Accessibility
The Publishers Association is working on several initiatives to help publishers respond to requests on behalf of people with reading impairments, particularly visually impaired people, in order to facilitate access to their material.
Click here for the PA's Publisher Guidelines for meeting permissions requests on behalf of reading impaired people, developed after extensive consultation. They are offered as suggestions for good practice, and the PA intends to refine and improve these Guidelines over time; please send any comment or suggestion to the PA's Graham Taylor (gtaylor@publishers.org.uk).
Along with other trade associations, the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), the PA is a backer of the Accessibility Action Group. The AAG produces the Publisher Accessibility Newsletter, which gives an overview of current activities designed to help pubilshers meet the requirements of those with reading impairments; click here for the latest edition.
Publisher Lookup UK is a collaborative website offered by the PA and the JISC TechDis service. It is designed to help those in education who work with disabled learners to get them an electronic version of published texts as quickly as possible; see www.publisherlookup.org.uk for more, and to check that your house is included. The PA and JISC TechDis have also devised a Guide to Obtaining Textbooks in Alternative Formats - see www.techdis.ac.uk/getaltformat
Publishers are contributing source pdf files to the DCSF Accessible Resources Project, whose steering group includes RNIB, PLS and Becta. The project is testing a model for provision of textbooks and other curriculum materials in electronic files for pupils who struggle to read books in standard format due to problems with sight or reading. 40 pupils aged 11 to 14 in nine schools are being given laptops and software to adapt and read the files in a format which best suits them, but if they find this difficult they will be supplied resources in their preferred format. Formats are audio, including text to speech, Daisy Talking Books, different presentations of text including larger fonts, and hard copy Braille. A final report will be submitted to DCSF at the end of 2010. The project's website is now live at www.mytextbook.org.