An E-Book Contract That Fails Three Students
A 7–12 district signs a three-year contract with an e-book aggregator: 2,100 titles, three simultaneous users per title, single sign-on, $14 per student for 1,600 students. Within a month: a tenth grader who uses a screen reader reports the platform's reader is mouse-only and its menus are not announced; a student with a reading disability has an IEP requiring text-to-speech and adjustable line spacing; another student will be hospitalized for six weeks and needs offline access. The vendor's accessibility conformance report lists "partially supports" for WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Separately, holds on a required ninth-grade class novel are 14 students deep because the model caps three concurrent users, while the print collection holds 22 copies. The district's acceptable-use policy says library resources are "for school-related use only."
1. What legal and policy obligations apply, and what are the immediate steps with the vendor?
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The obligation runs to individual students, not to the contract's convenience. As a public entity, the district has ADA Title II obligations, and Section 504 and IDEA obligations to provide students with disabilities equal access to the curriculum and to auxiliary aids and services. Accessible instructional materials are part of that, not an enhancement. Note also that federal rules issued in 2024 require state and local government web content and mobile apps - which include school-purchased platforms - to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance deadlines that phase in over the following years; the district should confirm its own date rather than assume the contract term excuses it.
Immediate steps: (1) "partially supports" is a disclosure, not conformance - request the full conformance report and a written, dated remediation roadmap with named milestones; (2) invoke the contract's accessibility representation and warranty through procurement, in writing, and request an accessible alternative format as an interim remedy, such as an EPUB or structured PDF the student can read with existing tools; (3) put the request in the vendor's support system so there is a record; (4) escalate to the special education director and, if the response stalls, to counsel, because the student's IEP team must be able to document that accessible materials were secured.
Longer term, this is a procurement failure: accessibility requirements, a warranty, and a real test with assistive technology belong in the RFP, not in the first month of a three-year contract.
2. Resolve the class-novel holds problem. Show the cost reasoning behind your recommendation.
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The design error is the licensing model, not the title. Three concurrent users for a required classroom text guarantees a queue: a class of 28 reading the novel over three weeks against three seats means most students wait and the unit stalls. Print is working - 22 copies - so the correct move is to stop pretending the e-book model serves assigned texts.
Anchor on the contract total: $14 × 1,600 = $22,400 per year. Now price the two fixes before choosing. Ask the vendor for the per-title add-on price for additional simultaneous seats, and compute cost per student-seat for a three-week window: if an added seat costs roughly $8–12 for the term, seating 25 more students is a few hundred dollars but is a recurring charge that disappears at renewal. Purchasing 25 print copies at, say, $18 runs about $450, is permanent, works when the network is down, and can be supplemented by a used-copy purchase.
Recommendation: buy a print classroom set with the departmental budget, and separately ask whether the aggregator offers an unlimited-simultaneous-use or class-set model for curriculum titles; many do, and it is priced differently from the one-copy model. If such a model exists at a reasonable per-title cost, adopt it for adopted texts only. Do not add seats title by title on the three-user plan - that pays recurring rent for a problem a print set solves once.
3. What do you do for the three students during the months before the platform is remediated?
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Interim access is an entitlement, so it must be arranged now and documented, not deferred until the vendor ships a fix. Work each case through the IEP or 504 team so the accommodation is a team decision with a written record.
For the screen-reader user: obtain the title in an accessible format the student's tools can already read - an accessible EPUB or tagged PDF from the vendor, or from the publisher upon an accessibility request, or from an authorized accessible-format producer if the student qualifies. Deliver it on a district device with a screen reader the student knows. Where the platform's reader is the only option, provide the reading in structured Word or tagged PDF with proper headings rather than photographed pages, which are unusable.
For the student requiring text-to-speech and adjustable line spacing: built-in operating-system reading tools and display settings on a district device satisfy this cheaply, and the team should specify which device and settings in the plan. For the hospitalized student: offline access means a device with preloaded, lawfully obtained copies plus a hotspot extended for the full six weeks; the AUP's "school-related use" language already covers coursework, so confirm that in writing to the family rather than letting the policy become a barrier.
Keep a log of requests, dates, and what was delivered. If the vendor's remediation slips, that log is what documents the district's good-faith effort and what triggers escalation.