Industry committee  But not in that shop.

Industry committee  There's another aspect to this that I don't think we've touched on very much, and that is libraries. We've talked to you a fair bit about our desire to be able to buy a book, and that's reality. In my case, I have a particular interest in certain areas of non-fiction, but it's ve

Industry committee  Well, there's a belief that it's locked. I maintain that's actually the big lie, and I say that for this reason: I get a PDF document, and if I can read it, if it is accessible, and there's a good chance it may be, I can take that document, turn it into Notepad or move it into th

Industry committee  I have a slightly similar story. When I retired, I decided I would go back to school. I applied to Ryerson. I was accepted. Some of their courses are done by distance learning, and they used this thing called “Blackboard”. I'm not 100% sure whether it was inaccessible or if it

Industry committee  If you consider the stat that Mr. Simpson gave you earlier, that only 28% of blind Canadians are currently employed, think of the costs that society is incurring for the extent of our unemployment. That is impacted on all aspects of life. If we don't have more money in our pocket

Industry committee  It probably goes a bit beyond that. We have a lot of indigenous languages in this country. There's a growing amount of literature and artistic performance in these various indigenous languages. I think we need to do more to promote that. Making some of that accessible to folks

Industry committee  I think Mr. Greco is right. Even when you scan a book, sometimes scanning isn't perfect. If the publisher produced an accessible version to begin with, that would alleviate that problem. It would alleviate the need to spend time scanning, and it would presumably produce a better

Industry committee  That's right.

Industry committee  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 sudden

Industry committee  I agree with everything you're saying. We have hopes that the accessible Canada act will have a positive effect on our lives. I think it needs strengthening, but we are delighted that the government introduced it. I think what would also help is some harsher words from human righ

Industry committee  I would also suggest to you that the low level of unemployment you mentioned has an additional negative effect. It's not just the economic deprivation that comes to us, but the fact that we are not represented in adequate numbers means that many organizations do not have expertis

Industry committee  I think an area that would help here would be more resources to the human rights commissions across Canada so they can do a better job of informing Canadians of the duty to accommodate, of legal obligations that in my mind already exist in human rights law. That's why so many of

Industry committee  I agree with your notion that consistency of definition would be helpful.

Industry committee  I would assume that producers are aware. I've seen publishers that are aware. As Lui just said, at the end of the day, our community wants access to more material to read. That's what we're after. Therefore, our work in CCD has really been more in trying to get publishers more in

Industry committee  It certainly can't hurt to expand Canadians' knowledge of what the act says and what it provides for. I think a lot of people who produce it, whether it be producers of alternate formats, or whether we're talking about colleges and universities—I suspect those people are reasonab