Accessible materials, including textbooks, are essential to students' learning. At the time of this writing, no federal law requires that publishers provide textbooks in alternate formats. State laws are infrequent and problematic. A standardized (or national) file format for accessible textbooks has not been agreed upon. Some publishers are beginning to respond to requests for accessible texts ad hoc, but the time required to get them is often prohibitively long.
Students are generally allowed to register for any course for which they are qualified. Even though degree plans exist, students do not always follow them precisely. Coupled with short pre-registration periods, this creates little time to plan for, acquire, or produce accessible formats.
Textbooks change frequently, sometimes as often as every semester. Many departments/colleges have loose or no textbook adoption policies. This results in textbooks that are frequently adopted close to or after the first day of class, resulting in no lead-time to create accessible texts.
Instructors sometimes think that academic freedom is of prime concern when selecting text materials. In fact, academic freedom is traditional in academia and has no legal basis.
