials are the curricular content (printed and
digital books, journals, course packs, articles, music, tests,
videos, instructor-created PDFs and PowerPoint documents,
web pages, etc.), as well as the technologies required (hardware,
firmware, software and applications) for the manipulation,
annotation, and dissemination of content. This definition also
includes any other required instructional software and
applications used to facilitate the teaching and learning process,
including learning software, courseware/learning management
systems, digital “learning objects,” library databases, and others.
Source: Defined by the Commission
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
IDPF is a global trade and standards organization dedicated to
the development and promotion of electronic publishing and
content consumption.
The work of the IDPF promotes the development of electronic
publishing applications and products that will benefit creators of
content, makers of reading systems, and consumers. The IDPF
develops and maintains the ePUB content publication standard
that enables the creation and transport of reflowable digital
books and other types of content as digital publications that are
interoperable between disparate ePUB-compliant reading
devices and applications.
Source: http://idpf.org/about-us
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
ISO is the world’s largest developer and publisher of
international standards.
ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 162
countries, one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in
Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system.
ISO is a non-governmental organization that forms a bridge
between the public and private sectors. On the one hand, many
of its member institutes are part of the governmental structure of
their countries, or are mandated by their government. On the
other hand, other members have their roots uniquely in the
private sector, having been set up by national partnerships of
industry associations.
Therefore, ISO enables a consensus to be reached on solutions
that meet both the requirements of business and the broader
needs of society.
Source: http://www.iso.org/iso/about.htm

Large print
Large print is generally defined as print that is larger than print
sizes commonly used by the general population (8 to 12 points
in size). Some use a guideline for defining large print as 18
point or larger. A document rendered in large print format
usually has more white space and may or may not look like the
original document but contains the same information. Large
print may be printed on pages that are the same size as a
standard textbook page or on pages of a larger size.
Source:
http://aim.cast.org/learn/accessiblemedia/allaboutaim/what
Local Education Agency (LEA)
The term “local educational agency” means a public board of
education or other public authority legally constituted within a
state for either administrative control or direction of, or to
perform a service function for, public elementary schools or
secondary schools in a city, county, township, school district, or
other political sub-division of a state, or of or for a combination
of school districts or counties that is recognized in a state as an
administrative agency for its public elementary schools or
secondary schools.
Source:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_
00007801----000-.html
LOUIS Database
LOUIS contains information on accessible print materials
produced by approximately 160 organizations throughout the
United States. These materials include books in braille, large
print, audio, and electronic file format. LOUIS also lists
products developed by APH.
LOUIS assists educators, administrators, and those who are
visually impaired in locating accessible books and materials in
an efficient manner.
Source: http://louis.aph.org/pages/about.aspx
Low-incidence/high cost
Disabilities such as visual impairments, deaf-blindness,
significant physical disabilities, deafness/hard of hearing, and
traumatic brain injury are examples of “low-incidence”
disabilities. Cost factors associated with the provision of
academic-related services and materials to students with lowincidence disabilities (extrapolated from K–12 special education
data sources) indicate costs ranging from four times to one
hundred times the costs associated with the provision of similar
academic services to non-disabled students.
Source: Defined by the Commission

Mark-Up language
A system of text annotations (e.g., elements in HTML) and
processing rules that may be used to specify the structure,
presentation, or semantics of content. Examples of mark-up
languages include HTML and SVG.
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/#glossary
MathML
MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical
notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal
of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and
processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled
this functionality for text.
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/
Metadata
An element used to describe the content of a document, literally,
‘data about data.’ Metadata information describes and identifies
[for example] a book or computer document for digital indexing
and archival purposes. The end user is not necessarily aware of
its presence.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
MP3
-.mp3 is the file extension for MPEG, audio layer 3 audio
format. Layer 3 is one of three MPEG coding schemes (layer 1,
layer 2, and layer 3) for the compression of audio signals.
Layer 3 uses perceptual audio coding and psycho-acoustic
compression to remove all superfluous information (more
specifically, the redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal
that the human ear does not hear). It also adds a modified
discrete cosine transform (MDCT) that implements a filter bank,
increasing the frequency resolution to 18 times higher than that
of layer 2.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics fulfills a
Congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report
complete statistics on the condition of American education;
conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education
activities internationally.
Source: http://nces.ed.gov/about/
National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
NISO is a nonprofit association accredited by the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI) that identifies, develops,
maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage
information in our changing and ever-more digital environment.

NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to
the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval,
re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation.
Source: http://www.niso.org/about/
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped (NLS)
NLS, Library of Congress, administers a free program that loans
recorded and braille books and magazines, music scores in
braille and large print, and specially designed playback
equipment to residents of the United States who are unable to
read or use standard print materials because of visual or
physical impairment.
NLS administers the program nationally, while direct service to
eligible individuals and institutions is the responsibility of
cooperating libraries in the various states, the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. Service
is also extended to eligible American citizens residing abroad.
Source: http://www.loc.gov/nls/aboutnls.html
National Longitudinal Transition Study–2 (NLTS2)
The NLTS2, commissioned to begin in 2001 by the U.S.
Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs
(OSEP 2001–2011) and Institute of Education Sciences (IES
2000–2011), is a follow-up of the original National
Longitudinal Transition Study. The original NLTS was
designed and conducted by SRI International for OSEP from
1985 through 1993. NLTS2 includes 11,270 youth nationwide
who were ages 13 through 16 at the start of the study (2000).
Information was collected over 10 years from parents, youth,
and schools and provided a national picture of the experiences
and achievements of young people as they transition into early
adulthood.
Source: http://www.nlts2.org/faq.html
Nemeth braille
Nemeth is a specialized braille code used for conveying
mathematical and scientific notation. Its particular strength is in
conveying mathematics in a linear way while still remaining
compact enough to be practical.
Source: http://aim.cast.org/glossary#nemeth
ONIX
The ONIX family of metadata formats includes standards for
books, serials and licensing terms (including RROs). All ONIX
standards are designed to support computer-to-computer
communication between parties involved in creating,
distributing, licensing, or otherwise making available

intellectual property in published form, whether physical or
digital. All are expressed in XML.
Source: http://www.editeur.org/8/ONIX/
Open Educational Resources (OER)
OER are teaching and learning materials that anyone may freely
use and re-use, without charge. OER are different from other
resources a teacher may use in that OER have been given
limited or unrestricted licensing rights. That means they have
been authored or created by an individual or organization that
chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights. For some of
these resources, that means anyone can download the resource
and share it with colleagues and students. For others, it may be
permitted to download a resource, edit it in some way, and then
re-post it as a re-mixed work. OER often have a Creative
Commons or GNU license that states specifically how the
material may be used, re-used, adapted, and shared.
Source: http://www.oercommons.org/about#what-are-openeducational-resources-oer
Open Source
Open source is a term that applies to software that is created and
maintained using a license that makes the source code available
for modification. There are a variety of licensing schemes that
this term applies to. For example, general public license (GPL)
or lesser general public license (LGPL)—there are many
different types of licenses that are open source.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
Portable Document Format (PDF)
PDF , developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated, is described
by Adobe as a general document representation language. PDF
represents formatted, page-oriented documents. These
documents may be structured or simple. They may contain text,
images, graphics, and other multimedia content, such as video
and audio. There is support for annotations, metadata, hypertext
links, and bookmarks.
Source:
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000030.shtm
l
Portable Document Format Universal Accessibility Group
(PDF/UA)
This Committee is developing a specification for accessible
PDF. The Committee’s goal is to set standards for PDF
authoring such that conforming PDF files are accessible and
usable to all, including those who use assistive technology.
Source: http://pdf.editme.com/PDFUA

