Complaint filed against Case Western Reserve University

Extracted from attached files:

June 25, 2009

VIA E-MAIL AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
Mr. John Wodatch
Chief Disability Rights Section - NYA
Civil Rights Division
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20530
John.L.Wodatch@usdoj.gov

Cleveland Office
Office for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Education
600 Superior Avenue East, Suite 750
Cleveland, OH 44114-2611
OCR.Cleveland@ed.gov

Re: ADA Title III and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act:
Case Western Reserve University/Kindle DX

Dear Mr. Wodatch and Office for Civil Rights:

We represent the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the American Council of the Blind (ACB), and current and prospective college students who are blind. Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) has contracted with Amazon.com, Inc. to provide the Kindle DX electronic book reader and web browser to its students in the fall of 2009. See http://blog.case.edu/case-news/2009/05/06/kindledx. Because the Kindle DX is inaccessible to blind students, the Kindle DX program at CWRU violates Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504).

CWRU will provide the Kindle DX to students in a two-semester pilot program beginning this fall. The Kindle DX will be offered to CWRU students in chemistry, electrical engineering, computer science, and freshman seminars. The Kindles will be provided with the textbooks and other reference materials for the classes installed.

The NFB is a national nonprofit membership organization of over 50,000 members. The ultimate purpose of the NFB is the complete integration of the blind into society on a basis of equality. The NFB engages in advocacy, education, research, technology, and programs encouraging the independence and self-confidence of people who are blind or have low-vision. The NFB has affiliates in all fifty states plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, and over seven hundred local chapters. A major focus area of the NFB is education for blind youth. NFB education programs include scholarships for blind students, Braille literacy programs, a clearinghouse of information on science subjects and careers, and a collection of literature on education for blind students. See www.nfb.org for more information. Contact information for NFB is below:

Marc Maurer
President
National Federation of the Blind
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
Phone: 410-659-9314
Fax: 410-685-5653

The ACB is a national nonprofit membership organization with 51 state and regional affiliates and 20 national special interest and professional affiliates. ACB’s membership numbers in the tens of thousands, the vast majority of whom are blind persons. ACB’s mission is to improve the well-being of all blind and visually impaired people by: serving as a representative national organization of blind people; elevating the social, economic and cultural levels of blind people; improving educational and rehabilitation facilities and opportunities; cooperating with the public and private institutions and organizations concerned with blind services; encouraging and assisting all blind persons to develop their abilities and conducting a public education program to promote greater understanding of blindness and the capabilities of blind people. Education is a major focus area of ACB, including scholarships for blind students and advocacy for improved education and rehabilitation programs for blind people. See http://www.acb.org/profile.html for more information. Contact information for ACB is below:

Melanie Brunson, Executive Director
Mitch Pomerantz, President
American Council of the Blind
1155 15th St. NW, Suite 1004
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 467-5081
Fax: (703) 465-5085

The Kindle DX allows students to carry over 3,500 books in a single mechanism. In addition, the Kindle DX offers a free web browser. Students using the Kindle DX will have access to a variety of functions not available in print textbooks, including a search function, an option to access the dictionary definition or Wikipedia information for any word the student highlights, and the ability to receive documents created by their professors electronically.

The Kindle DX has a text-to-speech feature that blind and print-disabled students can use to hear the text. However, the Kindle DX’s menus are not accessible to blind students. The menus (for selecting a book, activating features, setting device settings, etc.) are on-screen only, with no audio option. Nor are the Kindle and its e-books accessible through external screen readers. Therefore, if a student cannot see the screen, she cannot know which book she has selected, what the device settings are or how to change them, or how to navigate the on-screen menu. Ironically, without the ability to see the appropriate menu, she will not be able to activate the text-to-speech feature. Similarly, without audible screen navigation, the Kindle DX web browser, Kindle Store, and other features will simply not work for blind students. See the Kindle DX QuickStart Guide, which describes some of the onscreen menu features, http://s3.amazonaws.com/kindle/KindleDX_Quick_Start_Guide.pdf. See also the Kindle DX User’s Guide, http://s3.amazonaws.com/kindle/KindleDX_Users_Guide.pdf.

