November 19, 2004

WASHINGTON -- As part of a larger bill, the House today approved legislation authored by Rep. Tom Petri to speed textbooks to visually impaired students.

Speaking on the House floor, Rep. Petri said that current arrangements for translating textbooks into accessible formats such as Braille, large print or audio are unnecessarily cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive. "As a result, visually impaired students oftentimes receive their textbooks long after school has started and can be needlessly left behind their sighted peers," he said.

Petri's proposal, the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act, creates a centralized clearinghouse that states and local school districts can use to obtain electronic copies of textbooks to be translated into appropriate formats. It was incorporated into the federal special education law which was renewed and extended by the full House this morning.

The Senate is expected to approve the changes today as well, sending it to the President for his signature.