ENHANCING ACCESSIBILITY
The UK publishing industry has established an international leadership role in improving access for people with print disabilities. This success is based upon the creative licensing of copyright materials and close working partnerships with accessibility stakeholders.
Working together with interested charities, we supported the establishment of a new copyright exception in UK law. The Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons) Act was passed in 2002 and enables individuals with visual impairments to make and reformat copies without permission. Roughly 10% of people in the developed world, and 15% of people in developing countries, have a print disability.
UK rights holders offer a free collective license via the Copyright Licensing Agency which enables educational organisations and bodies such as the RNIB to make multiple copies of the same copyright work for their members.
Publishers have also very actively invested in their intellectual property to widen its availability to an array of formats that meet the needs of customers with print disabilities.
None of these initiatives would be possible without copyright, which has meant it is possible for publishers to invest in expanding market provision and mainstreaming access for people with disabilities.
The Publishers Association’s initiatives include:
• A stakeholder roundtable on Text to Speech in ebooks, which resulted in The Publishers Association recommending that this facility is enabled on all ebooks. See a demonstration of this technology.
• An industry Accessibility Action Group to co-ordinate initiatives across Trade Associations.
• A quarterly Accessibility Newsletter that provides an overview of accessible publishing activities worldwide.
• A Publisher Lookup service (provided in partnership with JISC TechDis) – to provide guidance to customers in requesting accessible publications, guidance to publishers in meeting these requests, plus an online database to facilitate this communication, and annual good practice awards. The 2010 winners were two UK companies: Elsevier and Sage.
• Path-finding projects (in partnership with accessibility organisations) in important areas including
MyTextbook.Org to provide accessible school textbooks in English schools, and the FOCUS project to increase the flow of large print titles into commercial bookshops.
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