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Photo by: Stephanie Judge
Date: 10/01 File#: 0110-229c-35a
History of Badger Accessibility Services
Badger Accessibility Services was formed in 2004 from a meeting between the McBurney Disability Resource Center and DoIT Digital Publishing & Printing Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This meeting between Tom Harron, Geoff Larson and Trey Duffy would end with a decision to create a disability resource conversion center at UW’s print shop.
Trey Duffy was the head of the McBurney Center and President of the Association of Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD). Our initial plan was to provide scanning, optical charecter recognition services, and audio conversion to the McBurney Center, but the meeting ended with an agreement to establish a service to provide all the services to other educational institutions across the country.
Geoff provided the assets and deligated reponsiblities in the setup of BAS. Tom Harron developed the tracking and ordering database and all service workflows. Two weeks later Trey Duffy gave a presentation at the Keynote address at the AHEAD Conference in Miami Beach, Florida announcing the formation of Badger Accessibility Services.
Badger Accessbility Services has converted thousands of books to e-text over the past 15 years. Over 100 organizations have registred for free. BAS provided an inexpensive outlet to get books scanned and converted to e-text on demand.