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About the Site
The CourseSmart Commitment
CourseSmart's mission is to connect content creators with content consumers in the emerging market for digital products in Higher Education. Our mission is supported by the commitment to provide access to our website, products, and technologies for all users, including those with disabilities.
CourseSmart is committed to providing an equal opportunity for all to benefit from its low eTextbook pricing and we strive to reduce barriers to delivering educational content on a timely basis to all customers. CourseSmart endeavors to sell textbooks that meet Section 508 Guidelines (http://www.section508.gov/) across the widest possible selection of textbook titles. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires that U.S. governmental agencies with information technology products meet specified levels of compliance with accessibility standards. Private companies, on the other hand, are not legally required to adhere to this standard. Although compliance with this section of the Act is voluntary for the private sector, CourseSmart is proud to support this progressive standard for information technology design and development.
CourseSmart Accessibility Strategy
CourseSmart focuses on accessible reading via the web, where there are robust accessibility standards that have been evolving since 1999. Assistive technology has capitalized on the standardization HTML affords, and CourseSmart's HTML-based approach to accessibility yields consistent results with most assistive technology. This approach is in concordance with CourseSmart's belief that anytime anywhere learning is best accomplished by computing "in the cloud."
CourseSmart's believes that digital textbooks with fidelity to the print textbook are most effective in environments where print and digital co-exist, this includes faithfulness to page numbers and page by page layout. Users of our accessible reader can access both the print fidelity page images as well as a text representation accessible to screen readers and text-to-speech software. Our accessible versions of the textbook retain faithfulness to the printed page including identical page breaks and pagination.
Accessibility Roadmap
CourseSmart is dedicated to continuous improvement in accommodating the needs of all users. CourseSmart has developed a product roadmap that focuses on near-term and longer term goals.
CourseSmart's Short Term Goals
- Meet or exceed industry accessibility standards.
- Achieve WCAG 2.0 A-level conformance by year end 2011.
- Achieve WCAG 2.0 AA-level conformance in Spring, 2012.
- Continuously improve usability for people with disabilities: CourseSmart updates its website monthly, including accessibility improvements resulting from customer feedback as well as rigorous third-party accessibility testing.
- Provide ready access to as many titles as possible: In addition to hundreds of pre-tagged best sellers, CourseSmart optimizes additional textbooks each month to have textbooks ready on demand. When we don't have an optimized version of a requested title, CourseSmart will work to get the title optimized as quickly as possible (often in as little as two weeks).
- Serve the widest possible range of disabilities. CourseSmart considers the needs of people with visual impairments, learning disabilities and mobility concerns.
CourseSmart's Long-Term Goals
- Provide a low-barrier, commercial alternative for all higher education accessibility needs.
- Provide industry-leading access to all subject areas, including STEM (Scientific, Technical, Engineering, Mathematics).
- Go beyond content access and provide more universal design study tools that assist all students.
CourseSmart Accessibility Status
CourseSmart maintains VPATs (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) on its website and application suite. Links to these VPATs are shown below:
Need an Accessible eTextbooks or eResource?
For students who need assistive technology, CourseSmart supports solutions like text–to–speech software, as well as a reader that is accessible to screen reader technology such as JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver. We invest significant engineering resources to assure that our online format (which includes offline access) is an accessible solution.
In addition, there is no additional set up or support needed to access CourseSmart's accessible reader. Users who enter the CourseSmart reader utilizing a screen reader are presented with the option to self–enable the accessible reader on their account without the need to contact customer support. The user can also select a link (revealed only to screen readers) that will open an email to accessibility@coursesmart.co.uk where they can request that a particular title be tagged for enhanced accessibility.
For additional information, go to www.coursesmart.co.uk/go/int/uk/accesshelp
CourseSmart Partnership with AccessText Network
CourseSmart has established a partnership with AccessText Network to include CourseSmart eTextbooks in ATN's Federated Search. Additionally, CourseSmart is a partner with ATN's Student E-rent Pilot Project (STEPP), a U.S. Department of Education, FIPSE grant project aimed to improve low-cost access to higher education textbooks for all students, including those with print-related disabilities. To learn more about the initiative, please visit the STEPP website: http://stepp.gatech.edu.
For more information on STEPP's commitment to accessibility, see: http://stepp.gatech.edu/accessibility.php
Stay in Touch
For additional information contact accessibility@coursesmart.co.uk to send comments and suggestions about the shopping experience and other website functions directly to executives responsible for accessibility.