AB422

1. AB422 (Steinberg): CDR-sponsored legislation. Facilitate the ability of colleges and universities to provide instructional materials to disabled students by requiring publishers to give the college or university an electronic version. This very important bill will dramatically improve access to instructional materials in alternate formats for students with visual impairments and other print-related disabilities in colleges and universities by requiring that publishers provide the school with an electronic version of the textbook or other instructional material. Up until the Senate Education Committee, there was substantial opposition to the bill from the publishing industry. However, we were able to negotiate some amendments to the bill that caused them to remove their opposition while still achieving the goals of the bill. The amendments limited the scope of the materials that are covered to printed materials "required or essential to student success." Non-printed materials and nontext portions of printed materials are required to be provided once it has been shown that conversion software is available. The amendments also specify that the college and university systems develop guidelines for implementing this law, and they allow (but don't require) the systems to designate regional centers to coordinate between the publishers and the individual schools.

Status: Signed by governor Sept. 15 Position: Support

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Pat McPartland, CDR Legislative Coordinator

SUBJECT:Action needed on AB 422: Visually Impaired Students,
Textbooks

The 1999-2000 legislative session is now underway, and CDR-sponsored
legislation has been introduced.  Our bill this year is AB 422, and the
author is Assemblymember Darrell Steinberg, Democrat from Sacramento.
Your action is needed as soon as possible to express your support of the
bill, which is greatly needed so that blind and visually impaired
students can use new computer technology to access written materials
without the need to hire a reader.  Unfortunately, the bill may have
significant opposition from the publishing industry.  AB 422 will be
heard soon in the  Assembly Higher Education committee.  Please contact
the author and the Higher Education committee members with your letters,
faxes or e-mails of support.  It is particularly important that you make
contact if you see that the list contains the Assemblymember  from your
own district, because in that case you can begin your letter "As a
constituent of yours, I am writing to support AB422..."

Following is a fact sheet describing exactly what the bill does, and
also a list of the members of the committee.
 

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AB 422: Textbooks on alternate media
for visually impaired students
March 5, 1999
 

Purpose

To allow schools to provide instructional materials in alternative media
to visually impaired or severely learning disabled students  in a timely
and cost effective manner.

Statement of Problem:

Technology is available to use a computer to translate from electronic
text directly to Braille, and also for visually impaired students to use
electronic versions of textbooks through a computer voice synthesizer
which reads (and can also index and search) the material on the
screen.   However, the schools are currently not able to obtain
electronic versions directly, and so must scan the materials into the
computer by hand before they can be manipulated.  The schools are
required to provide these alternate media texts to students who need
them, but to do so by scanning or otherwise translating from a printed
copy can be time consuming and expensive.  The time lapse causes a
particularly serious problem for the student, who may not be able to
obtain the text in a format they can use until well into the semester,
thus adversely affecting their ability to do well in the class.

Existing Law:

Current law in Education Code 60061 requires that publishers allow
schools to transcribe, reproduce and distribute instructional materials
into Braille or other formats for pupils with visual impairments.

At the federal level, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section
504 of the  1973 Rehabilitation Act require that schools provide
instructional materials to visually impaired and other students with
disabilities in a format which is usable and effective for the student.

Background

The federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has ruled that colleges and
universities must provide alternate media such as electronic text to be
read by a computer voice synthesizer or translated into Braille when
tape is not effective for the student.  Particularly for complex
subjects such as chemistry, a textbook on tape is much less effective
than a text in electronic format or Braille.  Both Braille and computer
voice synthesizers have systems for indexing and for review, whereas
tape lends itself more to listening from start to finish and it's very
difficult to find a particular point.

If the textbook publishers  provided the school with the textbook on
computer disk or equivalent electronic format the school would be able
to eliminate the costly and time consuming step of scanning the printed
version of the materials into electronic format.   This would save money
for the schools.   Perhaps more importantly, it would assure that
students would be able to get the books when they need them for the
class, rather than much later in the semester.

Specific action of this bill.

This bill would amend the Education Code Section 60061 (for K-12) and
add Section 67302 (for California Community Colleges, California State
Universities, and the University of California) to require that all
publishers who sell instructional  materials to public education
systems  in California  provide, on request,  electronic versions in
ASCII text or other unencrypted electronic form for use for students
with disabilities who cannot utilize standard instructional materials.
Various protections are also added to assure that these electronic
materials are not misused.

Support/Opposition

In addition to CDR, support for the bill  comes from the National
Federation of the Blind of California, the California Foundation of
Independent Living Centers, the California Council of the Blind, and
other visually impaired groups and disability groups, as well as schools
and organizations of educators of disabled students.  Opposition may
come from publishers.

For further information

Contact Pat McPartland, Legislative Coordinator, (916) 455-2008.
 

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List of Decision-Makers
(All addresses are:  State Capitol, Sacramento CA 95814.  Most
legislators have  e-mail  in the format of:  first name.last name
@assembly.ca.gov.  You can get more information at the Assembly web site
at www.assembly.ca.gov)

AB 422 Author:

Assemblymember Darrell S. Steinberg, Room 2176

Assembly Higher Education Committee

Lempert, Ted            Room 2188    21(D)  (916) 319-2021    San Carlos

Baldwin, Steve          Room 2002    77(R)   (916) 319-2077        El
Cajon

Ackerman, Dick          Room 4167    72(R)   (916) 319-2072
Fullerton

Thompson, Bruce  Room 2160    66(R)   (916) 319-2066        Fallbrook

Pescetti, Anthony       Room 2130    10(R)  (916) 319-2010        Elk
Grove

Cardoza, Dennis  Room 2141    26(D)  (916) 319-2026        Merced

Havice, Sally          Room  5150    56(D)   (916) 319-2056
Cerritos

Jackson, Hannah-Beth    Room 4098    35(D)  (916) 319-2035        Los
Olivos

Lowenthal, Alan         Room 4139    54(D)   (916) 319-2054  Long Beach

Reyes, Sarah            Room 5128    31(D)  (916) 319-2031        Fresno

Scott, Jack            Room  4146    44(D)   (916) 319-2044
Altadena

Romero, Gloria         Room  2117    49(D)   (916) 319-2049  Monterey
Park