Evidence of meeting #3 for Bill C-11 (41st Parliament, 1st Session) in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was copyright.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:20 p.m.
NDP
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Thank you.
Actually, that last comment was where I was going to start. You'd talked about Apple and iBooks being totally accessible, and I did want you to explain what you meant. Maybe you can elaborate a little more on that, if you could, just to educate us on how that works.
6:20 p.m.
National Director, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Apple has built in a screen reader. Normally when you buy a PC, you will purchase or use an open-source screen reader that's made by a separate company. What Apple has done is they've put people on the development of screen readers within Apple. It's built right into the Mac or the iPhone or the iPad. When you turn on this screen reader, you have access to all of the applications that come with the iPad and many third party applications that you would download from the App Store. One of them is the iBookstore. You can do things like read by sentence, or by word, or by character, which is essential if you want to spell a name or take a bit more fine-grained reading approach.
So that's what Apple has done. They've built the screen reader directly into the product, and anyone can turn it on or off, as they wish.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Could you conceivably identify an app and then open that app, let's say a newspaper app, and have the newspaper on screen read to you?
6:20 p.m.
National Director, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Yes, you can do that. Where it gets tricky is that not all of the third-party apps—and it would be third-party apps that are creating the newspaper app, The New York Times, for example—implement all of the accessibility APIs, or application program interface protocols or rules, that Apple has set out. Not all of them work within them, so they can end up creating inaccessibility where, if they had just used the tools that Apple had given them to make an accessible app, there would have been accessibility.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
I have a 16-year-old son with autism, and in our world, our lives have been made immeasurably easier because there has been an explosion of technology and apps, particularly right now, that allow him to communicate. He doesn't talk, so he uses his iPhone to talk for him, because it has a little bit louder output than an iPod.
Before that, we had a $10,000 speech device that was about 15 times as big, and now he has an iPhone that does exactly the same thing for $189 for the Proloquo2go app, and the cost of the iPhone. Is there a similar advance in technology that would benefit blind Canadians?
6:20 p.m.
National Director, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Yes, and it's happening with Apple.
You can spend $10 on an app that will identify your money, whereas before you would have spent $100 on a device, or had the device given to you by the Bank of Canada. It's the same thing as far as identifying colours, identifying objects, and scanning using OCR, so it's snapping a picture, performing optical character recognition, and then reading the text.
To do that, you would normally—and in previous cell phones—have to spend several thousand dollars. Now you can do it with a $10 app. The same thing has happened.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
It's pretty exciting stuff. I know it has changed our lives. I'm sure it has done the same for you.
Just to finish up with you on this, as I look down the list of the five concerns you raised, it seems to me that what you're saying is that, in most of these cases, the bill is an advance, but you think we could do even better. Is that an accurate portrayal of what you're saying?
6:25 p.m.
National Director, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Yes. I think there are a couple of places where the bill does some good things, like sending things outside of Canada. We needed that in the bill so that we could join this international agreement. The exemption for circumventing TPMs, I don't think that's a bad exemption. I just think it's not going to be one we can exercise very easily without some other things in place.
The other three, though, are all aimed at the existing Copyright Act, and they're all aimed at trying to improve that. Where I see silence in BillC-11 is on those three issues of large print, cinematographic works, and for-profit production.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
I look forward to hearing from you in the future on how we can take a look at other opportunities to make your life easier. Certainly I think that, for all of us around the table, one of the things that makes our jobs so enjoyable is that opportunity.
Thank you for taking the time to come here.
6:25 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Glenn Thibeault
Thank you, Mr. Lake.
I will now thank our witnesses and our guests. We will suspend briefly to go in camera for committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
