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Legislator to unveil disability bill, again

A bill intended to improve access to instructional materials for college students with disabilities will be reintroduced to the Wisconsin Assembly later this month.

State Rep. Donna Seidel, D-Wausau, proposed the legislation last fall and is scheduled to introduce her new version of the bill at a news conference today. She is working on finishing up the final version and will soon circulate it among legislators for co-sponsorship.

According to a draft provided to The Badger Herald, the bill would require the University of Wisconsin System and the Wisconsin Technical College System to create and manage a collection of educational material formatted in a way accessible to students with disabilities.

The program's initial startup could cost $134,000 in addition to $210,000 annually for maintenance and staff, according to a fiscal estimate of last year's bill also proposed by Seidel. The bill passed the Colleges and Universities Committee last fall but was killed on the Assembly floor.

Apart from creating a collection, this year's bill would also promote university officials to transfer written materials into a format that may be accessible by students with disabilities. That could include Braille, large print texts, audio recordings, digital texts and other formats for instructional materials.

David Giroux, a UW System spokesperson, said he was not familiar with the proposed bill but added, "Any legislator who wants to expand access is someone we're interested in talking to."

Traveling the state on Monday, Seidel was unavailable to comment on her proposed legislation.

Under the bill, any requested material not available to students with disabilities would have to be transferred to an accessible format, making university officials work with publishers over reproduction and copyrights.

Students would be required to purchase instructional materials but could request they be transferred to an alternative format. Publishers may require students to sign a contract agreeing to use the material for educational purposes only and not to distribute the digital material for other uses.