This lack of accessibility is not due to a technological challenge. Menus are routinely rendered audibly in a host of handheld and other electronic devices, including computers, Apple’s iPod Nano and iPhone 3GS, ATMs, talking microwaves, calculators and thermometers, and could be implemented for the Kindle DX.
Because of this lack of access, beginning in the fall of 2009, blind students in several classes at CWRU will be denied equal access and effective communication in violation of Title III of the ADA and Section 504. Furthermore, if this pilot program is permitted to continue, it will send the message that use of the Kindle DX or other inaccessible electronic media is acceptable at institutions like CWRU. As a result, such discriminatory practices will likely expand both within CWRU and at other universities.

CWRU is a private university subject to Title III of the ADA. http://www.princetonreview.com/CaseWesternReserveUniversity.aspx. CWRU receives federal financial assistance in the forms of federal financial aid, including Department of Education Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need, and federal grants and contracts (CWRU is 13th among private universities in federal expenditures for science and engineering research and 17th among medical schools for NIH awards).
See http://www.case.edu/president/cir/cirrankings.htm#research. Therefore, CWRU is subject to Section 504. Contact information for CWRU is below:

Barbara R. Snyder
Office of the President
Adelbert Hall 216
10900 Euclid Avenue
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH 44106-7001
Phone 216-368-4344
Fax 216-368-4325

Blind students and prospective students are qualified individuals with disabilities within the meaning of the ADA and Section 504. 28 C.F.R. § 36.104; 34 C.F.R. § 104.3. Therefore, CWRU may not provide them unequal or separate access to the benefits of its programs, services and activities. 28 C.F.R. § 36.201-202; 34 C.F.R §104.4. CWRU must also ensure that its communications with students with disabilities are as effective as its communications with students without disabilities. 28 C.F.R. § 36.303; 34 C.F.R. § 104.4.

Separate or different services for individuals with disabilities are only permitted under Title III and Section 504 when they are necessary to achieve equal access. 28 C.F.R. § 36.202(c); 34 C.F.R. § 104.4(b)(1). In the past, when colleges and universities had to rely on print textbooks, they had to rely on separate auxiliary aids and services, such as alternative format textbooks (Braille, taped texts, or electronic formats). This was necessary because print textbooks could not be made accessible any other way. CWRU’s program of offering the Kindle DX to students can be made fully accessible, without the need for alternative formats. As such, CWRU should not be permitted to rely on unequal and separate alternative formats as a solution. Just as website technology has advanced to the point where public entities cannot rely on mailing alternative formats to blind individuals instead of making their websites accessible, electronic textbook technology has similarly advanced to the point where it can be made equally accessible to blind people. Therefore, universities that offer electronic textbook programs can no longer rely on separate alternative formats, but must provide an integrated program. See U.S. Department of Justice, “Accessibility of State and Local Government Websites to People with Disabilities,” http://www.ada.gov/websites2_scrn.pdf (“An agency with an inaccessible website may also meet its legal obligations by providing an alternative accessible way for citizens to use the programs or services, such as a staffed telephone information line. These alternatives, however, are unlikely to provide an equal degree of access in terms of hours of operation and the range of options and programs available.”)

Both the ADA and Section 504 recognize that methods for ensuring effective communication must evolve as technology evolves. Thus, for example, because communication technology for deaf people has advanced beyond the TTY, covered entities must make their telephone communications accessible to those new technologies, and may not continue to assume deaf people will use TTYs. See U.S. Department of Justice, “ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments”, Chapter 4: 9-1-1 and Emergency Communication Services, Section D,” http://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap4toolkit.htm.

