Public postsecondary education: instructional materials: disabled students.

Existing law requires publishers and manufacturers of printed instructional material for use at public postsecondary educational institutions to provide the material, upon request, in an electronic format that is compatible with commonly used braille translation and speech synthesis software, when those materials are to be used by a student whose disability prevents him or her from using standard instructional materials and other requirements are met. Existing law also requires publishers and manufacturers to provide computer files or other electronic versions of nonprinted instructional materials, defined to include materials that require the availability of electronic equipment in order to be utilized, when technology is available to convert those nonprinted materials to a format that is compatible with braille translation or speech synthesis software. This bill would require publishers, as defined, to provide a captioned format of instructional materials, as defined, or an electronic format of those materials and a license to create a captioned format of the materials, upon request by a public postsecondary educational institution, and would authorize the public postsecondary educational institution to create a captioned format, subject to prescribed conditions, if the publisher provides a license to create the captioned format or fails to respond to a request for a captioned format. The bill would prescribe various requirements with respect to use and distribution of captioned formats of instructional materials by public postsecondary educational institutions that choose to participate in the request process. The bill would also make conforming changes.