June 28, 2002

Good morning, thank you for joining us today. We are here this morning to examine a critical piece of legislation - S.2246, the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act (IMAA) - that will literally grant blind and visually impaired students the ability to pursue their studies at the same time as their sighted classmates.

Critical laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) clearly establish the principal that people with disabilities have the right to the same public accommodations granted to those without disabilities.

While the ADA and IDEA clearly call for blind and visually-impaired students to have timely access to the same textbooks their sighted classmates use in the Braille format they need in order to read, sadly, this is often not the case. Far too often, blind and visually impaired students must now wait months for their local school districts to convert their textbooks into the Braille format they require.

However, important laws such as the ADA and IDEA do not specify exactly how we actually achieve equality in these accommodations. As I learned recently in efforts to enact national election reform legislation, there is a big difference between simply stating that all people, regardless of disability, are entitled to equal treatment and actually enacting policies that ensure that this commendable goal is truly reached. The Instructional Materials Accessibility Act seeks to bridge this gap.

At the same time blind and visually-impaired students face interminable waits for their school textbooks to arrive in Braille, the school districts in which they live often face exorbitant costs producing these conversions.

As we will hear from some of our witnesses this morning, those blind and visually-impaired students forced to wait long periods for their school materials in Braille face unfair impediments to their ability to earn an education. Clearly, something needs to be done to better enable students with disabilities to access the instructional materials they need.

To combat the problems presented by the often difficult and costly Braille conversion process, 26 states have passed laws requiring publishers to provide a copy of textbooks in an electronic format to aid in Braille conversion. And while the efforts of these states are laudable, the problem lies in the fact that these many laws do not require the use of the SAME electronic format for Braille conversion. Alarmingly, there is currently NO uniform electronic format available nationwide to ease the transcription of instructional materials into Braille and other alternative formats.

No one is well served when we force blind and visually-impaired students to unfairly wait for the opportunity to learn or when we force publishers to create multiple electronic file formats for the exact same school textbooks. The Instructional Materials Accessibility Act offers a significant leap forward for both members of the blind community and those that produce instructional materials for their use.

Any answer to the problems presented by the difficulty of Braille conversion must be prepared to answer two questions. First, how can we ensure that blind and visually-impaired students receive the essential school materials in the Braille or alternative format they require at the same time as their sighted classmates? Secondly, how can we better enable our nation's schools to meet the instructional material needs of their blind and visually-impaired students? The Instructional Material Accessability Act seeks to answer both of these important questions.

In order to best expedite the Braille conversion process, the IMAA will mandate the creation of ONE uniform electronic file format that will greatly ease the often-laborious Braille translation process. The creation of a single format will not only ease the burden placed on publishers by the multiple state laws requiring different electronic files, it will also ease considerably the Braille conversion process by allowing those that prepare instructional materials in alternative formats to rely on a single conversion method.

Secondly, the IMAA will create the National Instructional Materials Access Center to serve as a repository for these electronic formats so that can quickly and efficiently be disseminated to local school districts. With enactment of the IMAA, school districts will simply need to reach out to the National Instructional Materials Access Center to obtain the school materials required by their students in the uniform electronic file provided by publishers.

Lastly, the IMAA will provide critical funding to assist state and local educational agencies effectively convert the newly created electronic files into Braille so that blind and visually impaired students have access to the same textbooks their sighted classmates are using.

I want to especially thank the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), and the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) for their willingness to come together to help produce this important legislation. I am particularly pleased that we will soon hear from the respective leaders of two of these organizations, Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of the AAP and Dr. Marc Maurer of the NFB. It is largely because of their dedication to this effort that we are here today.

Lastly, I want to thank Representatives Tom Petri (R-WI) and George Miller (D-CA), the primary sponsors of the IMAA in the House of Representatives. I look forward to continuing to work with my House colleagues to ensure that this critically important legislation becomes law this year.

We often hear today the pledge that we will leave no child behind. To accomplish this laudable goal we must provide all children with the resources they require to succeed in school without regard to the disabilities that some students face. May I suggest that we also make every effort to ensure that we leave no blind child behind by passing the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act.

Multimedia:
View photos from the hearing