National Right to Books Campaign for the Blind
Two premier national organizations of the blind, the National Federation of the Blind and All India Confederation of the Blind, are undertaking a path-breaking joint initiative on behalf of the blind in India, for meaningful educational empowerment of those who cannot see. The initiative is titled "National Right to Books Campaign for the Blind". It coincides with the World Book Fair being held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from 30th January.
Tweet-- Two premier national organizations of the blind, the National Federation of the Blind and All India Confederation of the Blind, are undertaking a path-breaking joint initiative on behalf of the blind in India, for meaningful educational empowerment of those who cannot see. The initiative is titled "National Right to Books Campaign for the Blind". It coincides with the World Book Fair being held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from 30th January.
It is reliably learnt that persons with vision loss are able to get no more than 0.5% of all books coming out of the country's publishing houses. Even visually impaired children do not have sufficient textbooks to read. There is nothing, which the blind can read themselves at any of the stalls of the publishers at the prestigious Book Fair.
Books need to be converted for the visually impaired into special formats--mainly Braille or large print--with the help of advanced technologies, which is a highly costly process. Then, permission of the publishing houses or authors has, currently, to be obtained beforehand for undertaking the task of such conversion, which could involve delays and also additional costs by way of possible royalty.
Thus, the blind are getting more and more left out and excluded; have to face a kind of ' book famine'.
The present Campaign has the objective of providing thousands of avid blind readers some kind of parity and equality of opportunities in accessing reading material.
For this purpose, the Campaign seeks to address all important players--concerned Ministries in the Government of India, publishing houses, Braille printing centres, State Project Directors in-charge of SSA programme and the society at large.
Through a government press release, we note that the amendments to the Copyright Act of 1957, recently approved by the Union Cabinet contain a few provisions relating to the physically challenged, including the blind. We are submitting a memorandum to the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, to acquaint him with our specific concerns so that the proposed amendments genuinely provide necessary legal protection to the blind in regard to removing copyright restrictions and urging the Government to ensure the inclusion of following provisions in the proposed amending bill to Copy Right Act 1957:
i) Mandating the copyright holders/authors/ publishers to publish, store and make available their copyright works in appropriate accessible formats to persons with disabilities in general and visually impaired persons in particular without any additional costs to them. This provision should cover all forms of copyright material including print, digital, sound recording, electronic and/or Internet.
ii) The reproduction or conversion of copyright material in the appropriate accessible format for persons with disabilities in general and visually impaired persons in particular and the technology related for such reproduction or conversion should be exempted from the purview of copyright license and should not be construed as an infringement to such copyrights in relation to such materials.
Since India has ratified UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which obliges the States to ensure access to all forms of reading materials in appropriate formats to them on an equal basis, these provisions should be incorporated by the Government to meet its mandatory International Obligations under the Convention.
Our blind volunteers would go from one publisher to another at the Book Fair to bring their concerns to the fore and motivate the publishing industry to contribute their mite for overcoming the acute paucity of reading material.
Our other demands include:
The functioning of the Braille Presses working under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Social Justice (MSJE) be suitably revamped so that they produce Braille books to their optimum installed capacity;
The government through MSJE provide adequate financial assistance to Braille and talking books centres for the blind run by voluntary organizations;
The requisite Braille paper be made available in time and at reduced costs;
The Directors in-charge of SSA in States appoint especially trained teachers of the blind in every district so that visually impaired children studying in government schools under inclusive education could get quality teaching in Braille and other special compensatory skills;
The existing Braille Council of India currently working as a part of the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped be provided greater autonomy and resources by making it an autonomous organization, as is the case in many other countries.
We make a special appeal to the publishing industry in the country as well.
"Please, release all your publications from copyright restrictions for bringing your invaluable reading material within the reach of the visually impaired. Also, join us in this noble Campaign by making your publications compatible with instant Braille production."
Our dream is that visually impaired persons, one day, get "the same book, the same cost, the same day" as their sighted counterparts. The present Campaign seeks to make a determined and sincere push to that end. We solicit the support and co-operation of one and all in this stupendous, yet most rewarding, task.
PR and Communications for the campaign is being managed by leading PR Agency Approach Communications.
