On June 25, 2013, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an agency of the United Nations, reached agreement on an historic document designed to provide access to reading materials for people who are blind or have other print disabilities. The draft WIPO treaty changes copyright law to reflect that blind people need formats other than standard print in order to read. These alternative formats, or accessible formats, include Braille, audio, Large Print, accessible web content and other accessible electronic documents. The lack of accessible, available formats, and not blindness, is why blind people cannot read huge swaths of information available in standard print format. The need for accessible information has been at the core of many of the settlement agreements reached as a result of Structured Negotiations. Many of those negotiations began with stereotypes about blind people and their right, desire, and need to read independently.
Read more… Can’t Someone Read that to You? Dissolving Stereotypes of Blindness