2010 TAA Conference on Text and Academic Authoring

Ramada Mall of America Minneapolis, Minnesota

June 24-26, 2010

Textbook Track Session:

Robert Martinengo

Accessibility for Authors: Understanding the Reading Needs of Disabled Students

Day/Time: Saturday, 2:45 - 3:45 p.m.

Presenters: Robert Martinengo, Publisher Services Manager, Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC)

Students with disabilities that prevent or impair their ability to read standard printed books are protected from discrimination under various statutes. This means that textbooks and other instructional materials must be provided to these students in a format that they can use, such as braille, large print, audio, and newer electronic formats.

Conversion to these "alternate formats" is often done by schools or non-profit agencies, but publishers are coming under increased pressure to provide accessible materials through the same channels and at the same prices as printed books. This is causing a ripple-effect up the textbook production chain, to the point where authors should be aware of accessibility issues in order to understand how their materials are being reformatted for use by disabled students.

At the same time, other market factors, such as the perceived high-cost of textbooks, is driving publishers to develop viable electronic book products and distribution systems. These trends, the legal imperative for accessibility and the market pressure for affordability, intersect at the issue of digital rights management. While publishers are afraid to sell ebooks without layers of technical protection, they are also obligated to provide unlocked, unprotected files of these same books at no cost for use by disabled students.

Academic authors should have a basic understanding of accessibility issues so they will be prepared to intelligently respond to disability-related requests from their publishers, their administration, and their students. This session will provide sufficient background information and analysis of the current situation for authors to address accessibility issues in their own work environment.

About the Presenter:

Robert Martinengo has been working in the field of alternate media for 10 years and helped pioneer the publisher file request process for disabled students while at the Alternate Text Production Center, which represents over 100 community colleges in California.

Previous to that, he was a Studio Director for Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic in Los Angeles, where he supervised 200 volunteers in recording grade-school and college level textbooks that were used by over 100,000 students with disabilities.

Martinengo is now the Publisher Services Manager at the Alternative Media Access Center in Athens, Georgia, where he is working on a collaborative project with the Association of American Publishers called AccessText, which will make it easier and safer for publishers to provide services to disabled students.