[Web4lib] Accessibiity of Google Books

[Graczyk, William]

Ever since I heard about the Google mass digitization project in
December, 2004, I have been speculating (and, I admit, boring a lot of
other people with my speculations) about what it might mean for blind
people. I thought that in some utopia the project could possibly give
them universal access to the world's literature. The University of
Michigan has now digitized over one million of its books. I noticed on
one of their blogs just now that they have figured out a way to make all
million-plus volumes already scanned available to people with visual
handicaps who can use a screen reader. Here is how they do it:
"Access for students with visual impairments. For many years, students
with disabilities could request to have books digitized by the UM Office
of Services for Students with Disabilities (OSSD). Many universities
have similar services. The students could then use the digitized books
with screen readers such as JAWS. This is explicitly allowed under
section 121 of U.S. Copyright law:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#121
<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html> 
We now have a system in place for students with visual impairments to
use MBooks [i.e. the digitized collection] in much the same way. Once a
student registers with OSSD, any time she checks out a book already
digitized by Google, she will automatically receive an email with a URL.
Once the student selects the link, she is asked to login. The system
checks whether the student is registered with OSSD as part of this
program, and whether she has checked out this particular book. If the
student passes both of those tests, she will get access to the entire
full-text of the book, whether it is in copyright or not, in an
interface that is optimized for use with screen readers.
Currently, this system is available to UM students with visual
impairments. We are investigating the possibility of including students
with learning disabilities as well." 
See: http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/blt/
under the dates of May 20 and May 15, 2008
If you can expose the content with JAWS, can you make a DAISY digital
talking book out of it, with synthesized speech? Can you use some of the
internal hyperlinks Google sometimes creates to create the navigation
structure of a DAISY-formatted book?
If you can allow University of Michigan students to use the collection,
can you allow others access too, perhaps through a password protection
system administered by a state library for the blind, as many of them
administer Overdrive access or access to the National Library Service's
BARD project that makes available downloadable Braille and digital
talking books?
Michigan exposes out-of-copyright titles through an Open Archives
Interface to record harvesting by the University of Chicago Library.
Could this be done for works in copyright for students at the University
of Chicago, or anywhere else, as it is done for students at the
University of Michigan? Lots of questions, not many answers, but there
are now more than a million books that some blind people at the
University of Michigan have free and instant access to.
Bill Graczyk
wgracz at milwaukee.gov
Wisconsin Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
http://dpi.wi.gov/rll/wrlbph/index.html