[A2k] Looking for evidence that Visually Impaired persons do not have easy access (even in the US)? Here's some...

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
In the US, lawmakers have historically recognized that copyrighted
works should, with respect to fair use, be accessible to and usable by
people who are visually impaired. The legislative history of the
Copyright Act of 1976 states that:
"Another special instance illustrating the application of the fair use
doctrine pertains to the making of copies or phonorecords of works in
the special forms needed for the use of blind persons. These special
forms, such as copies in Braille and phonorecords of oral reading
(talking books), are not usually made by the publishers for commercial
distribution. While making multiple copies or phonorecords of work for
general circulation requires the permission of the copyright owner, a
problem addressed in section 710 of the bill, the making of a single
copy or phonorecord by an individual as a free service for a blind
person would properly be considered a fair use under section 107. H.R.
Rep. No. 94-1476, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (1976).

In Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 714
(1984), the Supreme Court stated that copying =93of a copyrighted work
for the convenience of a blind person is expressly identified by the
House Committee Report as an example of fair use, with no suggestion
that anything more than a purpose to entertain or to inform need
motivate the copying.=94 Id. at 456, n. 40. The US Copyright Act imposes
other limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners to
ensure access for blind and visually impaired individuals. Section
110(8) excludes performances specifically designed for and directed to
people who are blind or visually impaired using particular facilities;
Section 121 (the Chaffee amendment) allows authorized entities to
reproduce copyrighted materials and convert these materials to
accessible formats for the use by blind or other persons with
disabilities.

Here are some practical examples of the situation given by the
American Foundation for the Blind representative during one of the US
Copyright office' Notice of Inquiry, proceedings mandated by the
DMCA.  I believe DAVID O. CARSON, General Counsel, ROBERT KASUNIC,
Principal Legal Advisor, OGC, JULE L. SIGALL, Associate Register for
Policy and International Affairs STEVE TEPP, Principal Legal Advisor,
OGC were attending.
(Wednesday, March 29, 2006 Transcript (PDF format 240 Kb) 1:30 =96 3:00 htt=
p://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/comments/discipio_afb.pdf
  - 412.2KB [Docket No. RM 2005-11 ]http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/hear=
ings/index.html)

QUOTE
The American Foundation for the Blind proposes continuation of the
exemption for the class of works defined as "literary." We propose
continuation of this exemption because currently deployed anti-copy
technology still does not support the fair use intended by Congress
for this class of works.
SNIP
After conducting an evaluation in 2005, we find that these needs
continue to go unmet in much of the  marketplace. Our review of
materials for purchase at Amazon.com in the fall of 2005 provides
compelling evidence of the adverse effects that copy protection
measures have, even today, on access to the general categories of
authorship specified in Section 102. As noted such inaccessibility
occurs despite the current exemption. Such built-in inaccessibility
also ignores the historic fact that alternative methods of reading
lawfully-acquired works are, in fact, the precise kind of non-
infringing uses long permitted to allow blind and visually impaired
people access to the science and useful arts specified in the U.S.
Constitution. To allow the legal lock-up of content would deprive
blind and visually impaired people of a major constitutional goal of
copyright: =93to foster the growth of learning and culture for the
public welfare.=94 H. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2d Sess. (1909).

We purchased several e-books from Amazon.com using a laptop with
reasonably up-to-date software. We used a computer with Windows XP
SP2, Internet Explorer with updates, Adobe Acrobat version 7.0.5
(available free from the Adobe Web site), and GW Micro's Window-Eyes
version 5.0. Users of Window-Eyes, the screen reading software, can
download a very recently-released upgrade, version 5.5, but this user
had not yet installed the upgrade. It is not expected that an upgraded
version of Window-Eyes would have affected the e-book reading
experience.
We downloaded five E-books created in either Adobe ".PDF" or Microsoft
Reader ".Lit" formats. Two PDF books and three Microsoft Lit format
books were tested. Of the five books, only one was accessible =96 that
is, only 20 percent of the works were accessible. During our tests,
help was often required from sighted individuals.

Preliminary Activities
Before beginning to download content, we downloaded and installed the
Microsoft Reader product. In addition, after unsuccessfully attempting
to access the first Microsoft Lit format book, the Microsoft text-to-
speech component was downloaded and installed, but it did not improve
the accessibility experience.

Examples of Digital E-books User Experiences
Title: Richard Edward Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game": A Study
Guide from Gale's "Short Stories for Students"
This Adobe PDF study guide, designed to accompany the short story,
opened in Acrobat, but content was not accessible. The screen reader
voiced an extended string of question marks.

Choosing the "accessibility quick check" on the "document" menu
provided feedback, voiced by the screen reader. We were told that the
"document's security settings prevented access by screen readers."
This check also indicated that this document is not structured, so
even if a screen reader could access the content, the user might be
required to modify settings related to reading order preferences. The
document cannot be saved as a text file.

Title: The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) Author: Philip
Pullman
This popular book in a children's series was not accessible in the
Microsoft Lit format. The work proved even less accessible than either
of the Adobe PDF books as no messages were spoken with a screen
reader. In fact, the Microsoft Reader software did not function fully
with the screen reader, i.e. no menus were spoken or accessible using
the keyboard. Only when a sighted assistant used a mouse to click on
"help" did a message indicate that the content was not
accessible with text-to-speech.

Title: The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and
Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
Author: Michael A. Cusumano
Our experience was virtually the same as the other Microsoft Reader
digital books. The screen reader provided no feedback, and "tweaking"
yielded no help to us when we tried to access the content
independently. Sighted help was required to display the message in the
screen shot but it did not speak.
Title: The Imitation of Christ Author: Thomas A. Kempis
This book is a public domain book in the Microsoft Reader Lit format.
It is one of the three books tested in 2002, by AFB, when preparing
comments in the prior rule making related to this provision of the
DMCA. Today, the book still remains inaccessible =96 this is true
whether or not Microsoft's text-to-speech product is installed.

Title: Patent, Copyright & Trademark in Intellectual Property, 7th
edition Authors: Stephen Elias and Richard Stim
This book, created using Adobe PDF, was the only one of the five that
was accessible. The book opened easily in Acrobat version 7.0.5. We
were permitted to choose options for processing and presenting the
book in an accessible fashion.

Although using the "accessibility quick check" indicated that the
document was not tagged to provide structure, we were encouraged to
try different reading order preferences, as necessary, in order to
improve the reading experience. The "save as text" dialog box was
disabled. Nonetheless, this 570-page book seemed to be accessible
after a quick skim through some pages using the "infer reading order"
option.

Related Issues

A number of critical issues became apparent as we conducted real-world
testing in an effort to gain access to digital e-books. Concerns
include:

The Amazon.com site does not indicate, in advance, whether content
will be accessible.

Messages provided by the Microsoft Reader software indicating that
content cannot be accessed by a screen reader are not voiced by either
a screen reader or by Microsoft's text-to-speech supplementary
software. Sighted assistance is required to confirm that content
cannot be read.

  Users who purchase content but then find that they cannot read it
will need to negotiate Amazon.com's return process. Users may return
content within 30 days, but we did not test this process to determine
whether Amazon.com's approach is accessible. Other companies' return
policies may vary, so users should assess return policies prior to
taking the risk of purchasing potentially inaccessible digital content.
End of quote
***************************************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,

1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
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Il vaut mieux remuer une question, sans la d=E9cider, que la d=E9cider,
sans la remuer.
Pens=E9es, essais, maximes et correspondance de J. Joubert  p.249
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=3DGallica&O=3DNUMM-88671
Translation: It is better to debate a question without settling it
than to settle a question without debating it