Hi Dark, The UK copyright situation has recently changed because of the Disability Discrimination Act. Previously you had to ask permission from the publisher before you could produce an alternative format of a book but now you can do a Braille or audio version, provided a commercial one doesn't already exist, without having to ask permission. The only provision is that it must be free of charge, so it's down to charities and individuals (usually in prison) to transcribe the material.
My view is that this may extend to computer games, so producing accessible versions of popular computer games where none exist may be a defense under the DDA. Nobody's been prosecuted yet so let's wait and see. I recently came across a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire book that was being dumped in one pound shops so I bought a copy, transcribed some of it and produced an accessible version for a disabled person who would not be able to access the printed material. He doesn't read Braille so the format I chose was to make it into a computer game. Under the DDA, I reckon I'm entitled to do this without seeking permission. However, I'm definitely not allowed to sell it and I doubt if I am allowed to give it away. Back to your problem, have you tried RevealWeb, NLB/RNIB and Calibre? I think they are the main sources for audio books. Cheers, Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dark Sent: 18 February 2007 19:03 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Forcing accessibility Hi thom. I am actually looking into getting hold of The Dark tower at the moment, and have also gone through the hiddiously tortuous and long winded process that it takes to get stuff from the National Libruary of Congress exported to the Uk, (which isn't helped by the fact that the Rnib are useless). I was however just giving it as an example. In the Uk, there is absolutely no governmental backing or funding for the production of accessible books, and quite a few publishers just reffuse to allow tvarious charitable organizations permission to reccord their books, simply on the off chance that they might, at some point in the future wish to produce a commercial audio copy themselves, and thus any reccordings the charities did would, supposedly hurt their sails. In the Us However, as far as I understand it, sinse production of audio books (and maybe braille as well), is both funded and backed by the government, this sort of arguement doesn't come up. I'll skip my long anti-capitalist wrant here, but suffice it to say the situation really! annoys me! then of course, there's the problem that publishers often abridge what commercial audio books they do produce, sometimes I think abridging books should be punishable by abridging the culprit, ----- with an axe! And finally there's the issue we've already touched upon here, the problem that three quarters of blind people are over the age of 65, which is only made moree acuteby the charities intense lack of resources and (in the case of the Rnib), severe lack of knolidge of things like book genres and series continuity as well. I'm extremely sorry for the offtopicitude here, it's just that this is one issue that really! gets on my whick! Beware the Grue! (especially when wranting). dark. _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
