
That Digital Textbook? Your College Has Billed You for It - furcyd
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/your-money/college-digital-textbooks.html
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gnicholas
I was confused the first few times I heard companies bragging about their
student-friendly "inclusive textbook" programs. I thought they were
congratulating themselves for finally making textbook platforms that are
inclusive of people with disabilities, [1] and that's why they were calling
them "inclusive textbooks." But that's not it at all. It has nothing to do
with inclusion — these are mostly-mandatory (you're supposed to be able to
opt-out) programs.

And if you look at the PR release from Pearson, which is linked in the
article, you can see that's it's not designed to be good for students, but
rather for the publishers' bottom-line:

> _Our digital first model lowers prices for students and, over time,
> increases our revenues._

1: digital textbooks are infamous for having very few, if any, accessibility
features. Some of the largest platforms have used image-based PDFs, which are
terrible for people with low vision, or anyone who wants to read their
textbook on their phone.

