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In my American Heritage dictionary, one of the definitions of interface is “a point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact.” As engineers, we work with a multitude of application interfaces, but another intersection interests me even more: the point where technology meets society.

Because I have a hearing impairment, I’m particularly alert to the ways that technology impacts disabilities. Thanks to a chance encounter with a professional working with vision-impaired elementary and secondary students, I discovered that an unlikely political battle is brewing over the issue of using XML to facilitate text-to-Braille translation.

More than 10 million visually impaired Americans cannot read the newspapers, books and magazines that the sighted take for granted. But translating print media to auditory or tactile forms is no easy task. Certified transcribers spend a year learning Braille, six months (with assistance) completing simple projects such as novels, and an additional year specializing in field-specific vocabularies for math, science or music. The production process itself is time-consuming and requires multiple iterations between transcriber and proofreader to complete, after which the Braille book is manufactured and distributed.

The advent of XML as a lingua franca for data exchange and meta-markup has created the potential to release books simultaneously in print, audio and Braille formats. The DAISY Consortium, for example, has collaborated with the W3C to avoid reinventing the wheel: The Digital Talking Book uses the publishers’ XML-formatted files to produce text-to-speech e-books, thus obviating the need for human readers.

Only one problem prevents the blind and dyslexic from quick access to the latest John Grisham: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. More than half of the 50,000-plus e-book titles (which use programs such as Adobe Acrobat to display the files) specifically lock out text-to-speech software. It’s not just the latest bestsellers that e-book publishers—citing piracy concerns—have denied to those who need e-books, but also many titles in the public domain. The American Foundation for the Blind has petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to exempt e-books from DMCA regulations, asserting that they fall under the fair-use provisions of the Act.

A related battle affects students at the nation’s elementary and secondary schools for the visually impaired. The IDEA legislation (Individuals with Disabilities Act) mandates that the visually impaired have the right to a quality education. Obtaining Braille versions of new textbooks in a timely manner is just one obstacle schools face when attempting to meet the mandate.

Nuances wreak havoc when it comes to transcribing textbooks to Braille: How best to convert graphics (description, bas-relief or tactile graphics?) Is an uppercase A a letter A or the first element in an alphabetical group? Resolving these issues takes time—time that IDEA says infringes on students’ rights. To further complicate matters, each state has its own standards for Braille textbooks. And, for some small states, the number of students who will use a given title may not make production cost-effective.

As with e-books, the widespread use of XML has made it possible to significantly automate the production of Braille textbooks. Again, working with the W3C, advocates at the American Foundation for the Blind’s Textbooks and Instructional Materials Solutions Forum have leveraged those efforts to leapfrog Braille production from ASCII files to the XML-driven 21st century. By writing specialized Document Type Definitions, Braille producers can use the same XML files that publishers use to drive typesetters to produce Braille texts.

The ultimate goal? To set a national standard. Sen. Dodd of Connecticut and Rep. Petri of Wisconsin introduced the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act of 2003. In addition to defining the format for publishers’ electronic files (codifying W3C XML standards) and requiring that all school districts receive federal funds to adopt the standard, the bill also establishes a clearinghouse for publishers and school districts. The bill passed the House, but the clearinghouse provisions were eliminated and the Senate is now considering the remaining provisions as part of a larger special-education funding bill.

Technology seldom advances in a vacuum. Often, resolving the interfaces between technology and society is more difficult than creating the technology itself. Write me directly at wkeuffel@acm.org, or post a message for all to read at www.sdmagazine.com.

(Thanks to Lorri Quigley of the Utah State Schools for the Deaf and Blind for “opening my eyes” to these issues. Many of the issues mentioned here are discussed at greater length in links listed at www.tsbvi.edu/textbooks/index.htm.)

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