CWRU should not be permitted to avoid providing access because of its, and its licensee’s, own choices: “[W]hen making purchases and when designing its resources, a public entity is expected to take into account its legal obligation to provide communication to persons with disabilities that is “as effective as” communication provided to nondisabled persons. At a minimum, a public entity has a duty to solve barriers to information access that the public entity's purchasing choices create, particularly with regard to materials that with minimal thought and cost may be acquired in a manner facilitating provision in alternative formats. When a public institution selects software programs and/or hardware equipment that are not adaptable for access by persons with disabilities, the subsequent substantial expense of providing access is not generally regarded as an undue burden when such cost could have been significantly reduced by considering the issue of accessibility at the time of the initial selection.” Letter of Findings, Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Docket No. 09-97-2002.RES, April 7, 1997, http://uwctds.washington.edu/policy/09972002.RES.htm.

Even if CWRU were permitted to rely on separate auxiliary aids and services to provide effective communication, equality of access and effective communication cannot be achieved by providing alternative formats, such as Braille textbooks, taped texts, or electronic files, for several reasons:

 Timeliness:

•  Kindle DX textbooks are available for download within 60 seconds, 24 hours a day.
• Alternative format textbooks often take weeks or months to receive and must be ordered specially through Disabled Student Services offices, often far in advance of a class. This forces students with disabilities to commit to course selection far earlier than non-disabled students and locks them into course selections, even though non-disabled students can add or drop courses even after the classes have started.

Content:

•  Kindle DX textbooks include structural data, including chapter headings, page numbers and footnotes that make for easy navigation.
• Electronic files generated by Disabled Student Services offices are generally “text dumps” without the structural data that ensure proper reading order of pages with columns and sidebars and that enable navigation.

Features:

•  Kindle DX offers features, such as free instant access to dictionary definitions for any word that is highlighted by the reader and the ability to highlight and annotate text.
• Electronic files, taped texts, and Braille textbooks do not offer instant free dictionary access or the ability to highlight or annotate text.

Cost:

•  According to Amazon’s promotional materials (see, e.g., Video Demonstration at http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-DX-Amazons-Wireless-Generation/dp/B0015TCML0), “Kindle books and periodicals are much less expensive than their print versions.”
• Blind students are generally required to pay the higher price for a print book as a condition of receiving the content in an electronic file.

Web Browser:

•  Kindle DX includes a free web browser that is not contingent on the availability of Internet access through cable, broadband, or WiFi. Instead, it relies on cell phone networks and is available nearly anywhere.
• Students with disabilities must obtain separate Internet access, often at substantial expense, and that Internet access requires a physical or wireless Internet connection. Students with disabilities, therefore, face additional costs and limitations on location that nondisabled students do not experience. 

CWRU’s accommodations for students with disabilities are handled by the Disability Resources Office (DRO). As demonstrated by the enclosed Declaration of Leslie Penko, a blind recent graduate of CWRU, the DRO program and alternative format documents are unable to provide equal access to textbooks for blind students. Electronic versions are difficult to use, lack navigation, and contain content and formatting errors. DRO services are not equal to print textbooks and, as a result, blind students are behind their nondisabled peers. If DRO services are compared to the instant, mobile, 24-hour access and additional features of Kindle DX, it is clear that blind students will be even further behind and will face serious discrimination in CWRU’s Kindle DX program. The Kindle DX has the potential to place blind students on an equal footing, for the first time in their lives. But because of CWRU’s, and Amazon’s, choice not to provide accessible menus, they will be put even further behind.

We have contacted CWRU to attempt to resolve these issues, without success. For these reasons, we request that the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division and/or the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights investigate the Kindle DX program at the Case Western Reserve University under Title III of the ADA, Section 504, and any other applicable laws. We request that the Department require that CWRU ensure that the Kindle DXs provided to students are accessible or delay the Kindle DX program until the devices are accessible. Copies of our correspondence with CWRU are enclosed.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.