Qualified student with a disability
In the postsecondary context, a qualified student with a
disability is an individual with a disability who, with or without
reasonable modifications to rules, policies, or practices; the
removal of architectural, communication, or transportation
barriers; or the provision of auxiliary aids and services; meets
the essential eligibility requirements for the receipt of services
or the participation in programs or activities provided by the
applicable educational institution.
Source: 28 C.F.R. § 35.104; see also 34 C.F.R. § 104.3(l).
Refreshable braille display
Refreshable braille displays are electronic devices used to read
text tactually that is otherwise typically displayed visually on a
computer monitor. A refreshable braille display is connected to
a computer by a serial or USB cable and produces braille output
(with small plastic or metal pins that move up and down to
display the braille characters) for the reader.
Source:
http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?DocumentID=3652&SectionID
=7&SubTopicID=97&TopicID=330
Rich media
This term is often used to describe media (text, audio, video,
animation, etc.) that also includes interactivity, including
dynamic prompt and response components that may be
embedded in any of the listed media types.
Source: Defined by the Commission
Screen reader
A screen reader is software that attempts to identify and
interpret what is being displayed on a computer screen. This
interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-tospeech, sound icons, or a braille output device.
Source: http://www.daisy.org/glossary
Society of European Stage Authors & Composers (SESAC)
SESAC, Inc. is a performing rights organization with
headquarters in Nashville and offices in New York, Los
Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and London. Performing rights
organizations (currently three in the U.S.) are businesses
designed to represent songwriters and publishers and their right
to be compensated for having their music performed in public.
Source: http://www.sesac.com/About/About.aspx
Specialized formats
Specialized formats is defined to mean “braille, audio, or digital
text which is exclusively for use by blind or other persons with
disabilities,” and, in the case of “print instructional materials,

includes large print formats when such materials are distributed
exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.”
Source: From the Report
State Education Agency (SEA)
The term “state educational agency” means the agency
primarily responsible for the state supervision of public
elementary schools and secondary schools.
Source:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_
00007801----000-.html
Summary of performance
Section 614 of the IDEA 2004 indicates that as of July 2005 all
special education students who leave secondary education
through graduation or by exceeding state age eligibility are to be
provided with a summary of performance (SOP) to use as they
pursue their transition goals. The SOP is to be developed in lieu
of an exit IEP, with which many DSS personnel are familiar,
and is designed to provide useful information to agencies and
schools to which the exiting student might go next.
The language in Section 614 mandates secondary personnel to
provide “recommendations on how to assist the child in meeting
the child’s postsecondary goals” [IDEA § 614, H.R.1350,
(c)(5)(B)(ii)].
Source: http://www.ahead.org/resources/idea/introduction
Synthetic speech
Synthetic speech is artificial human speech which is produced
by a computer. There are a number of different software
applications through which this process can be achieved.
Some speech synthesizers use pre-recorded human speech and
fit words together to form sentences (this is most often used in
applications with a limited vocabulary, such as a talking clock).
Other synthesizers are more complex in that they fit together
tiny portions of speech (sounds) to form words and sentences.
Using this method, a synthesizer is able to produce an unlimited
vocabulary, and can therefore read aloud virtually any text
input. This is known as text-to-speech synthesis.
Source:
http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/accessibleinformation/acc
essibleformats/audio/speech/Pages/synthetic_speech.aspx
Tactile graphics
Tactile graphics, sometimes referred to as the haptic sensory
modality, deliver information through touch. They often

accompany braille textbooks to convey content in maps, charts,
building layouts, schematic diagrams, and images of geometric
figures.
Source: http://www.washington.edu/doit/articles?464
Text-to-Speech (TTS)
Text-to-speech or speech synthesis is the artificial production of
human speech and is generally accomplished with special
software and/or hardware. The quality of various speech
generation engines can vary considerably. Some voices sound
almost human while others sound more primitive and robotic.
Robotic-sounding voices are considered desirable for achieving
high rates of “reading” speed.
Source: http://aim.cast.org/glossary#tts
Textbooks
The term “college textbook” means a textbook or a set of
textbooks used for, or in conjunction with, a course in
postsecondary education at an institution of higher education.
Source:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/20/usc_sec_20_00001015--b000-.html
Title IV institution
Institutions participating in Title IV federal student financial aid
programs (such as Pell grants or Stafford loans) are accredited
by an agency or organization recognized by the U.S.
Department of Education, have a program of more than 300
clock hours or 8 credit hours, have been in business for at least
2 years, and have a signed Program Participation Agreement
with the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), U.S.
Department of Education.
Source: Raue, K., and Lewis, L. (2011). Students With
Disabilities at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions
(NCES 2011-018). U.S. Department of Education, National
Center for Educational Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office
United States Government Accountability Office (GAO)
The U.S. GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency that
works for Congress. Often called the “congressional
watchdog,” GAO investigates how the federal government
spends taxpayer dollars.
Source: http://www.gao.gov/about/index.html
Universal Design
A concept or philosophy for designing and delivering products
and services that are usable by people with the widest possible
range of functional capabilities, which include products and

