Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

The View from an Authorized Entity  Many Bookshare users (and potential Bookshare users!) have been asking about the Treaty of Marrakesh (formal name: The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities. What’s in it; what does it mean; how does it affect Bookshare members? In the popular online acronym, IANAL (I am not a lawyer). However, as the founder of the Bookshare online library, we have a great deal at stake in how the Treaty gets implemented. Although it might seem like a complicated document , we’re really excited about it because we think it will greatly improve global access for people with bona fide print disabilities. Here’s our laymen’s take on the major provisions of the Treaty. The Treaty of Marrakesh, Top Issues: What’s the goal of the Treaty? The goal of the Treaty is to end the book famine for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled. Ultimately, t...

Earlier today, I attended the American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) National Leadership Conference in Chicago where I received the 2013 Migel Medal . The Migel Medal, often called the highest honor in the blindness field, is awarded annually to one or two individuals whose careers exemplify exceptional accomplishments in the field. It was named for the first board chair of AFB, M.C. Migel, whose experiences with blindness caused during World War I, led to him helping start the Foundation.  Helen Keller, who worked for AFB for many years, was on the original award board for its first twenty years, starting in 1937. The other recipient this year was Kay Ferrell, Professor of Special Education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, who won the Medal for her tremendous work with and on behalf of children and youth who are blind and visually impaired. I’m honored to join Kay in receiving this prestigious award and deeply grateful to AFB for its recognition. Remarks ...

In November, I wrote a blog post entitled: Why I’m Scared of the SOPA bill . Part of my objective was to show the unintended consequences of Internet censorship bills like SOPA and PIPA (SOPA's Senate buddy bill), responding to alerts from organizations I trust like the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Copyright Alliance had the courtesy of engaging with multiple comments in favor of the proposed bills, but they failed to directly address (either a deliberate omission or because it was a robot) my major concerns about two of our main technology programs: the Bookshare online library (largest in the world for people with print disabilities) and our Human Rights program. Today, we're joining what is probably the largest online protest in history , by blacking out significant portions of the Benetech website, as well as our Martus and HRDAG human rights websites. We're not alone: far larger sites like Wikipedia and Google and hundreds of others (if not thousands). Copyr...

There has been a major breakthrough recently on international copyright negotiations in Geneva around improved access for people who have print disabilities. Through negotiations, four competing proposals have been merged into a single document supported in June by the Latin Americans (led by Brazil), the U.S., the European Union and others. Here are some questions and answers I've prepared on this topic, based on my recent trip to Geneva to attend the first week of discussions on the issue. 1. Question: What are the two key points of the document? Answer : • Countries should provide for a copyright exception in their national laws to allow nonprofit organizations serving people with disabilities to make accessible versions of inaccessible books and other content • Import and export of such accessible materials shall be permitted 2. Question: Why is this a good idea? Answer : A copyright exception makes it much easier for people with print disabilities to get access to the material...

Statement of Benetech to the 22nd Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization June 15, 2011, Geneva, Switzerland • Greetings from California’s Silicon Valley! I’m a high tech engineer and the founder of Benetech, one of Silicon Valley’s leading nonprofit technology companies, dedicated to seeing that the benefits of technology help all of humanity, not just the richest 10% • As a nonprofit charity, we focus on areas of market failure, where regular for-profit companies have decided that the market opportunity for a given product is not large enough • One of our best-known programs is the Bookshare library, the largest online library of accessible books in the world, a library dedicated to serving the one or two percent of the population with a severe print disability • Since I last spoke to this body less than one year ago at SCCR20, the Bookshare library has grown from serving 100,000 people with print disabilities...

We filed the following comments to the Copyright Office's request for comments on issues about access for people with print disabilities. Background on this can be reviewed at the Knowledge Ecology International website. December 4, 2009 Benetech’s Reply Comments in response to the Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry and Request for Comments on the Topic of Facilitating Access to Copyrighted Works for the Blind or Other Persons With Disabilities The issue all comes down to human rights vs. money. The human rights issue we’re discussing are the human rights of people with disabilities that cannot effectively use the printed word. The printed word is essential for education, employment and social inclusion. The status quo is that people with print disabilities are experiencing a book famine. And famines have consequences. Most of this community doesn’t have access to formal education, most of this community doesn’t have access to jobs and most of this community isn’t recognized by l...

Last Friday I spent almost two and a half hours in a wide-ranging conversation with Maria Pallante and Michele Woods of the Copyright Office (Michele's name updated, plus a summer law clerk attended) . I came away with a much better understanding of the issues they are exploring and certainly did my part to articulate why I support the positions we have. [Long post alert!] I would characterize the atmosphere as one of informed and intelligent skepticism on the part of the Copyright Office, with many questions exploring different positions. We discussed Chafee, especially in the context of the Amazon text-to-speech brouhaha, and the proposed international treaty that was tabled at the WIPO SCCR meeting in Geneva last month. The Chafee Amendment The U.S. copyright exemption for serving the print disabled is commonly called the Chafee Amendment: Section 121 of copyright law. It’s what makes our Bookshare service legally possible. The fact-finding public hearing and request for com...

Betsy Beaumon and I had the pleasure to meet today with Kareem Dale, the special assistant to the president for disability policy. We had a wide-ranging conversation about Bookshare and the current hot disability issues. Really exciting. The one incredibly newsworthy item was Kareem emailed me (during the meeting) a statement he drafted on the topic of the Global Treaty that was discussed in late May at the SCCR event at the World Intellectual Property Organization. I found it very exciting as President Obama's position on this developing issue! The following is the email I received from Kareem Dale in its entirety (and I have his permission to distribute it): Access to information and ideas is essential for personal and professional growth and full engagement in a democratic society. But engagement can be severely limited when information is not available in accessible formats. We are committed to building a world that no longer puts up unnecessary barriers. We must create...

Lots of excitement recently in Geneva at the World Intellectual Property Organization. We've been supportive of an effort by the World Blind Union to get an international treaty in place that sets up a global system much like the one we have today in the United States. I was part of an expert panel that drafted the original proposed treaty. Bookshare pretty much has been made possible by the Chafee Amendment, a copyright exception provision in U.S. law that made it legal for us to scan just a bout any book without needing to get permissions first. The goal of the treaty is to set a standard that all countries have such a provision, and that they interact with other countries. Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay joined together to propose that WIPO consider this treaty. During the meeting in Geneva, there was worrisome rhetoric coming from the advocacy community, like the Boing Boing post USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people's access to written ma...

I’ve been watching with interest the legal controversy over the synthetic speech capability of the new version of the Amazon Kindle, such as the coverage on Boing-Boing entitled Author's Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal . I think it’s time to write a series of short essays on the struggle for accessible books, starting with this brouhaha. This isn’t a new issue. George Kerscher and I wrote a major essay on the topic seven(!) years ago entitled the Soundproof Book . In it, we pointed out the irony that the first generation of ebook readers being inaccessible to blind people. This irony continues: it’s a terrible shame that Amazon (and other ebook device vendors) keeps putting out ebook products that are inaccessible to the blind! More on that in another essay. The essence of the Soundproof Book essay was the dueling moral high grounds: author’s rights vs. the right to access. Since these are both generally good from society’s standpoint, how do you handle the...