Complaint filed against Princeton University

May 7, 2009

VIA FACSIMILE (609) 258-1615
AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
Shirley Tilghman
President
Office of the President
Princeton University
1 Nassau Hall Princeton, New Jersey 08544

Dear President Tilghman:

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 Princeton 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 New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

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 New Jersey, 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: Peter M. McDonough, Esq (via facsimile (609) 258-2502)
David Zapolsky, Esq. (zapolsky@amazon.com)

Original file attached.

Princeton University Office of General Counsel
120 Alexander Street, 2nd Floor
Princeton, New Jersey 08540-7102
Tel: (609) 258-2500
Fax: (609) 258-2502

May 14, 2009

Daniel F. Goldstein
Brown Goldstein Levy LLP
120 E. Baltimore Street - Suite 1700
Baltimore, MD 21202-6701
Re: Kindle DX

Dear Mr. Goldstein:

Thank you for your letter of May 7, 2009, to President Tilghman, which was referred to me. I have reviewed your letter with staff in our office ofInformation Technology and would like to offer the following clarifications. Princeton University has no control over or input into the design ofAmazon's Kindle DX. To the extent that your concern relates to the design and features ofthe Kindle DX, discussions in that regard need to be with Amazon directly. To the extent that you have a concern about the accessibility ofPrinceton University course materials through Kindle DX, I hope the following information will be of assistance. Princeton is committed to ensuring equal access to students with disabilities, in accordance with federal and state law, and makes course materials available in appropriate formats and/or media for students. Princeton plans to utilize the Kindle DX on a trial basis in three courses during fall semester 2009. The expected student enrollment for these three courses is a total of40 students. Of particular significance to your apparent concern, the pilot program is structured to enable any student who does not wish to use a Kindle DX to opt out and receive the materials in another format.

The materials that will be provided through the Kindle DX are primarily those materials usually made available through what are known as library "reserves," which are sometimes printed copies and sometimes electronic documents. Just as we make library reserves accessible to students with a disability now, we would do so for any student with a disability who enrolled in one ofthe pilot courses for next fall.

To the extent that further contact with Princeton University is necessary, please use this office as your contact point.

Very truly ours,
Hannah S. Ross
University Counsel
HSR/si
cc: Shirley M. Tilghman
Peter G. McDonough
David A. Zapolsky (Amazon.com)

Original file attached.

May 20, 2009

VIA E-MAIL AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
Hannah S. Ross
Office of General Counsel
120 Alexander Street
2nd Floor
Princeton, New Jersey 08540-7102

Re: Princeton University

Dear Ms. Ross:

Thank you for your letter of May 14, 2009. In response, I offer the following clarifications, which I hope will aid your understanding of our legal position and inform Princeton’s decision whether to continue with the Kindle DX pilot as currently planned.

First, both federal and state laws obligate Princeton University, not Amazon, to ensure that its disabled students and faculty have equal access to the programs, activities, benefits, and services Princeton offers to its non-disabled patrons. Specifically, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, place responsibility on the institution that offers the program, activity, service or benefit – in this case, the provision of a Kindle DX and its attendant benefits to students and faculty – to ensure that disabled students and faculty can participate.

Whether Princeton has control over or input into Amazon’s design of the Kindle DX is irrelevant to Princeton’s legal obligations to provide equal access to its disabled students and faculty. If Kindle DX’s had a history of occasionally exploding, resulting in injuries to student users, I have no doubt that Princeton would recognize an ethical and legal obligation not to use such devices in a pilot program. The obligation not to undertake a program that will discriminate against your disabled students is no less Princeton’s responsibility.

You assert both that Princeton is committed to equal access and that blind students will continue to have the same access to textual materials that they currently have. However, if the Kindle DX offered no significant advantages over the scanned-in and OCR’ed text offered by Princeton’s Office of Disabled Student Services, then you would simply offer this already created electronic text to all of your students, disabled or not, and have no reason to do a pilot program with the Kindle. Presumably, Kindle DX will be superior, offering instant download, mobile access, navigability, bookmarking, the ability to get instant definitions and annotate other features. If some or all of those features are not available to your blind students and faculty through DSS, then the access must be more accurately stated as separate but not equal.

In an effort to avoid litigation, we therefore urge Princeton to reconsider its participation in the Kindle DX pilot, unless and until the device is accessible to all students and faculty. If you have an interest in discussing this matter further, the leaders of the groups in this coalition are ready to meet with you and President Tilghman at your convenience within the next thirty days.

