Read without seeing: improving access to books for visually impaired persons

Sarah Lux-Lee

On 27 June 2013, the anniversary of Helen Keller's birth, a Diplomatic Conference of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) adopted the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled.  The treaty is intended to ensure that books and other published materials can be made and distributed in formats accessible to people with print disabilities, such as Braille, audio and large print formats.  It does so by obligating its signatories to adopt exceptions to copyright infringement in their domestic laws, to allow accessible copies to be made and distributed within those countries without the need for permission or payment.  It also requires exceptions to enable cross-border circulation of accessible copies of copyright material, in order to reduce the global costs of providing access to copyright works.  Fifty-one countries signed the treaty on 28 June 2013, with several others having followed suit in the months since.  The treaty will enter into force once 20 countries have ratified it.

The treaty is a significant move toward ensuring equality of access to learning materials around the world.  At present, it is estimated that only 5% of the world’s books and published materials are ever published in an accessible format.  In developing countries, where blindness and visual impairment is particularly prevalent, the problem is even more acute, with an estimated 99% of published works never being made available in any accessible format.  The problem is not a technical inability to make the conversions; increasingly, sophisticated technologies are available for the fast and affordable conversion of books and other published materials into Braille, audio and large print versions.  Rather, this “book famine” persists in large part because in many of the world’s content-producing countries the conversion of a published work into an accessible format, and the import or export of such products, would amount to copyright infringement.   

According to a 2006 survey conducted by WIPO, fewer than sixty countries have limitations and exceptions in their domestic copyright laws that enable the creation and distribution of accessible works.  In addition, because of the “territorial” nature of copyright law, the exceptions that do exist in various countries rarely make allowance for the import or export of accessible works, which need to be separately negotiated with rights holders.  The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) does feature a number of exceptions and a statutory licence relating to the creation and distribution of accessible works; in this sense, Australia is a leader in the effort to ensure equal access and opportunity to those suffering print disabilities.  

The trans-border provisions of the treaty offer the potential for Australia to further enhance its contribution by implementing an additional exception for the import and export of accessible format copies.  This component of the treaty is intended to ensure that the conversion of a published work only needs to occur once, and that the accessible copy can subsequently be made available to those who need it anywhere around the world.  Cross-border circulation of accessible versions of works will enhance access both directly, by increasing the volume of available converted works, and also indirectly by avoiding the costs of unnecessary duplication and freeing resources for the addition of new titles to the global accessible library.  It will have particularly significant implications for blind, visually impaired and print disabled individuals in the developing world.

The adoption of the treaty was a moment of great significance for the beneficiary communities and their advocates, who have worked tirelessly to improve outcomes in this area.  The World Blind Union has expressed hope that the treaty will be an effective step toward the achievement of equality of access, while noting that work in this area is not yet complete:

In plain language, this is a Treaty that should start to remedy the book famine. It provides a crucial legal framework for adoption of national copyright exceptions in countries that lack them. It creates an international import/export regime for the exchange of accessible books across borders. It is necessary for ending the book famine, but it is not sufficient. Countries need to sign, ratify and implement its provisions. Non-profit organizations, libraries, educational institutions and government need to take advantage of these provisions to actually deliver the accessible books people with disabilities need for education, employment and full social inclusion.

Then-Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC lauded the agreement as "a landmark copyright treaty, the first of its kind in the history of the multilateral copyright system”. Curiously, despite Australia’s leadership in negotiations and proud reportage of the treaty’s adoption, it was not one of the 51 nations that signed the treaty in June and, at the time of writing, it does not appear to have subsequently signed. Vision Australia and other representative bodies of Australia’s blind, visually impaired and print disabled communities have nevertheless expressed optimism about the future impact of the treaty in Australia and are continuing to work toward signature and ratification.

Image by Diego Molano, made available by Creative Commons licence via Flickr.

Small press networks in the digital age

Julie Koh, Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn

Sleepers Publishing is an independent publishing house based in Melbourne. Founded by Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn in 2003, it advocates for new and emerging writers in Australia. Writer Julie Koh interviewed Louise and Zoe about the implications of new technologies for the work of Sleepers Publishing and other small presses across Australia.

How does social networking impact on how you connect with readers?

Social media is a really quick and easy way to speak to our audience frequently and light-heartedly. We use Twitter, which is big in the publishing industry, and Facebook. Some of our authors are great social networkers: Steven Amsterdam is big on Facebook, with regular and interesting updates, and miles vertigan is a prolific Tweeter. His tweets are funny and irreverent, and a great companion to his book, Life Kills - they have a similar style and sense of humour to the book, so they are each a tiny publicity stunt.

The Sleepers App for iPhone comprises short stories from previous Almanacs. What was your rationale behind creating the app? Are you finding this technology to be a worthwhile venture?

We were aware a few years ago that reading habits were starting to change, and as we began to make our existing books available as ebooks we also wanted to dive into a new format. The iPhone App seemed like a good way to start because we know many users of the iPhone, and the great thing about it is that it’s with you all the time. There have been sales but digital formats are generally slow at the moment, and plenty of our readers still prefer paper books. However, it’s been a really useful way for us to get our toes in the water of digital reading, and we have discovered a fondness there. We are, increasingly, surrounded with friends and family reading on Kindles and iPads.

You publish in both paper book and ebook formats. Are you finding one format to be more popular than the other? How much do you think this will change in the future?

