BILL ANALYSIS
AB 386
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 386 (Ruskin)
As Amended April 28, 2009
Majority vote
HIGHER EDUCATION 9-0 APPROPRIATIONS 16-0
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|Ayes:|Portantino, Conway, |Ayes:|De Leon, Nielsen, |
| |Block, Cook, Fong, | |Ammiano, |
| |Galgiani, Huber, Ma, | |Charles Calderon, Davis, |
| |Ruskin | |Duvall, Fuentes, Hall, |
| | | |Harkey, Miller, |
| | | |John A. Perez, Price, |
| | | |Skinner, Solorio, Audra |
| | | |Strickland, Torlakson |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
| | | | |
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SUMMARY : Authorizes California's public colleges and
universities (segments) to provide captioning for nonprinted
instructional materials for students with disabilities if the
publisher does not respond to a request for this service within
a 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 the segments.
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 segment.
3)Authorizes the segments to provide captioning for the
nonprinted instructional materials for students with
disabilities if the publisher does not respond to a request
for this service within the two-week period.
4)States that nothing in this bill shall be deemed to authorize
any use of instructional materials that would constitute a
violation of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment of the
AB 386
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United States (U.S.) Constitution or would constitute an
infringement of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976.
FISCAL EFFECT : 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 : Existing law requires nonprinted instructional
materials to be compatible with Braille translation and speech
synthesis software but does not list "audiovisual captioning
software." Thus, 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 California Community Colleges (CCC)
Chancellor's Office, 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.
Existing law provides that the electronic copies of printed and
nonprinted instructional materials for use by students with
disabilities must include the student's agreement the he or she
will only use the materials for his or her own educational
purposes; that he or she will not copy or duplicate the material
for use by others; and that the disk or file be copy-protected
or the college or university take other precautions to ensure
that publishers' copyright protections are not violated.
Further, existing law and this bill do not authorize any use of
instructional materials that would constitute an infringement of
the publishers' copyrights under federal law or a violation of
the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since existing
law was enacted in 1999, staff is unaware of any disputes over
compliance with publishers' copyright protections that have led
to litigation.
AB 386
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Analysis Prepared by : Sandra Fried / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960
FN: 0000746