Very truly yours,

Daniel F. Goldstein
Mehgan Sidhu
BROWN, GOLDSTEIN & LEVY, LLP
120 E. Baltimore St., Suite 1700
Baltimore, MD 21202
(410) 962-1030
Fax: (410) 385-0869
dfg@browngold.com
ms@browngold.com

Eve L. Hill
1667 K St. NW, Suite 640
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 296-2044
Fax: (202) 296-2047
ehill@law.syr.edu

Amy Robertson
FOX & ROBERTSON, P.C.
104 Broadway, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80203
TTY: (877) 595-9706
(303) 595-9700
Fax: (303) 595-9705
arob@foxrob.com

Matthew A. Kairis
JONES DAY
325 John H. McConnell Blvd
Suite 600
Columbus, OH 43215-2673
(614) 469-3939
Fax: (614) 461-4198
makairis@jones.day.com

Enclosures

cc: Ms. Russlynn Ali (via first class mail)
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20202-1100

Jeanine Arden Ornt, Esq. (via e-mail and first class mail)
Vice President and General Counsel
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7020
jeanine.ornt@case.edu

Original file attached.

May 7, 2009

VIA E-MAIL AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
Barbara R. Snyder (Barbara.snyder@case.edu)
President
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio  44106

Dear President Snyder:

I write on behalf of the Reading Rights Coalition, a cross-disability group of thirty-two organizations that are committed to ensuring that e-books are accessible to and usable by anyone wishing to read them. 

It has been brought to our attention that Case Western Reserve University has entered into an agreement with Amazon to provide mobile access to e-textbooks and course materials through the Kindle DX.  The controls and navigation features of the Kindle are inaccessible to blind and visually impaired students and faculty who will not be able to independently navigate Kindle’s menus, change settings, locate books or documents, or be able to identify critical information, such as device settings.  We encourage you not to move forward with your agreement, as doing so would violate numerous federal and state laws barring disability discrimination by colleges and universities, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the the Ohio Civil Rights Act.

As elsewhere, separate is inherently unequal and texts that are produced by your Disabled Student Services Office for your blind students lack the navigation, structural information and features to be found on the Kindle and in its contents and cannot constitute meaningful participation in this program.

Because e-books, as zeros and ones, are not inherently visual, aural or tactile, they offer individuals the opportunity to access content through whatever method(s) are accessible to them.  Accessible e-book readers create the opportunity for the first time for blind and visually-impaired students to have access to the same content, in the same manner, with the same features and at the same time as sighted students.

This means that a blind student’s achievement could, finally, be primarily determined by her intellectual and creative abilities and work ethic, rather than impinged upon by unnecessary barriers relating to lack of sight.  Thus, not only do we have no objection to the Kindle once its controls are accessible, but we would eagerly embrace it. 

Members of our Reading Rights Coalition will be addressing this issue aggressively and, where possible, in cooperation with, rather than as adversaries to, the educational institutions.  Recently, Amazon announced on its blog a vague and indeterminate promise to work on making the Kindle controls accessible, bereft of timeline or details.  It is our understanding that whatever plans may exist, they do not include having accessible controls for the Kindle DX in time for its introduction on your campus in the fall.  This is powerful technology, and the distribution of an inaccessible e-book technology that aggravates a gratuitous competitive inequality is completely unacceptable.

The inaccessibility of the Kindle does not result from the absence of existing technology to make the Kindle accessible.  The inaccessibility of the Kindle is entirely the product of Amazon’s well-documented lack of interest in providing e-books that are accessible to people who are blind and visually-impaired.  We encouraged Amazon to make the Kindle controls accessible, beginning with a meeting more than 15 months ago with the Kindle product manager and other officials at Amazon. 

Since that time, counsel for one of our Reading Rights Coalition members has repeatedly warned Amazon that if it entered the textbook market without accessible controls it would be exposing its institutional customers to substantial liability.  We did not and do not understand a market plan that involves exposing one’s customers to lawsuits.  Nonetheless, Amazon plunged ahead to develop the Kindle 2 and now the Kindle DX before starting a serious effort to make the device accessible. 

When educational institutions insist on accessibility, accessibility happens. When iTunes U was inaccessible and the Massachusetts Attorney General and the undersigned demanded that Apple make that service accessible, it resulted in an accessible iTunes and an accessible iPod, within three months after the under- signed wrote Apple’s 257 university partners to apprise them of the accessibility issue.  You now have a similar opportunity to effect this even more momentous positive change. 

