Complaint filed against Pace University

May 7, 2009

VIA E-MAIL AND FIRST CLASS MAIL
Stephen J. Friedman (sfriedman@pace.edu)
President
Pace University
156 William Street
1 Pace Plaza – 5th Floor
New York, New York 10038

Dear President Friedman:

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 Pace 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 York 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 New York, 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: Stephen Brodsky (sbrodsky@pace.edu)
David Zapolsky, Esq. (zapolsky@amazon.com)

Original file attached.

Declaration of Christine Grassman

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

I, Christine Grassman, 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 Christine Grassman.
3. I live in Merrick, New York.
4. I am a member of the National Federation ofthe Blind.
5. I have been totally blind since birth.
6. I graduated from Pace University in May 2006 with a Master's degree in Education.
7. I work full-time as a teacher for the New YorkCity Department of Education where I prepare at-risk students to take the OED.examination.
8. Prior to becoming a teacher, I was a practicing attorney. I have a bachelor's degree from Princeton, and a law degree from Hofstra University. I am licensed to practice law in New York.
9. In 2004, I applied to and was accepted into the New York City Teaching Fellows program. This program trains professionals to become teachers in New York City's public schools. While working full-time as teachers, Fellows must pursue a Master's degree ill Education part time at select universities, including Pace University. Fellows must also commit to teaching for at least two years in at-risk schools. The program enrolled me in the Master's program at Pace University in the summer if 2004 and.rgraduated with my degree in May 2006.
10. My courses at Pace required textbooks and materials on subjects such as curriculum design, at-risk students in the classroom, and other topics related to teaching and education theory.
11. Because I am blind I cannot read print. My preferred reading format is Braille. However, because so few books and textbooks are available in Braille, and because the process of converting textbooks into Braille is time consuming, r often read books in an electronic text format using automated text-to-speech software that "reads aloud" thetext on my computer. Alternatively, I hire a reader to read the text of a print book to me or record it on a tape or CD so that r can listen to it later.
12. During my first year at Pace, I hired friends as readers to read aloud the assigned readings from my textbooks and record them on tapes or CDs. Juggling a fulltime teaching job, part-time graduate program, and two small children, while trotting around the city to get from work to school and home, I did not want to squander time or ,cede control over my reading material to the Disabled Student Services office at Pace. I preferred to rely on readers I know and trusted to provide me with the quality of reading r needed and submit the tapes in advance of the due dates for my reading assignments, sc I could assure I would be prepared for, class.
13. Audio recordings ofmy reading assignments are sufficient for me to review' small quantities of material that I only need to read through once. My second year at Pace, however, I had an increased volume of reading. I was also enrolled in a research course which would require in in-depth and repeated readings of the assigned textbooks. For these books, audio recordings would not provide the control, ability to go back and forth through the text, provide spellings, highlight and mark up passages, and other reading features I would need. Instead, 1needed accessible electronic formats of those textbooks.
14. Because 1 am an independent person who is used to doing things for herself, well before the course started, I contacted the publisher of the textbooks I needed directly and asked to purchase accessible electronic formats. The publisher told me that, while it may have electronic files of the textbooks I needed, I could not purchase them independently. Rather, the Office of Disability Services (ODS) at Pace University would have to submit a request on my behalf. Despite a subsequent call to the publisher from my academic advisor, confirming that I am blind and legitimately needed the textbooks for my classes, the publisher made it clear that it would not provide the books without a formal request submitted by Pace University.
15. Frustrated, I went to Pace's ODS, which is housed in, and is apart of, the Pace Counseling Center. The ODS informed me that before it could place a request on my behalf to the publisher for the books I needed, I would first have to submit medical proof of my disability and complete a disability registration form. Then, I would have to purchase the print textbooks at full price and provide the receipts to the office, Only after I had completed all of these steps, would the office request the electronic file from the publisher.
16. I felt humiliated and angry that I was forced to go to the Counseling Center, register and prove my disability, and relinquish control and independence over my reading material, simply to access the textbooks my sighted classmates already had, I could not understand why I had to jump through all these hoops and go through a separate system to read the assignments my classmates could acquire independently. After an extensive email campaign and a phone call or two with the Director of the Counseling Center, as well as correspondence with one of Pace's attorneys, it became clear that I had no other choice if I wanted to obtain an accessible format of the book. I provided medical documentation of my disability, purchased the print textbooks through Amazon.com and provided the receipt to the counseling center.
17. It took at least three weeks for the textbooks to arrive. By that time, I had already fallen significantly behind in my class. As a teacher, I expect my students to come to my classes fully prepared. I expect no less from myself as a student. Without the textbooks, however, I could not complete my reading assignments. I felt completely unprepared for class and was unable to participate intelligently in class discussions. I did not fully understand the lectures and discussions during class because I had not had an opportunity to read the assignments. I take education very seriously.
18. Although already behind, 1 fared little better with publisher's electronic files that I received through the ODS because these files were not fully accessible. Each section of the book was a separate file (one file for the front cover, one with the table of contents, etc.), forcing me to jump from file to file to locate my reading assignments. Moreover, it was very difficult to read the text within the files because the headings, page numbers, and other structural data were not identified. In addition, the reading order on the page did not function with my screen-access software, often resulting in a delayed voice or reading the text out of order. The experience was very frustrating and made it very difficult to read. I struggled through the rest of the class until graduation,
19. The ability to have instant and independent access to electronic textbooks accessible through text-to-speech, with all the structural markings in place, the ability to highlight and mark up passages, to navigate the chapter headings and structural markers in short, to have the same reading experience and access to textbooks as my sighted peers - is something that, as a blind person living in a print era, I have never had. Moreover, in my experience, Pace University simply cannot offer its blind students instant, independent access through alternate formats.

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

Executed this 25th day of June, 2009, at Merrick, New York.

CHRISTINE GRASSMAN

Original file attached.