ABSTRACT
These include the right to license individuals or organizations to produce editions which are accessible to the blind or partially sighted (visually impaired persons, VIPs) or others with reading disabilities – these may include people with dyslexia or with disabilities which prevent them from holding or reading a book in the usual way. These rights are noncommercial in nature; they cover the production of books in Braille and Moon (another embossed tactile system, using large characters similar to the alphabet) and the recording of undramatized readings of books on cassettes, CDs or as digital downloads for use by the reading impaired (RIPs). Increasingly, those organizations producing material for this readership seek rights to supply material in other media, for example in disc format for computer-driven Braille display, magnified screen display or text-to-speech (TTS) versions. These rights have traditionally been granted free of charge or in return for
a purely nominal fee. Large-print rights for the partially sighted who can cope with such editions are excluded from this category as they are produced on a commercial basis (they are covered in Chapter 13). Since the last edition of this book appeared, there have been ongoing
developments on both the political and legislative fronts to facilitate the provision of accessibility and inclusivity in relation to the use of copyright material by visually impaired and disabled people, and the legal situation at the time of writing is described later in this chapter. The practical situation concerning the supply of material in accessible formats for RIPs is described below.
