Electronic Text (E-Text)

The Office of Accessibility & Accommodations (OAA) Electronic Text (e-text) Conversion
Policy

If a student is eligible for Learning Ally membership:

  1. OAA shall not perform e-text conversion of materials that are available from Learning Ally in Audio Book Format
  2. Before the start of each term, OAA will expect the student to provide a list of course materials needed in e-text format
  3. OAA will then assign a Learning Ally Membership login
  4. The student must have software or a specialized player to use materials from Learning Ally. PC Software currently is free for a license and portable players are available for purchase, or the student can use their own laptop or desktop computer for free. The student is responsible for the cost of this equipment. OAA staff may assist in ordering the equipment.

When Pacific University has determined e-text accommodation eligibility, or when a Learning Ally-eligible student's materials are not available in audio format:

  1. The student must inform OAA of the course materials that are to be converted. OAA may not be able to convert materials that contain certain foreign languages, significant quantities of mathematical notation, or other unique typographical constraints, all of which have limited transferability to continuous, ASCII plain-text.
  2. The student must provide OAA with a copy of the material that is to be converted to e-text. The student is responsible for the cost of the material. Students may acquire used books whenever possible.
  3. OAA will complete converting the course material in as short a time as possible.  The converted materials are shared with the student via BOX.  The student may pick-up the hardcopy materials from OAA when conversion is complete.
  4. While conversion is in progress, the student may check-out the book from the OAA office if needed. This will necessarily lengthen the time it takes OAA to complete the conversion and release the book to the student.

To arrange for audio textbooks/scanned texts:

If your OAA Accommodation Letter recommends audio text format or electronic texts, it's definitely worth your while to try them out.

Using your course syllabi, conduct a search on LearningAlly.org. If you find any of your textbooks there, let our staff know, and we will assign you a membership for audiobook downloads from Learning Ally. If the textbook is not available on audiobook, then we will need to scan your textbook and convert it into an e-reader format.

Learning Ally

The Learning Ally webpage is www.learningally.org

This is the website where students will search for textbooks available in electronic form, players to play the textbooks and computer software. The site has an easy-to-use search menu, which enables the user to search for textbooks in a variety of ways. The site also allows the user to easily compare players and software before purchasing.

Pacific University Bookstore

The Pacific University Bookstore now provides access to digital textbooks. Keep in mind that not all courses have digital textbooks. However, if one of your course's textbooks is available digitally and you request our e-text services, you must buy it. OAA will not scan a book that can be purchased digitally. To learn more, visit the bookstore website.

Voice Synthesizer Software

In order to utilize our e-text services, you need to have text-to-speech software installed on your computer. Our students tend to have good luck with the free software found at www.naturalreaders.com