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Recommendations 

I. The Legislature should authorize the agency to establish up to three demonstration projects to investigate the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of developing accessible electronic textbooks in the priority shown:

A. First Priority:

1. A directly accessible CD-ROM textbook which could be used without assistive technology by students who are blind or who have visual or other disabilities.

2. Educational materials on the World Wide Web, the Internet, or other on-line services which are fully accessible to students who are blind or who have visual or other disabilities.

B. Second Priority: A CD-ROM textbook which could be used along with assistive technology to provide important information to students who are blind or who have visual or other disabilities.

II. The Legislature should authorize the agency to establish a consortium of textbook publishers, media accessibility researchers, consumer advocates, software and hardware developers, Internet and on-line service providers, educators, community members and representatives of the Texas Education Agency to:

A. Review the progress of the demonstration projects and provide feedback to the Agency. Upon completion of the demonstration projects, the consortium would make recommendations to the Agency on how to expand the availability of accessible electronic textbooks in future textbook adoptions.

B. Study the need for standards for the selection, modification and development of electronic textbooks to make them accessible to students with visual impairment or blindness.

C. Make specific recommendations on standards if needed.

Demonstration projects would enable the Agency to document, monitor, and analyze the various stages of production prior to making recommendations for publisher, agency or legislative action. Several variables and unknowns exist, including the time frame needed to provide the redundancy and accessibility features described in this report and the development and production costs required to develop these features. A study of the extent to which accessible electronic textbooks would actually be used could be part of a cost benefit analysis.

Demonstration projects could provide the agency with an assessment of procedures, adaptations, costs, and benefits associated with producing electronic textbooks accessible to students with visual impairment or blindness.

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Last Revision: July 30, 2002