[Nfbf-l] Ending the book famine for the blind

[Alan Dicey]

Just a follow up article  on the past few postings on this wonderful 
achievement!

Last week, delegates from around the world met in Marrakesh Morocco to 
discuss a treaty for the blind that would end the book famine. As it stands 
right now, less than 5% of all published work is available to the 300 
million blind and visually impaired people around the world. The aim of the 
treaty was to give countries around the world permission to alter the format 
of published works for people with print disabilities. After much 
negotiation, it was on June 27th that 51 countries signed the treaty into 
law.

The reason for the famine is that copyrighted material is not allowed to be 
changed into a different format without express permission from the 
publisher. The publisher can also decide that the alternate formats are only 
allowed within the borders of the country that published the work. A good 
example of this situation is that out of the 200,000 books that are 
available on Bookshare, only 75,000 are available to people in the UK 
because of copyright restrictions.

With the new treaty in place, countries will have the right to both alter 
the format of the published work and translate it into the language of the 
user. There will also not be a restriction on whether the published work is 
available commercially which was a major concern for libraries like 
Bookshare. This will open doors for the millions of blind people in 
developing nations. No longer will they be restricted to a small number of 
options.

To read the Washington Post's coverage of this issue, visit this link: 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/group-finalizes-treaty-to-expand-book-access-for-worlds-blind-community/2013/06/26/461311fe-de83-11e2-948c-d644453cf169_blog.html 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/group-finalizes-treaty-to-expand-book-access-for-worlds-blind-community/2013/06/26/461311fe-de83-11e2-948c-d644453cf169_blog.html>