RESOLUTION 2008-03
RE: Books Formatted for Braille from Bookshare.org
WHEREAS, Bookshare.org is a project dedicated to the legal distribution of books and
periodicals in accessible formats, including electronic Braille; and
WHEREAS, with creativity and ingenuity Bookshare.org offers unprecedented access to
general books and periodicals to blind readers through a mechanism enabling the
sharing of books scanned by thousands of individuals, which eliminates significant
duplication of effort; and
WHEREAS, in the fall of 2007 the project received a grant from the U.S. Department of
Education in the amount of $32 million over five years to expand significantly the
availability of accessible electronic books and to make them available without charge to
all students with qualifying disabilities in the United States; and
WHEREAS, according to its Website, Bookshare.org intends “to make extensive use of
textbook files provided by publishers in the recently mandated National Instructional
Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS), to create high-quality, student-ready
materials in digital audio, large print, or Braille”; and
WHEREAS, it is widely known that, despite the many advances in the capability of
Braille-translation software, intervention by a Braille transcriber knowledgeable in the
rules set forth by the Braille Authority of North America is still required to ensure that the
often complicated layout and the increasingly graphics-intensive content of textbooks is
rendered properly and can be readily understood and navigated by the Braille reader;
and
WHEREAS, Bookshare.org’s process for converting books and periodicals from print to
accessible formats involves some checking by volunteers and staff to ensure basic
readability and navigability, but the process of converting to Braille is handled
automatically by translation software and involves no final proofreading to ensure that
the format of the Braille versions is correct, so in reality Bookshare.org Braille files are
not student-ready; and
WHEREAS, Bookshare.org has an obligation to indicate clearly to all concerned that the
Braille textbooks made available on its Website have not been proofread and are
therefore not student-ready; and
WHEREAS, the economics of special education, combined with the unfortunately
pervasive lack of knowledge about Braille production even in the special education field,
leads some people who work with blind children simply to download the Bookshare.org
files and provide them directly to the students rather than paying for professionally
transcribed books; and
WHEREAS, such a trend will have far-reaching implications, not only undermining
ongoing efforts to ensure that children who read Braille receive high-quality instructional
materials, but also eroding the already fragile infrastructure now in place for the
production of Braille textbooks; NOW, THEREFORE,
BE IT RESOLVED by the National Federation of the Blind in Convention assembled this
fifth day of July, 2008, in the city of Dallas, Texas, that this organization urge
Bookshare.org to have its Braille versions of K-12 textbooks professionally proofread
and corrected; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this organization strongly urge Bookshare.org to use
its unique position to support efforts at improving the quality of Braille educational
materials for K-12 students.