When you are procuring new institutional platforms (such as eBook, VLE, content creation platforms) or licences have come up for renewal again, check which of the following features are available. If a significant number of these features are missing you might renegotiate costs based on the extra costs you might incur in supporting print impaired […]
Category: Alternative formats
Where’s my help gone? Changes to the Disabled Student Allowance – DSA – mean that the non medical help support (for example library assistance) previously paid for by the DSA will no longer be available unless the university supplies the service. For some disabled learners this could represent a significant extra difficulty so universities have been considering […]
Copyright law entitles disabled persons to make copies of works for personal use without getting the permission of the rights holder. This includes scanning a textbook and converting it into an electronic format. But how do you go about it? Use a smart phone or tablet then do one of the following: Take a photograph […]
There is no single ‘ideal’ way of sourcing your alternative formats because so much depends on the nature of learner, the nature of the resource and the amount of information required. However, just because there is no unique ‘magical workflow’ doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking at what’s available and putting together a starting point […]
Providing alternative formats for staff and students can be a challenging business. What happens when an external library member or an ex-student library user makes a request? This question came to us recently so we put it to our subject specialists for technology and the law – John Kelly and Jackie Milne worked together to give […]
How can you improve the offer of textbooks in alternative format for disabled learners, particularly for those hit by changes to the DSA? The best solution is, ideally, to already have an accessible e-book on an accessible e-book platform. Even if the book or platform lacks accessibility they may often be more than adequate for […]
Crowd-sourced accessibility If you have scanned an entire book under the provisions of the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Disability) Regulations 2014 the best thing you can do with any intermediate copy is upload it to Load2Learn so that others can benefit and even build on its accessibility. However, sometimes you only need to scan […]
It’s good to share, it’s easy to share, it’s legal to share For many years libraries and disability support teams have had the frustration of wasted time and effort in scanning books that others had already scanned… but that licences prevented them from sharing. Now that copyright laws have changed (see previous blog post) it […]
The Law got better for disabled learners The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Disability) Regulations 2014 legislation enshrined a right for HEI’s to share accessible “intermediate copies” of textbooks with one another. However, the lack of definition of “intermediate copy” meant that, in practice, hardly any sharing was taking place for fear of falling foul […]