[A2k] WIPO Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired Persons (July 13 in Geneva)

[Claude Almansi]

<http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/07/14/wipo-looks-at-mandate-on-ip-and-=
climate-change/>
covers the whole 2 days of this week's WIPO meeting, including a
useful account of the "Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired
Persons" part:

"A conference on access to reading material for the visually impaired
took place on 13 July immediately preceding the public policy
conference. The topic of exceptions and limitations to intellectual
property rights had been proposed as an addition to the global
challenges agenda, but concerns from member states that it would
distract from the focus on the patent system and technology
development and diffusion resulted in its being placed on a separate
agenda.

Christopher Friend, strategic objective leader on accessibility at the
World Blind Union (WBU), called for aid for the 300 million visually
impaired people =E2=80=9Cincarcerated in a world without books=E2=80=9D bec=
ause only 5
percent of literature is available in an accessible format. =E2=80=9CHow
long,=E2=80=9D he said, =E2=80=9Cbefore the world realises that to deny acc=
ess to
knowledge is to deny people access to a basic human right?=E2=80=9D

Copyright restrictions create problems because it prevents
organisations =E2=80=93 usually small - working on accessible formats from
sharing resources, said Dipendra Manocha, director of the Digital
Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium office in New Delhi.

For example, said Friend, the popular novel Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets had 5 different English-language master copies
produced in Braille and 8 produced in DAISY Audio because copyright
prevented the sharing of those master files with other countries. The
extra cost meant other books were not made accessible.

=E2=80=9CIn the last years we=E2=80=99ve extended rights to rights holders,=
 including
into the digital sphere,=E2=80=9D said Ambassador Mario Matus of the Chilea=
n
mission to the WTO. =E2=80=9CBut this hasn=E2=80=99t happened in the same w=
ay for
exceptions=E2=80=A6 the time has come for a treaty on visual impairment.=E2=
=80=9D

Herman Spruijt, the president of the International Publishers
Association (IPA) in Geneva said his organisation was =E2=80=9Cwilling to
contribute our fair share=E2=80=9D to the effort to expand access but said
that solutions must be market driven rather than involve copyright
exceptions."

Still: can anyone complete info about the ambassador from an Arab
country (?) who said that illiteracy due to lack of educational
opportunities should be included among reading disabilities during
question time, please?

Best

Claude

2009/7/13 Federico Heinz <fheinz@vialibre.org.ar>:
> On 13/07/2009, Claude Almansi wrote:
>> However, when Federico Heinz asked him about publishers disabling
>> text-to-speech in Kindle texts, he answered that Amazon had forgotten to
>> negotiate the "audio rights".
>
> Later, talking with him in the lobby, I told him that was a lame answer, =
that
> audio rights might have been needed if Amazon had distributed a recording=
 of
> the sound-to-speech output, but were not needed in this case: if I purcha=
se a
> book, I don't need audio right to read it aloud to my children, and neith=
er do I
> need audio rights to get my computer to read it aloud to them.
>
> After that exchange, he admitted that publishers were fighting a lost cau=
se
> there, and that it was just a matter of time until common sense sets in.
>
> =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0Fede
>