The Department of Education finally acknowledged the gaps in quality and confirmed they are requiring the changes we demanded. It has been a long and exhausting fight to get them to listen to our concerns but the work is officially moving in the right direction. I am exhausted by the …
November 16, 2022
Final supporters
On October 11th, 2022, Benetech announced a new award for an estimated $45 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Education to provide accessible educational materials to students with disabilities.
We the undersigned, based on our expertise and experience, believe Benetech needs to make immediate and substantial improvements in the quality of accessibility of the books they provide to students with disabilities through Bookshare.org. These books are often missing (or have incorrectly placed) page numbers, have incomplete or missing charts, graphs, and tables, and exhibit other accessibility flaws (such as poorly formatted braille output), which must be corrected before they can be used by students. Remediating poor quality books into student-ready ones is time-consuming work that should be done by Bookshare using grant funding, not by service providers or students.
We respectfully request the Department of Education direct Benetech to take the following steps as soon as possible to address these problems:
- Bookshare's website should show the complete accessibility metadata for every book in their catalog, including all accessibility issues and problems, such as missing page numbers, incomplete graphs and tables, inaccessible STEM content, and any other issues that would prevent the book from being ready to be used by students.
- Bookshare should provide a system for users to request books with accessibility flaws to be remediated by Bookshare as rapidly as possible, with full progress tracking, estimated times for completion, and notifications.
- Books that are in high-demand by students, or anticipated to be so, should be proactively identified and remediated by Bookshare so that they are ready for immediate student use.
The Department of Education and Benetech know Bookshare should represent the 'gold standard' for accessible educational materials, but too often it falls well short of that goal. We hope they will take this opportunity to reflect on how they can improve this valuable program to better serve all students, including those with disabilities.
Thank you
Updates
October 13, 2022
Seeing this grow makes me feel the weight of what we are fighting for. The path forward feels long and exhausting but your response proves that we are not the only ones who see these flaws. I am tired of the excuses and we are staying right here until they fix this.
29 Comments
With $9 Million a year of taxpayers' money, they should be able to provide students "made accessible" books (when not "born accessible"). Something as simple as page numbers is a requirement in college courses.
I appreciate the use of Bookshare for students with disabilities I work with at the college level. However, there are many books (textbooks and novels) that are not available on Bookshare. This automatically creates a barrier for the students. Improvement to Bookshare would be greatly appreciated.
Many publisher will only share their files with Bookshare, then this files need to be accessible with accurate exact same text, page numbers, images with descriptions, correctly formatted tables, charts and graphs, correctly done math and science. The currently available files are not accessible and have too much missing.
This funding needs to be used strictly for accessible content. Digital access is NOT accessible content. I just accessed a comic book and the only thing read out loud was the page numbers. Worthless! It is disheartening to think Bookshare which is relied heavily upon the vision-impaired community is becoming just another digital library that produces reading content they can't use. We have enough digital library depositories. Be better!
These redmediations are long overdue, especially in light of the increased DOE funding to Bookshare, which has received this feedback over the years but neglected to do make the changes that would allow their product to meet the definition of accessibility framed by DOE and DOJ.
Page numbers are so 20th century, but I agree with everything else. When students access books from Bookshare, they assume they are accessible and ready to read.
Benetech and Bookshare need to quit taking in the money unless they make whole-scale and sincere efforts to improve the services and processes.
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The Department of Education finally acknowledged the gaps in quality and confirmed they are requiring the changes we demanded. It has been a long and exhausting fight to get them to listen to our concerns but the work is officially moving in the right direction. I am exhausted by the …
November 16, 2022
Final supporters
On October 11th, 2022, Benetech announced a new award for an estimated $45 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Education to provide accessible educational materials to students with disabilities.
We the undersigned, based on our expertise and experience, believe Benetech needs to make immediate and substantial improvements in the quality of accessibility of the books they provide to students with disabilities through Bookshare.org. These books are often missing (or have incorrectly placed) page numbers, have incomplete or missing charts, graphs, and tables, and exhibit other accessibility flaws (such as poorly formatted braille output), which must be corrected before they can be used by students. Remediating poor quality books into student-ready ones is time-consuming work that should be done by Bookshare using grant funding, not by service providers or students.
We respectfully request the Department of Education direct Benetech to take the following steps as soon as possible to address these problems:
- Bookshare's website should show the complete accessibility metadata for every book in their catalog, including all accessibility issues and problems, such as missing page numbers, incomplete graphs and tables, inaccessible STEM content, and any other issues that would prevent the book from being ready to be used by students.
- Bookshare should provide a system for users to request books with accessibility flaws to be remediated by Bookshare as rapidly as possible, with full progress tracking, estimated times for completion, and notifications.
- Books that are in high-demand by students, or anticipated to be so, should be proactively identified and remediated by Bookshare so that they are ready for immediate student use.
The Department of Education and Benetech know Bookshare should represent the 'gold standard' for accessible educational materials, but too often it falls well short of that goal. We hope they will take this opportunity to reflect on how they can improve this valuable program to better serve all students, including those with disabilities.
Thank you
Updates
October 13, 2022
Seeing this grow makes me feel the weight of what we are fighting for. The path forward feels long and exhausting but your response proves that we are not the only ones who see these flaws. I am tired of the excuses and we are staying right here until they fix this.
29 Comments
Files for many books on bookshare have a .brf file extension, however these files are not formatted to be embossed, or read on a braille display, without issues such as spacing, and proper page numbering. errors. Also, books containing math notation being available with a .brf extension, is very misleading, because very few of these books are properly marked up using MathMl. This mark up also makes it so that math notation can be read with cynthasized speech applications.
With $9 Million a year of taxpayers' money, they should be able to provide students "made accessible" books (when not "born accessible"). Something as simple as page numbers is a requirement in college courses.
I appreciate the use of Bookshare for students with disabilities I work with at the college level. However, there are many books (textbooks and novels) that are not available on Bookshare. This automatically creates a barrier for the students. Improvement to Bookshare would be greatly appreciated.
Many publisher will only share their files with Bookshare, then this files need to be accessible with accurate exact same text, page numbers, images with descriptions, correctly formatted tables, charts and graphs, correctly done math and science. The currently available files are not accessible and have too much missing.
This funding needs to be used strictly for accessible content. Digital access is NOT accessible content. I just accessed a comic book and the only thing read out loud was the page numbers. Worthless! It is disheartening to think Bookshare which is relied heavily upon the vision-impaired community is becoming just another digital library that produces reading content they can't use. We have enough digital library depositories. Be better!
These redmediations are long overdue, especially in light of the increased DOE funding to Bookshare, which has received this feedback over the years but neglected to do make the changes that would allow their product to meet the definition of accessibility framed by DOE and DOJ.
Page numbers are so 20th century, but I agree with everything else. When students access books from Bookshare, they assume they are accessible and ready to read.
Benetech and Bookshare need to quit taking in the money unless they make whole-scale and sincere efforts to improve the services and processes.
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Files for many books on bookshare have a .brf file extension, however these files are not formatted to be embossed, or read on a braille display, without issues such as spacing, and proper page numbering. errors. Also, books containing math notation being available with a .brf extension, is very misleading, because very few of these books are properly marked up using MathMl. This mark up also makes it so that math notation can be read with cynthasized speech applications.