We recognize that the cost of print textbooks and environmental sustainability, among other reasons, make e-textbooks extraordinarily desirable for your students. If you hold the line on accessibility, competitive market forces will come into play that will enable you to provide all of your student’s equal access to e-books under the law.  But unless you insist on accessibility, no vendor will bother to provide it. 

Attached are guidelines we will soon be distributing to colleges, universities and college bookstores to encourage them to demand accessibility from e-book vendors.  I have also attached a resolution recently passed by the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind, which includes the state agency for Ohio, urging institutions of higher education to insist that the e-book readers and e-books they offer are accessible and noting the legal reasons for doing so.

Because the announcement of this pilot project comes less than four months before the commencement of the fall semester, any meeting to discuss a possible resolution of this matter, with or without Amazon, must be scheduled as soon as possible.  The blindness and cross-disability groups in this Reading Rights Coalition are not willing to compromise their options by delay.  Accordingly, if you wish to discuss this further, please contact the undersigned on or before the close of business on May 15.  I will be traveling to and on the West Coast May 14 or 15, so on those two days, a message to my e-mail, dfg@browngold.com or a call to my cell phone, 410-218-8537, might be best.

Very truly yours,

Daniel F. Goldstein on behalf of
The Reading Rights Coalition

DFG/tt
Enclosures
cc:        Jeanine Arden Ornt, Esq. (jeanine.ornt@case.edu)
David Zapolsky, Esq. (zapolsky@amazon.com)

Original file attached.

May 22, 2009

The Reading Rights Coalition
c/o Daniel F. Goldstein, Esq.
Brown Goldstein Levy
120 East Baltimore Street, Suite 1700
Baltimore, MD 21202

Dear Mr. Goldstein:

This is in response to The Reading Rights Coalition's concerns about Case Western Reserve University's pilot program with Amazon to have a small group ofstudents use the Kindle product. I understand the Coalition's concerns and applaud its desire to promote the rights of blind and visually impaired students.

Please understand that the University likewise is conunitted to helping those same students that are a part of our community. This is a pilot program designed to help determine the strengths and weaknesses of making Kindle available to our students. This program includes having our Student Services Office assist any student in this pilot group who needs a reasonable accommodation. My understanding is that Amazon also is currently working on improvements that will make Kindle more accessible to blind and visually impaired students.

Again, thank you for your letter and I hope that this sufficiently addresses your concerns.

Sincerely,

Jeanine Arden-Ornt
Vice President and General Counsel

W.A. "Bud" Baeslack, III
Provost and Executive Vice President

Original file attached.

June 9, 2009

VIA E-MAIL: jeanine.ornt@case.edu
AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
Jeanine Arden-Ornt
Vice President and General Counsel
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio  44106-7020

Dear Ms. Arden-Ornt:

Your letter dated May 22, 2009 and postmarked June 2 arrived in yesterday’s mail.  We appreciate the response, but must advise you that it does not sufficiently address our concerns.  However, before pursuing legal avenues, either in court or with the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and/or Department of Justice, we are certainly willing to discuss this matter with you further, provided that we can do so with sufficient dispatch that it will not prejudice our ability to obtain relief before the beginning of the fall semester.

The most capable Student Services Office at any college in the United States does not and cannot give its blind students an experience equivalent to the experience the Kindle DX will provide to the sighted student.  Publishers simply do not supply electronic files in a timely fashion, forcing blind students to wait weeks or months after classes start before they can get the textbooks.  As a result, a blind student must decide what classes to take months in advance with no prospect of adding or dropping early in the semester, if she is to have any hope of receiving the books for her courses.  Publishers also often provide their texts in inaccessible formats, without navigation features.  When this occurs, the Student Services Office is left to scan and OCR a print copy that contains conversion errors, lacks the structural data that would permit navigation (going to page 9, chapter 9 or footnote 9) and lacks reading order when there are columns and sidebars, among other deficits.  None of the additional features available with the Amazon Kindle DX are available through these electronic formats.  By contrast, the Amazon Kindle DX offers a variety of features a Student Services Office cannot provide:  instant (within 60 seconds) remote access to new materials, complete navigability, bookmarking, annotating and the opportunity to instantly look in the dictionary or Wikipedia for any unfamiliar term, as well as a free web browser.  As detailed in my May 9th letter to you, the Amazon Kindle DX does not offer that same experience to blind students.  Thus, the use by sighted students of the Kindle DX will immediately widen the competitive gap between blind and sighted students.  By contrast, if the Kindle DX were accessible to blind students, then, for the very first time, blind and sighted students would have the same reading experience and be operating on an equal basis.  The good news, after all, about the Kindle DX is that textbook content is accessible and superior.  It is only the user interface on the device that produces inaccessibility and therefore needs to be addressed.

