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Funding and governance of library and information services for visually impaired people: international case studies

Part2:Country studies

Australia

Publishers'involvement

CAUL notes that publishers provide files electronically in Word or PDF for text books.

Deakin University’s experience with publishers for the supply of accessible files during 2006 proved that the main problem was not with the response time or with the provision of a text file but with the quality of the file. In almost all cases, it notes, the text file provided did not contain any page numbers so that the student would not be able to reference as is necessary with any assignment where quotes are lifted from the text. Also some files could not be opened because they had been created on an incompatible application like QUARK. On a few occasions incomplete files were sent.

Most publishers providing the files also required a licence agreement to be signed and exactly who should sign such agreements became problematic.

The Library decided to go back to converting material that is not commercially available for itself, in the light of the problems it has been having with quality of the files it has been receiving and to a lesser degree to the time taken to supply. There are also problems with the requirement to sign a licence agreement. It would, however, prefer material to be readily available on a commercial basis.