services that are directly accessible (without requiring assistive
technologies) and products and services that are interoperable
with assistive technologies.
Source: Assistive Technology Act, 2004, Section 3(19)
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)
UAAG 2.0 provides guidelines for designing user agents that
lower barriers to web accessibility for people with disabilities.
User agents include browsers and other types of software that
retrieve and render web content. A user agent that conforms to
these guidelines will promote accessibility through its own user
interface and through other internal facilities, including its
ability to communicate with other technologies (especially
assistive technologies). Furthermore, all users, not just users
with disabilities, should find conforming user agents to be more
usable.
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG20/
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
WAI develops...
• guidelines widely regarded as the international standard
for web accessibility
• support materials to help understand and implement web
accessibility
• resources, through international collaboration
Source: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
WCAG 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for
making web content more accessible. Following these
guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of
people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision,
deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive
limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities,
photosensitivity, and combinations of these. Following these
guidelines will also often make web content more usable to
users in general.
Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It is
dedicated to developing a balanced and accessible international
intellectual property (IP) system, which rewards creativity,
stimulates innovation, and contributes to economic development
while safeguarding the public interest.
Source: http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/what_is_wipo.html
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The W3C is an international community where member
organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to

develop web standards. Led by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee
and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C’s mission is to lead the web to its
full potential.
Source: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/
EXtensible Mark-Up Language (XML)
XML is a simple text-based format for representing structured
information: documents, data, configuration, books,
transactions, invoices, and much more. It was derived from an
older standard format called SGML (ISO 8879), in order to be
more suitable for web use.
Source: http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/core

Acronyms and Abbreviations:
ADA: Americans with Disabilities Act
ADAAA: Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act
AE: Authorized Entity
AHEAD: Association on Higher Education and Disability
AIM: Accessible Instructional Materials
AMAC: Accessible Media Access Center
AMP: Accessible Media Producer
ASCAP: American Society of Composers, Authors, and
Publishers
AT: Assistive Technology
ATAG: Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
ATF: Accessible Textbook Finder
ATN: Access Text Network
ATPC: Alternative Text Production Center
BMI: Broadcast Music, Inc.
CAST: Center for Applied Special Technology
CCC: Copyright Clearance Center
DAISY: Digital Accessibility Information SYstem
DCL: Dear Colleague Letters
DMCA: Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DOJ: Department of Justice
DR/S: Disability Resource/Service Office
DRM: Digital Rights Management

ED: Department of Education
ePUB: Electronic Publication
GAO: United States Government Accountability Office
HEOA: Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008
HTML: Hypertext Mark-Up Language
IDEA: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004
IDPF: International Digital Publishing Forum
IEP: Individual Education Program
IHE: Institution of Higher Education
ISO: International Organization for Standardization
IT: Information Technology
K–12: Kindergarten through Grade 12
LD: Learning Disability
LEA: Local Education Agency
LOC: Library of Congress
NCES: National Center for Education Statistics
NIMAC: National Instructional Materials Access Center
NIMAS: National Instructional Materials Accessibility
Standard
NISO: National Information Standards Organization
NLS: National Library Service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped
NTLS2: National Longitudinal Transition Study-2
OCR: Office of Civil Rights
OER: Open Educational Resources
PDF: Portable Document Format

PDF/UA: Portable Document Format Universal Accessibility
Group
PRO: Performance rights organization
SEA: State Education Agency
SOP: Summary of Performance
STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics
TTS: Text-to-Speech
UAAG: User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
UD: Universal Design
VI: Visual Impairment
W3C: World Wide Web Consortium
WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative
WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
WIPO: World Intellectual Property Organization
XHTML: EXtensible Hypertext Mark-Up Language
XML: EXtensible Mark-Up Language