From: Mark Pease
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: O'Reilly books for the blind
Tim,
I have been using "Learning Perl" as the text for class that I teach, and I have situation that I'm not sure how to handle, and I was hoping the you may have a solution.
In an up coming class, I have a blind person that would like to attend. I have converted my class slides/notes to HTML, and she will be able to follow what I'm talking about using lynx. I don't know how I will handle the class readings from the book.
Does O'Reilly have brail version its books? Is the content available as ASCII text? I do have the Perl man pages online, and I can direct her to the proper page, but If you have some product that we could purchase, we would like it better.
I hope you can help!
Mark.
Mark,
Lenny Muellner, one of our production tools gurus, has been managing our "books for the blind" program for years. Here's what he has to say on the subject:
Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic in Princeton New Jersey has many of our popular titles in forms that are accessible to blind users; the last time I checked, Learning Perl had been requested but was not yet converted. You can call them at 1-800-221-4792 and ask them what the current status of the book is. If it's not available and they're not about to make it available, then this is our policy: we ask that the disabled person FAX to my attention a certification of their disability from a physician or recognized institution for the blind (FAX here is 617 661 1116); we can provide an ascii version of the text provided that the person concerned agrees to use it for their own purposes and not to share it with anyone else. This sort of thing is standard practice--I mean the request for certification--and we've helped lots of blind programmers this way around the world. But RFBD is a terrific organization, and we don't want to compete with them, so if you check first and then, if necessary, put me in touch with the individual blind user (not the teacher), I'll be glad to help out fast.
Lenny
