[Athen] Accessible Textbook Platforms? (long)

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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> on behalf of via athen-list <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 4:34:26 PM
To: 'Deborah Armstrong' <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>; 'Access Technology Higher Education Network' <athen-list at u.washington.edu>; 'Ali Steenis' <ali.steenis at bellevuecollege.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible Textbook Platforms? (long)

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Hi,

Great comments from DeBee. I have been saying for a long time that a university should offer course credit for students with disabilities around learning Assistive Technology and Applications used at the University. I have run such independent studies for individual students, and they got 2 credits. Once completed, they had more of the skills they needed to be successful. IMO every student with a disability that uses AT should take such a course in their first year. Of course, this is difficult because it needs to be specialized. It also means identifying the right technology for that individual. Hopefully, the student would then be able to explore solutions on their own and identify support groups to help solve the issues they will face throughout their lives.

Best
George

Best
George


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Deborah Armstrong via athen-list
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 9:47 AM
To: Ali Steenis <ali.steenis at bellevuecollege.edu>; Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible Textbook Platforms? (long)

What I  want to say about this, is  more opinion than fact.
Definitely spend some time with George’s epub tests.
As a screen reader user I’ve found BryteWave/RedShelf (I think they are the same--  easy to use. Also VitalSource. I also can cope with Adobe Digital Edditions but wish it showed more of a book’s structure to the screen reader user. George likes Thorium which can read unprotected EPUB books.
I have found both the eBook platforms integrated in to labs from Pearson and McGraw-Hill work well for me also.
But this has not been the experience of many of my students. In cases of blind and low-vision users, it seems they don’t have the advanced screen reader skills to work effectively with these platforms. They get lost in the toolbars, sidebars, footers and the like. You need a firm grasp of jumping to,  in and around html elements to be successful with these platforms.
Another issue is how these platforms want to show you a little section at a time, so you are always trying to locate the next button or the table of contents button. Learning to use bookmarks for web navigation can help there.
Sometimes, if you can get the book in a reasonable format and convert it to something the student knows, like Word, that student will be more successful.
But Word is not my favorite platform for reading either. For one thing, it’s a word processor, so the wrong keypress can modify the document. Also Word will insert soft page breaks, messing up pagination.
The first thing I do if I have a textbook converted to Word is to save it as HTMl, making it accessible and read-only.
The biggest problem I think our non-techie students have is the constant requirement to change reading platforms. One semester it’s Pearson. Next it is VitalSource or RedShelf.  Next it’s some weird publisher-supplied platform that none of the DSS staff has ever heard of. And then, the instructor puts his own book in google docs, or it’s in libretext, Openstaxor Merlot or someplace else on OER commons.
This is particularly a big deal for my learning disabled students. Having to switch to and master a new platform is very stressful even though, unlike blind students, they can use a mouse.
So the biggest barrier I think is not the platforms, though not all are accessible of course, but the mastery of tech skills.
For one recent example, one of my blind students complained his book was inaccessible. It was an OER textbook on the Libretext platform. He went to the platform, arrowed down to “download PDF” selected that, and presto, an inaccessible PDF appear. It was over 500 pages, so asking JAWS to OCR it would not have been a fun experience.
Next he pulled up the page on his iPhone. Again he did “download PDF” knowing it would appear in Apple books. It did, but it was still just an image.
I went to the platform scrolled past “download PDF” wen to an unlabeled button and chose it.
The table of contents appears, I selected various sections, opening each in a different tab. The book was fully accessible after all, and even included some picture descriptions. It was the button to pull up the table of contents and the accessible text-based HTML view of the book that was inaccessible;  One lousy little button was the only inaccessible thing!
My student’s problem was impatience!

A couple of tips: be sure to look for “text view” or some other clue that when an image of a page is displayed, the platform also has a way to read the book as text. For example, a Pearson lab I used showed the book as page images. I was poking around looking for some study aids, when I found a link labeled “accessible resources”. When I chose it, the full text of the book appeared, and the link to it was outside of the paywall!!! So you really have to explore and poke around before you determine that the thing is not accessible even when the default presentation of an eBook might be.
If your book has images and your student is blind, teach them to use AI to get good descriptions. Sure, AI hallucinates, but we can hallucinate too when listening to a human describe. With the latest CoPilot app, you can actually share your screen and chat with it voice-to voice, asking it to tell you about a graph; it will even tell you to scroll up or down so it can “see” the image better. JAWS has Picture Smart and there are several NVDA add-ons utilizing AI for image description.
Consider too, if your student prefers a device for reading and if you can extract the book from the publisher, that they might be happier reading it on their phone, in Kurzweil 3000 or 1000, on a Victor reader stream, or a Braille display. One of my long-term sighted students is in love with his Plextalk player, which these days is pretty deprecated. I cannot always format a book for his player, but I try!
Some students simply cannot look at a book for long periods, but they can see, and we should respect that they want to use their vision. Maybe all they need is for you to point out the “read out loud” button in the platform and that makes it accessible for that student, even though it is generally considered an inaccessible platform. Maybe they should buy or rent the electronic version on Amazon and have Alexa read it to them while they look at specific sections in their browser or their Amazon device. I’ve rented textbooks on my Fire tablet and read them without trouble and saved a lot of money too. But if it is stuck inside an online platform, and a power user of a screen reader can access it, then I’d generally call that platform accessible.
Remember too, that if there is a text view, all those apps and browser extensions that “read the web” with synthesized speech are useful for low-vision and learning disabled students.
For English and humanities, especially you can often borrow the book from a local library so any student majoring in these subjects should procure many library cards.
As a lover of science fiction and someone who uses a Fire tablet, and borrows tons of eBooks from libraries, I have a lot less trouble with diverse reading platforms than either my blind or learning disabled students. The desire to fuel my reading addiction has forced my screen reader competence in to a higher plane, because if I don’t have something to read always, I’m in serious withdrawal. But the vast majority of students I serve dislike reading, which already reduces their ability to work with eBooks wherever they are located. “If you like horror flicks”, I tell them, “Read some Stephen King over the summer using your library card and don’t wait to master online platforms until you have to”.

 --Debee
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