The intent of any pilot program for new technology, as we understand it, is to determine the utility of a product.  If the pilot program is a success, then the Kindle DX can be expected to spread rapidly to colleges and even K-12 schools across the country, worsening the lot of blind students everywhere.  The arc is a familiar one:  as new applications are developed for the Kindle, the task of retrofitting to make the Kindle accessible will become more complex, time-consuming and costly.  At the same time, as devices made by competitors offer new features, Amazon will have to devote engineering time to improving its product quickly, diverting resources away from making the device accessible and delaying the introduction of the accessible product. 

The National Federation of the Blind met with Amazon more than a year ago, in February 2008, and explained the steps necessary to make the Kindle accessible, and advised them of the companies with the experience and capacity to address the issue.  More than a year passed before Amazon took any steps to follow up on this information, while it devoted substantial resources to developing the other features of the Kindle DX.  And, indeed, because Amazon is not a charitable institution, but a profit-making one, there is no reason why it would do so, as long as its institutional customers will accept an inaccessible solution.

By contrast, when colleges and universities have met their responsibilities under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, change comes quickly.  For years, colleges and universities across the United States bought inaccessible course management software, principally Blackboard.  When the Cal State system said it would not qualify Blackboard as a bidder because of its inaccessibility, the accessible Blackboard 9.0 appeared very quickly. 

Amazon has made only a vague promise to make the Kindle accessible in a fashion and at a time yet to be determined.  We invite you to be our colleague in ensuring that all of your students and faculty receive equal access to information and the great benefits that Case Western Reserve has to offer by telling Amazon that, whether as a pilot program or otherwise, Case Western will wait for the accessible Kindle DX, thus hastening its reality.   

Please let me know promptly if you wish to discuss this further.  Again, because we do not wish to prejudice our ability to seek relief before the beginning of the fall semester, we hope to talk with you as soon as possible.

Very truly yours,

Daniel F. Goldstein on behalf of
The Reading Rights Coalition

DFG/ch
cc:        David A. Zapolsky, Esq.

Original file attached.

June 19, 2009

The Reading Rights Coalition
c/o Daniel F. Goldstein, Esq.
Brown Goldstein Levy
120 East Baltimore Street, Suite 1700
Baltimore, MD 21202
Re: Kindle DX

Dear Mr. Goldstein:

Thank you for your response of June 9, 2009.

Case Western Reserve University shares the Coalition's concerns about making textbooks accessible to all students. The University's Office of Educational Services for Students strives to meet the needs of all students, including blind students, and has been very successful in empowering them to meet their full potential.

While the University understands the Coalition's concerns about the Kindle DX product, it is important to recognize that this is a very limited research pilot program designed for evaluation purposes. Amazon also has indicated that it is working to make this product fully accessible to blind students, and the University's hope is that this pilot program will help with that endeavor.

I appreciate that this is not the response the Coalition is seeking, but I hope that upon further consideration, the Coalition will come to the same conclusion as the University.

Sincerely,

Jeanine Arden-Ornt
Vice President and General Counsel

Original file attached.

