The Alternative text format accommodation assists students with print-related disabilities by providing text in Alternative formats. Alternative formats include large print, audio, braille, and electronic formats, such as PDFs or Word documents. Often students with this accommodation use electronic files of their textbooks and other course materials with a text-to-speech component on personal computers to listen to the reading material.

 Successfully using this accommodation can enable students to cut down on their reading time and increase their comprehension. Using this accommodation can enable students to comprehend more information in a shorter time and may lead to greater academic success. Using text to speech software can become a life-long skill that will increase success, not only in college, but in professional and personal lives after college.

Requesting Alternative Formats

 Requests for Alternative formats should be submitted four (4) weeks, prior to the beginning of the semester. These timelines will provide the DSS with sufficient time to contact instructors and other alternative media resources in order to request a copy of the text for scanning. If a copy of the text is available through any of these sources, the text will be processed into the requested format, and DSS will notify the student when the text is available.

If DSS is not able to obtain a copy of the text through any resource, then DSS will need to use the student’s textbook for processing into an alternative format. The student will be notified by DSS and will be responsible for providing their textbook to DSS for processing. The same timelines as listed above should be followed when a student is providing their own text to DSS for processing into an Alternative format. Student texts will be taken apart and rebound with a spiral binding.