BILL ANALYSIS
AB 386
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Date of Hearing: May 6, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Kevin De Leon, Chair
AB 386 (Ruskin) - As Amended: April 28, 2009
Policy Committee: Higher
EducationVote:9-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill authorizes the state's public colleges and
universities to provide captioning for nonprinted instructional
materials for students with disabilities if the publisher does
not respond to a request for this service within the two-week
period. Specifically, this bill:
1)Clarifies that publishers of audiovisual instructional
materials and digital media files, including "podcasts" and
"Web clips" as defined, must provide captioning or other
alterations to make these materials accessible to students
with disabilities at California's public colleges and
universities.
2)Requires publishers of nonprinted instructional materials to
provide a captioned copy of these materials, for use by
students with disabilities, within two weeks of receiving a
written request from a California public college or
university.
3)Authorizes California's public colleges and universities, if
the publisher does not respond to the above request for this
service within the two-week period, to create a captioned copy
for the nonprinted instructional materials for students with
disabilities to the extent permitted by the Copyright Revision
Act of 1976, the takings clause of the U.S. Constitution, and
other applicable laws. The campus is also to ensure that the
copyright owner is not deprived of reasonable compensation.
FISCAL EFFECT
AB 386
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Minor savings to the segments from reducing the administrative
costs involved in providing accessible multi-media materials to
hearing-impaired students. The segments note that they are
already required under state and federal law to provide such
accessibility, and this bill will assist in their compliance.
COMMENTS
Purpose . Current law requires nonprinted instructional
materials to be compatible with Braille translation and speech
synthesis software, but does not list "audiovisual captioning
software." Therefore, when captioning or other accessible
information is not already available on audiovisual or other
type of media, the college or university must ask the publisher
to provide the captioning to make the information accessible to
students. According to the sponsor, the Chancellor's Office of
the California Community Colleges, publishers' responses to
these situations vary. Some publishers require a written
request, which can delay by weeks the student's ability to use
the materials. Others will give permission upon payment to
provide this service, and some never respond. Many CCC campuses
are able and willing to add the captioning; however, legal
authority is necessary to caption audiovisual and other types of
media when publishers are not responsive to college requests.
Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081