[Athen] AltFormat Survey

[Russell Solowoniuk]

Hi Ron and all,

I'm getting to this a bit late, and, some of our challenges have already been touched on, but here are a few...

1. We have had publishers, mainly Cambridge, tell us that their books are available through Bookshare, so they will not provide us with publisher files.  We are located in Canada, so many of the textbooks are not available to us, although I did have someone from Bookshare tell me that they might be able to make some of those textbooks available to us.  Many of our students use Read and Write Gold, and I'm not sure how well RWG works with Bookshare files... can anyone comment on this?

2. Publishers who refuse to provide electronic files.  These include Penguin, Waveland Press, Random House, and some other smaller publishers.

3. Publishers who still insist on sending files on CD... John Wiley & Sons US and Pearson UK... this greatly increases the turnaround time to get files into the hands of students.

4. Publishers putting out new editions of their textbooks every year or two, with only minor changes to the content.

5. Instructors waiting till the last minute to choose which textbooks they will use for their course.

Hope this is helpful.

Thanks,

Russell


Russell Solowoniuk
AT Educational Assistant, Services to Students with Disabilities
MacEwan University
7-198 D4, 10700-104 Ave.
Edmonton, AB  T5J 4S2
E: solowoniukr at macewan.ca
T:  780-497-5826
F:  780-497-4018
macewan.ca
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>>> "Ron Stewart" <ron at altformatsolutions.com> 4/2/2014 8:06 AM >>>

Good morning all I have been asked to develop a survey of the biggest
challenges in the AltFormat space.  Can you send me what you find to be the
"pain points" in the provision and delivery of your alt format obligations I
will work with my team to develop a survey that will be distributed in the
coming months.

 

Ron Stewart

 

****************************************************************************
***

Ron Stewart

Managing Consultant

Altformat Solutions LLC

 

8300 West Weller St

Yorktown, IN 47396

Mobile: 609 213-2190

Fax: 765 405-1484

 

ron at altformatsolutions.com 

www.altformatsolutions.com