Evidence of meeting #133 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was accessible.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
David de Burgh Graham Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Thank you.
Mr. Simpson, you held up a device earlier. What is that thing called?
4:20 p.m.
Head, Public Affairs, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
This is a Victor Reader. It plays a DAISY book, which is a navigable audiobook.
4:20 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Is there any technology that exists, regardless of cost right now, that you can point at a piece of paper and it will read it to you?
To take the text to—
4:20 p.m.
A voice
OCR.
4:20 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
OCR, thank you—to the next level, does that technology exist or is it in development? Have we heard about it?
4:20 p.m.
National Manager, Advocacy, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
Yes, it does exist. There are free programs. One is called Seeing AI, which is an artificial-intelligence app that Microsoft put out. It's a prototype development platform they're trying to use to tweak artificial intelligence.
A few years ago, the National Federation of the Blind, in partnership with Ray Kurzweil—I'm sure you've all heard of him—made available for cost an app called the KNFB Reader. The last time I checked—and please don't quote me on this—it was around the $100 price point. It was a very robust optical character-recognition system that you could literally point at a piece of paper—a menu, a newspaper, whatever—and it would do a really half-decent job of digitizing that to make it accessible.
4:20 p.m.
National Manager, Advocacy, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
I have the Seeing AI app on my phone. It's great. I tried using it in the hotel room last night to tell me whether it was shampoo or body lotion, not exactly Ultimate Format materials, but it gives you a sense of the.... Hopefully I didn't use...anyhow, it doesn't matter.
4:20 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:20 p.m.
National Manager, Advocacy, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
We laugh, but these things are real. You go into a hotel room and there's a deluge of leaflets on your bed. You go onto a plane and they encourage you to read the safety briefing card. You go to a university and they ask you to pick your courses from a calendar, and so on and so on and so on.
I haven't personally used the KNFB Reader. I know many people who have, and they love it. It's opened huge doors to them. It's definitely going the right way.
4:20 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
For somebody who is visually impaired or outright blind, how much does it cost in extra things you need to get through life? Is there any way of quantifying that for us?
4:20 p.m.
National Manager, Advocacy, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
For the talking book reader that Thomas has here, a company called HumanWare, just outside of Montreal, sells these devices internationally for $350 to $400 a pop.
The KNFB Reader was around $100 the last time I checked. Some of the more sophisticated reading machines, closer to TV readers, where you place printed material underneath a camera that then blows it up, based on the person's ability to read or to see, are in the thousands of dollars. Braille display machines that Mr. Rae talked about, the refreshable Braille displays, are in excess of $3,500.
Prototypes are coming onto the market. CNIB participated in something called the Orbit Reader. It's just coming to fruition now, selling for $500, but it's still first generation. Just think back to microwaves; they were clunky, and they sort of worked.
It will get better. As these devices go through their life-cycle development, they will get better, and they will become cheaper and do more.
4:25 p.m.
Chair, Social Policy Committee, Council of Canadians with Disabilities
But the costs that Mr. Greco was speaking about are real, and that's one of the reasons that we need a national program to fund technical equipment. If you live in Ontario, as I do, our ADP will cover three-quarters of the cost of a fair number of pieces of equipment. If I suddenly move out of Ontario, I lose access to that. That should be available across the country.
4:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
As I understand it, you're allowed to circumvent a technological protection measure for visual impairment, so you can use it. If something is protected, you're able to reverse engineer that legally. What are the resources required to do that? If you have a device that has digital locks on it, what's involved in circumventing them to use it?
4:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Yes. It's DRM in the U.S., and TPM in Canada.
4:25 p.m.
National Manager, Advocacy, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
It's impossible. It's impossible, because unless you want to reverse engineer a DRM product, you then run the risk of contravening not only the law, even though you are entitled to do so for accessibility purposes.... Once you start tampering with electronic files, you run the risk of compromising the content, which, quite honestly, I think is a more serious issue than running the risk of alienating or upsetting a publisher because you've broken their copyright.
4:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Okay.
I have a few seconds left. David, do you have a quick question.?
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
David Lametti Liberal LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
Sure. I'll speak to Mr. Novotny and Mr. Posner.
The gist of your argument is that you had a system. There was an ecosystem in which your contribution would be valued with payments collected by SOCAN, but based on a model that doesn't represent the reality. We've moved from advertising to subscription as a source of revenue, so tracking advertising is not very good.
As a hypothetical question, do you think you have enough negotiating clout at the outset to say you'd be better off getting a higher fixed fee at the outset? Would that be a possible solution?
4:25 p.m.
Screen Composer, Screen Composers Guild of Canada
I can pretty much tell you that it wouldn't be. Based on the types of budgets that we see here in Canada, certainly it wouldn't be. I'm not even sure if would be for American composers, either. I suppose if I were a single guy in my twenties living in a one-bedroom apartment, or something like that, perhaps I could make a go of it that way. But it certainly wouldn't make for a reasonable middle-class lifestyle of any sort. So much of our livelihood is dependent on our intellectual property working for us. We do contract work. When you're between contracts, and maybe you don't see a new series or film or show for a few months, that revenue is all the more important.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
David Lametti Liberal LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
What can we fix upon in the subscription model in order to try to replicate or create a revenue stream? Is it the number of streams? Is there something there that we could pin some kind of remuneration on?
4:25 p.m.
Screen Composer, Screen Composers Guild of Canada
It's a little difficult for either of us to say because we are composers. SOCAN would probably know that. But my understanding of it is that there must be some sort of rate that these subscription services basically pay to performing rights organizations. Maybe that mill rate needs to go up. Maybe the actual way the views are counted needs to change. There's such a disconnect between the way this is working now and the way it used to work.
I'll be truthful. I teach at Humber College and I'm also at York University. I'm very concerned for the next generation of composers and musicians. Many of them are saying that they want to enter this profession, and with the numbers that Ari has reported to me, I feel like a hypocrite trying to position an optimistic viewpoint to my students.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
We're going to move back to the Conservative Party. Mr. Albas, you have five minutes.
4:30 p.m.
Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to go along the same lines as MP Graham.
We've heard a lot about the education exemptions that are available with fair dealing and their impacts on the publishing sector. Are there any aspects of those exceptions that impact people with disabilities to a larger extent that the committee should be aware of?