Below is the final agreed upon text for the SCCR 17 on the issue of access for persons with reading disabilities. There are four sentences, in one paragraph.
The Committee acknowledged the special needs of visually impaired persons and stressed the importance of dealing, without delay and with appropriate deliberation, with those needs of the blind, visually impaired, and other reading disabled persons, including discussions at the national and international level on possible ways and means facilitating and enhancing access to protected works. This should include analysis of limitations and exceptions. This should also include the possible establishment of a stakeholders platform at WIPO, in order to facilitate arrangements to secure access for disabled persons to protected works. A number of delegations referred to a paper presented by the World Blind Union (WBU) and expressed interest in further analyzing it.
I may later write a more detailed comment on what transpired, but here are some quick thoughts.
The SCCR 18 meeting in the Spring will be very important. By then we expect to see a formal proposal for a treaty by one or more WIPO member states, and we also expect to see significant civil society mobilization, including the disabled community. I will say that the opposition to the proposal for a treaty for the blind and disabled coming from France and the Europe Member states (plus Switzerland) was quite shocking to many participants in the room, and the lack of leadership or opposition among other developed countries on this issue (including the USA, Canada and Japan), was appalling. Only New Zealand and Australia among the high income countries did anything openly helpful in addressing the core concerns of blind, visually impaired and other disabled persons.
In terms of what the WIPO SCCR did, one should start with the embrace of IFRRO (the collection society) proposal for “a stakeholders platform at WIPO.” This was the main push by Europe and also the United States. WIPO, as a UN agency, was dealing with the topic of limitations and exceptions for blind and other disabled people — a vulnerable population whose access should be addressed a matter of human rights. IFRRO developed its proposal without any consultations with the blind or disabled communities — none at all. And their proposal was opposed by the WBU in the meeting, partly on the grounds that the was no consultation, and because IFRRO was on record in the meeting opposing limitations and exceptions for the blind and disabled. Nonetheless, France and all European Member states threw their weight behind the IFRRO proposal, and opposed everything the WBU was asking for. The EU even blocked from the consensus any discussion of the cross-border delivery of accessible works. It is only because of the resistance from Latin American, Asian and African countries that the concerns of the blind and disabled community advanced.
While IFRRO had never even bothered to talk to the WBU or any other disabled groups, the WBU had petitioned WIPO regularly since 2002 to provide for harmonization of limitations and exceptions, and to address the import/export issue, and specifically the intellectual property barriers that are blocking the development of new global libraries for the blind and disabled populations. To appreciate how extensive the WBU’s presentations to WIPO were on this topic, see: https://www.keionline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=213
The SCCR 17 text on disabilities will, in the end, be sufficient to move this issue forward, and we expect a very important debate in the Spring of 2009, and we fully expect the new Obama government to abandon the alliance with the EU, in opposition to the blind and disabled community, and do the right thing, and support a treaty.
Nonetheless, it was an insult and a disgrace that the IFRRO proposal not only was embraced and advanced in this meeting, without any debate on its merits or even purpose, but that it was given a higher status in the decision than was the six year effort by the WBU to deal with an important copyright issue.
I will close with the comments from one delegation at the end of the evening. The delegate, from a high income country, had been silent the entire meeting, but is a country one expects to provide some moral leadership. I said, “why didn’t you speak up? — this is a human rights issue.” She said, “this isn’t the human rights commission, — this is WIPO.” She wasn’t being ironic or critical of WIPO. She thought it was natural that the collection society would come first on this issue. That pretty much summed things up.