Declaration of Leslie Penko

Re: Case Western Reserve University/Kindle DX

I, Leslie Penko, declare as follows:

1. The facts in this declaration are based upon my personal knowledge. If called
to testify, I could testify competently to the facts described in this declaration.
2, My name is Leslie Penko.
3. I live in Euclid, Ohio.
4, I am a member of the National Federation of the Blind.
5. I am legally blind.
6, I graduated from Case Western Reserve University in May 2009 with a Master of Arts in Social Science Administration.
7. I am currently completing my licensing exams and intend to pursue a career as a counselor,
8. Prior to attending Case Western, I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, with a minor in Gender Studies, from the University of Notre Dame,
9. I started the Social Science Administration program (MSSA) at Case Western in the fall of 2007, The MSSA program at Case is designed to prepare students for advanced social work practice in a variety of settings, Most of the courses in the program required a combination of assigned textbooks and handouts.
10. Because I am blind, I cannot read print and require text-to-speech or audio to access text. Specifically, I read electronic versions of text on my computer with automated text-to-speech software that "reads aloud" the text. Alternatively, I listen to audio books or other human voice recordings on a CO or cassette.
11. Prior to starting the MSSA program at Case Western, I met with Case Western's Disability Resources Office (DRO) to discuss the accommodations for textbooks and reading material the DRO could offer me, A DRO representative explained that to obtain my books in accessible fonnats, I would need to provide a textbook list for each class to the DROas early as possible, Once received, the DRO
would attempt to locate an audio recording of the textbook through Recordings for the Blind& Dyslexic (RFB&D), If not available, the DRO would contact me and ask me to purchase the print textbooks and bringthemto the DRO, where the DRO would scan each page on a machine, and then use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to convertthe scans into text files that I could read usingtext-to-speech software on my computer 01' Audio Port.
12. Once I started classes and obtained my readinglists, however, 1quickly realized that Case Western's DRO process would not be workable forme, It was clear that DRO's process would take an inordinate amount of time to handle the volume of reading materialI was assigned. I was also aware that the DRO is a small office that provides services to all students with disabilities, and feared that 1would not receive my materials all time. Therefore, during the two years I studied at Case Western, I used my own scanner and software to scan all of my textbooks and reading material myself. Doing so offered me the flexibility of selecting the chapters I needed to read for class and the assurance that I was in complete control ofmy reading material. However, the burdens of doing so, and the inherent shortcomings of scanned materials, severely impacted my experience as a student.
13. I obtained audio recordings of my textbooks through Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D) when I could. However, the vast majority of my textbooks and assigned readings, were not directly available in an accessible format. For those books, I scanned the assigned material, page-by-page, and converted it into text using OCR software so that I could read the material on my computer or Audio Port. 1 had, on average, 100,- 300 pages of reading per week. With each page taking 30 to 40 seconds to scan,1spent 20 hours a week scanning my reading material throughout grad school while maintaining my status as a full time student, participating in internships, and trying to read and study for my classes.
14. Where I could, 1 would multitask, by reading pages as they Were scanned. Sometimes, admittedly, 1 became overwhelmed with the amount of reading material to scan and skipped my reading altogether. At those times, in particular, I wished I had the opportunity to simply pick up the assigned reading and skim through it, like my sighted classmates could.
15. Because converting a print book to text using OCR software is an approximation of the print experience and not a perfect process, oftentimes the quality of the scanned material had errors, like exclamation marks or numbers in the middle of words, that made it difficult or impossible to read. As a result, I would often skip over pages that 1could not read and simply miss out on that material. Moreover, scanned books lack structural markers and navigation, making it difficult 01' impossible to find page numbers, 01' select a particular chapter.
16. Though 1 graduated with my MSSA on time and performed well academically, the stress and time involved in obtaining comparable access to the reading materials that my sighted classmates had at their fingertips was profound.
17. The opportunity to have instant access to electronic textbooks with text-to-speech, free of errors and complete with structural and chapter mark-ups, is difficult for me to fathom, To be able to simply purchase a textbook for class, pick it up and start reading my assignment, to be able to read on the bus or on the go rather than tied to my computer and scanner, like my sighted classmates can, would provide a level of equality I have never experienced. It is far beyond anything that I could offer myself or that the DRO at Case Western could offer blind students while I attended.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed this day of June 24, 2009, at Euclid, Ohio,

LESLIE PENKO

Original file attached.