They fight for the visually challenged

Times News Network

Bangalore: The National Access Alliance (NAA) on Thursday opposed the Centre’s move to amend the Copyright Act 1957, which will prevent NGOs, educational institutions and persons with disabilities from converting reading material into audio, digital and other formats.

Nirmita Narasimhan, programming manager for the Centre for Internet and Society, on Thursday said: “Roughly, one lakh books are published every year, but only 700 are available to the blind in an accessible format. And most of these are illegally converted by NGOs. But what else can these organizations do?”

Converting texts into formats involves applying for a licence, which takes about three months; still it may take many more months for actual conversion to happen. Any student would lose a year by then, she explained.

Executive director of the centre, Sunil Abraham said: “It is important to remember that everyone is only temporarily visually-enabled. The issue affects all of us. Unlike American students, print-disabled Indians cannot freely convert their study books into MP3 format.”