According to the Association of Canadian Publishers, more than 10,000 books are published in Canada each year. However, under Canada's current copyright requirements, publishers are not required by law or regulation to make these books accessible. Even with incentive programs through Canadian Heritage, Canadian publishers are under no obligation to produce accessible works, despite receiving public dollars.
The CNIB believes all books should be accessible. Whether it's just to ensure that accessibility applications can be used simultaneously with e-books or that Canadians with sight loss can buy Braille or electronic Braille copies in-store, all books published in Canada must be accessible.
We recommend that publishers be legislated to make accessible copies of their books. To do so, we recommend creating an additional subsection within section 3 of the Copyright Act, subsection 3(2), which would read, “For the purpose of this Act, a copyright cannot be granted to a literary work unless the production of such a work is done in an alternate format for persons with a print disability.” You can follow along in your Braille copy, if you'd like to know the specifics.
We believe that this sensible amendment to the Copyright Act would ensure that all books will be born accessible in Canada. Given the abundance of means by which accessible books can be produced, why does the lack of accessible books continue to be an issue?