All of our books are now available as ebooks. We still sell more paper books, by a long margin, but it’s slowly changing. It can be hard to find the books you want as ebooks in Australia, due to territorial rights, so readers are sometimes wary of investing in the new technology until everything is available. However, availability is increasing, in multiple formats, starting, for us, with Readings and Kobo, and we envisage a steady rise in ebook take-up from our readers over the next few years.

A few years ago, the Small Press Underground Networking Community (SPUNC), in which you are both involved, commissioned a report by Kate Freeth, A lovely kind of madness: Small and independent publishing in Australia (2007). Freeth found that some of the more common difficulties that small presses face relate to issues of distribution, publicity, marketing and public awareness. How is SPUNC helping small presses to confront these difficulties?

SPUNC has been invaluable at connecting small presses with the ebook retailers/distributors, and therefore showing us the market that is out there. It can be difficult to keep up to date with all of the technology as it changes so it’s terrific having someone "on the ground", digitally speaking, to keep us in the loop. In terms of paper book distribution and marketing, the SPUNC site and blog and surrounding social networks creates an easy to access way into a community of likeminded publishers, and a community of eager readers. It’s the linking and educating that SPUNC does so well.

Can you comment further on how new technology has had, and will have, an impact on the operation of Sleepers Publishing and small presses in Australia?

We can’t speak with any authority about other small presses but, at Sleepers, it has been terrifically energising to know that we are now able to access a worldwide community. Prior to ebooks, it has been near impossible for us to take our books out of Australia and New Zealand, but now we are in the global market. We look forward to seeing that grow and continue. Sometime in the future, we will print fewer books – ideally only printing on demand – therefore reducing the need for warehousing or, as is the case at the moment, overcrowding our micro-tiny office. We look forward to that day!

Louise and Zoe discuss the Sleepers iPhone app,

the founding of Sleepers Publishing and paper books.

Planet ebook: from virtual graveyard to literary lift-off

Julie Koh

The world of the self-published ebook is quickly shedding its image as a virtual planet where failed authors go to die.

Increasingly, fiction writers are considering the ebook as an avenue through which they can bypass established publishers to get their work out there and to connect with new readers.

E-superstars

One of the stars of the ebook revolution is Amanda Hocking.

The 26-year-old author from Minnesota, U.S.A., has received a great deal of media attention over the last year, having grossed approximately $2 million in ebook sales. Her ebooks include the young adult vampire romance series, My Blood Approves.

What stuns most commentators is how swiftly Hocking’s star has risen. She began self-publishing ebooks in April 2010. By early March 2011, she had sold over 900,000 copies of 9 of her ebooks. Her series of novels about trolls, the Trylle Trilogy, was optioned for a film in early 2011, with Terri Tatchell, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter for District 9, attached to adapt the screenplay.

Self-publishing phenomenons like Amanda Hocking demonstrate that the ebook is allowing indie authors to extend their readership significantly on a global scale.

That said, ebook self-publishing seems to be more lucrative for those sections of the indie fiction writing population who publish genre fiction, such as thrillers, romance, paranormal romance, mystery and fantasy. As Hocking’s sales figures suggest, the most successful of these writers are those whose work taps into the young adult zeitgeist, which at present favours — among other things — female fantasies about pallid men with sharp teeth who fall in love with us but simultaneously must resist draining us of blood.

What about literary fiction?

For emerging non-genre writers like myself, the question remains whether taking the self-published ebook route is advisable for developing a literary reputation. After all, success in literary fiction is often tied to where, and by whom, an author has had work published. Furthermore, readers may not trust a self-published ebook to be of the same quality as ‘p-books’ (a trendy new word for paper books) put out by reputable publishing houses.

Until mainstream readers and critics genuinely come around to this new electronic format, one option is for emerging literary fiction writers to self-publish short stories in ebook format after the publication of those stories in well-regarded print and online literary journals. This widens the availability of the stories to potential readers without requiring the author to pass up the opportunity to keep building a literary career that follows a traditional trajectory.

At the same time, an emerging writer may decide to publish other short stories direct to ebook, simply because those stories are experimental and unlikely to be accepted by major literary publications due to their niche market appeal.

Take, for instance, The Fantastic Breasts, a feminist satire I’ve published through Smashwords. Without a doubt, this story would have had trouble finding a publisher. Its style is an obscure and experimental mix of magic realism and hyperrealism. To add to this, the story has the potential to alienate those who take its lack of political correctness literally and feel that the language used denigrates women. The story may also alienate those who struggle to reconcile its extreme satirical humour with the serious issues it addresses relating to the objectification of women.

Ultimately, not all stories a writer produces are destined to be popular. In circumstances where an author isn’t willing to compromise to make a story more palatable for a mainstream audience, the ebook is a powerful new publishing option. It lowers the barriers to publication for experimental literary work and vastly improves the author's chance of reaching that work’s niche global readership.

Lift-off

Ebook technology can benefit a wide variety of fiction writers, particularly those who can handle the hurdles involved in self-publishing and who want to connect with a global readership without having to woo an established publisher willing to aid them in this quest.

I once heard of a writer who said that having an unpublished story is like having a grown-up child who won’t leave home. The ebook has become an avenue through which such a story can make a life away from the worried clutches of its author: a life that begins in an aesthetically pleasing and widely available electronic format on an increasingly prosperous virtual planet.



Image by goXunuReviews, made available by Creative Commons licence via Flickr.