Briefly: The Treaty for the Visually Impaired (TVI)
14 October 2008
New technologies make it possible to imagine a world where blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons have access to a broad variety of documents at the same time as people without vision or other reading disabilties do, and at a reasonable price, but there are still many obstacles.
The copyright laws in some countries are too restrictive for blind, visually impaired or other reading disabled persons to benefit from the new digital technologies, such as refreshable braille, audio works, or large type digital readers that are indexed and searchable. It can be time consuming and costly for third parties to create high quality accessible formats of copyrighted works. Unfortunately, works published in accessible formats in one country cannot be exported to another country.
There is a need for greater harmonization in limitations and exceptions, including the right to export and import, in order to create a global platform for making works available to the reading disabled.
This is the right moment to table a concrete proposal at the WIPO SCCR. The topic is mature, and the WIPO SCCR is finally ready to discuss copyright limitations and exceptions.
Since 2003, the World Blind Union (WBU) has been asking the WIPO SCCR to address the need for harmonization on minimum limitations and exceptions for the blind, and to solve the export/import problem.
In 2005, the government of Chile asked WIPO to address the subject of mandatory minimum limitations and exceptions to copyright, for several groups, including the blind and visually impaired.
In February 2007, WIPO published a detailed report by Judith Sullivan, "Study on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for the Visually Impaired."
At the March 2008, meeting of the WIPO SCCR, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua and Uruguay presented a new proposal, which elaborated further the proposal by the Delegation of Chile regarding exceptions and limitations. Several delegations "underlined the need for speedy action to improve the access of visually impaired persons to protected works."
The treaty proposal provides for harmonization of mandatory minimum limitations and exceptions to copyright for the benefit of blind, visually impaired, and reading disabled persons. It also ensures that works published under these provisions can be legally exported and imported across borders.