Copyright Protection as Access Barrier for People who Read Differently: the case for an international approach

For people with print disabilities, copyright protection poses an access barrier. Although they have traditionally used Braille and audio materials to satisfy their reading needs, one should not, when considering access issues, confine the analysis to those media only. In a rapidly changing technological environment, accommodations are needed that will not become obsolete due to technological change that opens up new access opportunities. In a number of countries the problems posed by copyright protection as access barriers have received legislative attention in the form of attempts to remove them. Those attempts have not always given rise to perfect solutions. This paper is concerned with access barriers to print posed by copyright protection, by successes as well as unfortunate by-products of previous attempts to deal with those barriers, by technological developments that affect copyright protection, and it tries to isolate lessons learnt so far.