Print Access
Making Reading Accessible and Available: Print Access
Accessible formats – Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY), Braille, Audio books, E-text and many more ensure information is easily accessible to persons with print disabilities. However, the availability of material in accessible formats has always been a challenge, both legally and logistically.
The Legal Hurdle Overcome: Copyright Act, 2012
The XRCVC’s advocacy initiative persevered actively from 2006 to bring about an appropriate modification to the Copyright Act of India, 1957 to the current Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 which ensures that print access rights to the print disabled are guaranteed within the Indian legal system.
If you would like to know more about this journey, you may find the following articles of interest:
- Copyright Representation by Publication Access Coordination Committee (PACC)
- Policy paper submitted to Parliamentary Standing Committee on ‘Concerns with Licensing for the Print Disabled‘
- XRCVC Report on Right to Read Campaign
If you are interested in knowing the details of the old and new legislation and other related legislations and how exactly it will impact the print disabled please read the following:
Ground Zero Efforts: Working towards Effective Awareness, Library and Dissemination Systems
Parallel to the legal changes, the XRCVC has been involved in a range of content creation, dissemination system creation and awareness efforts.
Publisher Partnership Programme, DFI & OBL
The XRCVC, as one of the founding members of the DAISY Forum of India (DFI), initiated an active publisher contact programme to harness positive and effective partnership with the publishing community. Over the years, the DFI has built robust partnerships with leading publishing houses such as, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Cambridge University Press, Sheth Publishers Pvt. Ltd., S. Chand & Co. Ltd., Zubaan Books, Pratham Books, Himalaya Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., Other India Press, Sahitya Akademi, Tata McGraw-Hill Education etc. To know more about the same, you may visit www.daisyindia.org.
In addition, the XRCVC, as part of the DFI, is also actively involved in DAISY content creation. All DFI organisations producing accessible content are further pooled into a centralised library for easy access and availability at the Online Braille Library (OBL). To access content across India, you may visit www.oblindia.org.
The XRCVC has also published its own publication - Write-Right: Understanding Homonyms Better. The book was released in all three versions of accessible formats – Braille, Large Print and the DAISY full text full audio format. If you are interested in getting a copy, please contact us.
Bookshare.org
Bookshare.org, the world’s largest online library for persons with print disabilities, has started its Indian memberships at highly subsidized rates to benefit the print-disabled community in India.The XRCVC has collaborated with Bookshare.org to become their Western India region representative. As part of this partnership, the XRCVC regulates the registration of print-disabled persons’ memberships to Bookshare.org in the Western India region.
To know more about the Bookshare online library, please visit www.bookshare.org.
To know more about becoming a Bookshare.org India member, please read the Bookshare India Frequently Asked Questions.
To become a member, you can follow the link to the online form below and fill and submit them for membership completion formalities.
Individual Membership Form
To know more about how you can make books inclusive, please read The ABC of Inclusive Publishing.
This book lists the standards of and guidelines for creating accessible e-content from Mircosoft Word. These standards are intended to help NGOs, libraries, book production agencies and volunteers prepare a digital copy of books in Microsoft Word with a view to further convert it to accessible formats such as EPUB, accessible PDF and DAISY formats with minimal modifications. To know more about how to create accessible text content, please read:
Spreading the Word – Reading Without Seeing Workshops
Whilst technologies enable the visually challenged to read independently, many users are still unaware of the host of new-age technologies and what suits them the most. In order to bridge this gap, the XRCVC organizes “Reading Without Seeing” workshops/seminars providing awareness and basic training of accessible technologies for the visually challenged across various parts of the country. The workshop/seminar is a demonstration of different mobile accessible technologies along with various reading equipments, DAISY book players and magnifiers, Braille writing devices & low-vision aids made available by the XRCVC.
If you would like the XRCVC to organise a Reading Without Seeing workshop, or for information about the next scheduled workshop, feel free to contact us.