Very truly yours,

Daniel F. Goldstein on behalf of
The Reading Rights Coalition

DFG/tt
cc: Shirley M. Tilghman, President
Bruce Greenberg, Esq.
David A. Zapolsky, Esq.

Original file attached.

Declaration of Joanna Foster

Re: Princeton University/Kindle DX

I, Joanna Foster, 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 Joanna Foster.
3. I live in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.
4. I am graduated from Princeton University in May 2008 with a major in ecology and evolutionary biology.
5. I intend to pursue a career in journalism with a focus on science, health and environmental reporting, In the fall of 2009, I will begin a Master's degree through the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHErP) at New York University,
6. I am legally blind as a result of Stargardt's Disease. While I have some residual vision, I have little central vision and no depth perception. I cannot read standard print. To read, I require hooks in recorded audio or as electronic text that I can read using automated text-to-speech software on my computer or in an enlarged font.
7. I began my freshman year at Princeton in the fall of 2004. Before the first semester started, I met with Princeton's Office of Disability Services (ODS) office to explain my disability and the accommodations I would need, including all books in audio or electronic format and a copy of the print book so that I could enlarge diagrams.
8. The dean of the ODS told me that I should wait until the first day of class to receive the syllabi from my professors for each class and provide the syllabi and textbook lists to the ODS. Once received, the ODS would attempt to locate the book in an audio former through Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D), If the book was unavailable through RFB&D, as most books were, ODS would hire a reader to read the text of the books aloud and record the readings on cassette tapes. I would receive an email from ODS when the cassette tapes were ready. ODS was reluctant to begin the process oflocating or obtaining accessible copies of my books before classes began because, they said, professors often change their minds about which books they will assign before the start of class.
9. Throughout my freshman year, the cassette recordings ofmy books arrived weeks after my courses started and reading assignments were due. As a result, I simply could not complete my reading assignments. Where I could, I would ask friends to read the material too me. Without my books, however, I felt I was falling far behind in a competitive environment and course loads that required a significant volume ofreading. I felt I was at a complete disadvantage in a very competitive environment. About halfway through my first semester, I realized I could not keep up without better accommodations.
10. I went to the ODS office, often in tears, because I did not have my reading material and was falling behind. During my second semester freshman year, I was enrolled in Introduction to Molecular Biology, a required class for my major. I had not received the cassette tapes of my textbook well into the semester, and was forced to take the midterm exam without ever having had the textbook. I complained to the ODS office that this was unacceptable.
11. My junior year, a new Dean of the ODS office at Princeton was appointed, andprocess improved somewhat, though I still received books much later than my sighted peers. Under the new system, I would drop off my syllabi, as before. Princeton's ODS would then send the print textbooks to another university to be scanned and converted into electronic text, then returned to me on a CD that I could read using screenaccess software on my computer. Although this system moved much faster, I still received my books two weeks into the semester.
12. While the scanned books were an improvement over the audio, in that I could enlarge the screen and search for words or phrases, they lacked navigation structure and reading order. For example, if the scanned page had two columns of text, the screen access software would read across the two lines of the columns, making it difficult to read and understand.
13. Also, sometimes the quality of the scanned material was poor and contained conversion errors. I would often skip reading where the scanned quality was poor and contained conversion or navigation errors. Sometimes, I could find someone to read the text aloud to me. Other times, I would enlarge the text to a size that I could read. However, often, even if enlarged, the text was too grainy and faded for me to read. I can only sustain reading enlarged print for a short period of time, after which my eyes become fatigued, and I need text-to-speech or audio. It is also much slower for me to read enlarged print rather than through a text-to-speech or audio format. Nonetheless, because the scanned quality was often poor, I spent many additional hours slowly reading with my eyes.
14. Overall, as a blind student at Princeton, I felt I was at a significant disadvantage to my sighted peers because I did not have equal access to books. Sometimes, I would select my courses based on the availability of accessible textbooks, rathenthan my own interests, taking, for example, an English class on classics where I knew the books would likely be available through RFB&D, rather than a course with new textbooks or obscure reading materials.
15. The opportunity to have instant, portable access to my textbooks and course materials that I could read through text-to-speech would have revolutionized my undergraduate experience at Princeton. It would mean that as a blind student, one could have equal access to the books and materials as sighted classmates, closing the competitive gap I struggled with throughout my four years. This kind of equal access to books and materials is something that Princeton's ODS office simply cannot offer.

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 23, 2009, at Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.

JOANNA FOSTER

Original file attached.