Stevie Wonder made headlines on Monday when he called on the assembled U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, to adjust international copyright laws in order to make books and other written material more available to the blind. Before breaking into song (and getting the staid crowd of technocrats humming along to “I Just Called to Say I Love You”), Wonder laid out his position:
According to the AFP, aides to Wonder said that just “five percent of printed materials and books are available in a readable form for the blind or visually impaired in industrialized nations, and just one percent in developing countries.” That’s a shockingly low figure. I asked Paul Schroeder, the Vice President of Programs and Policy at the American Foundation for the Blind, to help sort out why so few books get translated into Braille, audio, and other formats.
What restrictions prevent books from being translated and made available for the blind?
Several nations, mostly in the developed world, have varying provisions that allow books to be produced in Braille, audio, and sometimes electronic or large print to make it possible for people with vision loss or other print-reading disabilities to read the books. These provisions often allow the special-format productions to be made without permission of the copyright holder, with two important limitations: (1) the books are only provided to people with print disabilities (such as blindness, a physical disability making it impossible to hold or page through a print book, learning disabilities, etc.), and (2) the books are made by specialized format producers who work with people with print-reading disabilities.
For example, the U.S. copyright provisions, sometimes known as the Chafee provisions (named for former Senator John Chafee), allow special format producers to convert books into Braille, audio, and electronic print (but not large print) for people with vision loss or certain other print-reading disabilities.
However, these materials cannot be exported outside the U.S., and that is generally true of other nations’ laws.
What formats have been easier to negotiate for translation: audio or Braille? Which is preferable to the blind community?
Braille generally isn’t a problem for rights-holders because obviously only people who are blind will read it. Audio is sometimes more of an issue because there is a commercial-audio market, but in some places audio books for people with print-reading disabilities have been delivered in special formats (such as on modified cassette tapes playable on special players that work with slow-speed and multiple-track tapes).
Ultimately, most of the trouble is around electronic text. Once a book is produced in a computer file with mark-up such as XML or HTML, it can be rendered into Braille, large print, or a file that can be read as text with a speech-to-text reader. However, publishers fear e-text because it is too easily pirated.
Who is standing in the way of making printed material easier to access? Is it artists, publishing companies, or even countries more generally? Are things getting better in this area?
As noted, copyright holders fear piracy and the ease of piracy of digital material. I think things are getting a bit better, at least for the possibility of sharing digital files among developed nations with laws like our Chafee law. There is a nonprofit called Bookshare that makes digital textbooks available to people with print-reading disabilities in the U.S., and on a limited basis internationally.
There’s also a group called the DAISY Consortium that works to create an international format for accessible digital files.
Are Stevie Wonder’s statements on Monday in line with what your organization hopes to see?
We definitely want to see a treaty or other mechanism that allows books to be shared across borders for use by people with print disabilities. There is a real crisis in access to reading material, both new and old, and it’s especially traumatic for people in the developing world.
