Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Harry, you are right as regards Amazon but I think -- based solely on the little that has been presented here (and I freely admit I may well be wrong) -- that the lawsuit's purpose is being misconstrued.
As I understand it, the suit is about requiring students to use the Kindle as part of the university's requirements for a class. When the program was originally started, the idea was to replace printed textbooks with Kindled ebooks and require students to use the Kindle to access the coursework.
If this is correct, then the lawsuit makes sense to me: It is asking that the requirement of using a Kindle be eliminated. To require a particular course as part of graduation requirements, and to require the use of certain texts in that class, necessarily implies that (a) the course will be available to all students (after all, how could someone graduate if they haven't taken a required-to- graduate course?) and (b) that the required course materials will be accessible and available to all enrolled students.
I suspect that the Kindle program fails on the latter and that is what the lawsuit is about: stopping universities from requiring students to use material that they cannot access.
Again, let me emphasize that not having read the lawsuit papers I am only guessing and may be wrong by 180 degrees.
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Even if the university had a requirement to use the Kindle, it would not apply to the students who could not use it due to disability. The university would still have to make a 504 plan and then make any accomodations needed for the student.
Two of my children had 504 plans and the school was required to make accomodations for them. One of them had to have a laptop provided by the school system to take notes. The other had to be allowed to leave the classroom any time he felt stressed as he had severe Tourettes and stress would bring on episodes.
Also, when I went back to college after retiring, I had to have accomodations made by the university due to vision, hearing, and physical access. At that time, I found out that all public colleges in the US are required to have someone to run their accomodation program. So, I can promise you that the university was never requiring their blind students to use the Kindle.