Dear Friends,
Do you know how many books are published each year?
How many are available in accessible formats?
How many people in India cannot read print?
What does our law say on the subject?
What does our Government say?
What are we doing about it?
Industry statistics reveal that there are about 80,000-100,000 books
published each year in India. Out of these, barely 800 books may be
available in accessible formats for persons who cannot read print. India has
approximately 70 million or more people who cannot read print because they
are blind, have dyslexia or have cerebral palsy or some other form of
physical, cognitive or sensory disability which prevents them from holding
or turning the pages of a book. Our Copyright Act does not have any
provision which permits books to be converted in to formats which they can
read. So organisations have been converting books only after getting
permission or on their own out of a need to sustain the intellectual needs
of the community for pursuing education. However, even these efforts have
resulted in very few accessible books being in circulation.
We have been petitioning the Government for the past three years to change
the law and make reading, which is a fundamental right for Indian citizens,
possible for us. We have submitted many petitions, research documents, shown
best practices, analysed possible provisions which would benefit both us and
the industry, met them personally several times and spoken in the media
about this. In November a group of us met the Minister of HRD Mr. Kapil
Sibal and submitted a detailed representation yet again and explained the
problem for the Nth time. He seemed most positive and assured us that our
problem would be adequately addressed in the present Copyright amendment
Bill which is to be tabled before the Parliament in the budget session in
February 2010.
After that, in the last week of December 2009, the Ministry of HRD comes out
with a press release
(http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=56443&kwd= ) which talks very
briefly about the amendment which has been proposed with regard to the
"physically challenged". This press release is a cause of great concern and
distress for us. The press release essentially states that conversion would
be possible for physically challenged persons only in specialised formats
without permission, for all other formats, we need to go to the Copyright
Board for permission, which will be granted at the discretion of the Board
and on such terms as they will specify. This essentially means that
conversion is possible only into Braille or sign language. This is
problematic because it leaves out all the millions of persons who are
disabled and cannot read print or know Braille. What about those with
dyslexia, cerebral palsy or those whose upper body is paralysed and all
those who do not know Braille? Are not such persons also citizens of India?
Should they not also have the Right to Read?
In this information Age, where all accessible formats can be produced
through a master source electronic file and where even Braille can be read
through refreshable Braille displays, for the Government to now come out
with an amendment which would have been useful twenty years ago seems
ironic. For how many of those 80,000-100,000 books can each of us keep
asking for permission because we want an electronic file? And when we can
use a mainstream electronic format like MSWord or PDF etc, why does the
Government want to make things difficult for us again by asking us to
convert into a specialised format? And for how long will we have to wait for
permission? How will it be possible for us to keep making requests to the
Copyright Board whenever we want to read a book?
Clearly, this has gone beyond all logical reasoning. We must be united and
act together to ensure that ALL persons with disabilities can exercise their
Right to Read.
The nationwide Right to Read campaign was launched in September last year
and events were organised in Chennai and Calcutta. The next campaign is
being organised in Delhi on 30th January, 2010.
The Venue: Lal Chowk, Pragati Maidan
Time: 02:00pm-05:00 pm
Date: 30th Jan
30th Jan is also the day when the International World Book fair begins in
the same venue. What better time and venue can we have for us to show that
while publishers from around the world are showcasing their publications,
we, the Disability Community, still have no Books to read?
Appeal:
We need very strong support from the Disability community to come to the R2R
campaign and make it a success. Lal Chowk has a seating capacity of 1000
people and we need all of you to come in large numbers and participate. We
will also try to organise transportation if the number of participants is
large from any organisation.
I request you to please send your confirmation to me at the earliest.
Best wishes,
Nirmita
Nirmita Narasimhan (Programme Manager)
Centre for Internet and Society
No. D2, 3rd Floor, Shariff Chambers
14, Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560 052
P: + 80 40926283
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