Accessible Course Materials


MIT students with print disabilities who need electronically accessible course materials have the following resources available to them.

Resources for Acquiring Alternative Formats

MIT has memberships with various providers of accessible books, including:

Some publishers also provide digital textbooks if requested for a student with a print disability.

Resources for Scanning and Converting Materials

When alternative formats cannot be acquired in time, materials may need to be converted to an accessible format on campus.

  • Our office in W20-507 provides self-service high-speed or flatbed scanners and Optical Character Recognition software for students to convert materials
  • MIT Libraries Document Services will scan books and other printed materials, run optical character recognition (OCR), and provide you with text-based or PDF files
  • MIT CopyTech provides scanning to image (TIFF or PDF only) and enlargements of print materials

Resources for Reading

Our office provides software applications to read materials, including Kurzweil 3000, Kurzweil 1000, JAWS screen reading, ZoomText Magnifier/Reader, and e-book readers.

Note: Students requesting e-text or other alternate media from a publisher may be required to verify that they have purchased a print copy of the text. If electronic files are not provided by the publisher, a qualifying student may be given permission by the publisher to scan his/her own print copy of the text.  Books are provided or scanned according to permission granted by the publisher. Any further reproduction or distribution may be considered an infringement of copyright law.

Questions about resources to obtain, create, or read accessible course materials may be directed to atic-staff [at] mit.edu.