Facilitating Access to Copyright Works for Visually Impaired Persons

This site is a platform for initiatives in the intellectual property (IP) field aimed at facilitating access to information and cultural content by the blind, visually impaired, and other reading-impaired persons (VIPs).

An objective of the IP system is to promote creativity and culture, while returning value to creators and providing widespread, affordable access to content for the public.  Digital information technologies add a new dimension to the need for balance between protection of rightholders on the one hand, and the needs of specific user groups to benefit from reasonable exceptions to rights, on the other. Such users include more than 160 million VIPs around the world.  Comments, suggestions and input are welcome.
 

WIPO makes available Accessible Publishing Guidelines

The Enabling Technologies Framework is a three year project funded by WIPO and endorsed by the Stakeholders Platform of WIPO which started in June 2010. This is a joint project involving both EDItEUR and the DAISY Consortium. It's goal is to evolve mainstream publishing processes so that they are capable of delivering digital publications that are fully accessible to people with reading disabilities. If engineered properly, publishing processes should be able to yield digital products that can be used effectively by every member of society. The fundamental usability of digital publications should equally meet the needs of both mainstream users and persons with disabilities; our target is to allow the same product to be used by everybody.

The focus of work has been to develop best practice guidelines for publishers to follow in their production process and where appropriate to integrate existing standards (including ONIX, ePub and DAISY) into mainstream publishing in ways that enhance these best practices. The outputs have been designed to be used by publishers in all parts of the world. As the first year of the project is nearing completion, EDItEUR launches the guidelines document "Accessible Publishing, Best Practice Guidelines for Publishers".

For further information on these guidelines please contact Sarah Hilderley at sarah@editeur.org or visionip@wipo.int.

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