Hi all, I saw this on the ACBNY list and thought it was worth publishing. Ann P. New Librarian of Congress Ruling Gains Access to eBooks for People With Visual Impairments WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 -- The Librarian of Congress issued a ruling supporting the right of people who are blind or partially sighted to gain full access to electronic books (eBooks). The ruling provides an exemption to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it legal to circumvent any encrypted or protected features that render the text inaccessible for the specialized computer technologies used by people who are visually impaired to read electronic text. "This ruling upholds the fundamental right to read for all people," said Carl Augusto, President of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). "The emerging electronic book technologies have the potential to make published information more accessible and usable to people with visual impairments. By removing barriers to utilizing eBooks, the Library ensured all people can continue to enjoy the benefits of progress." This ruling is the result of a concerted advocacy effort by AFB involving testimony and evidence to show that approximately 50 percent of currently published eBooks are inaccessible for people who are blind or partially sighted. "This is a major victory, but there is more work to do," continued Augusto. "AFB will continue to work with Congress, the Librarian and publishers to ensure future titles are fully accessible for people with visual impairments." DMCA, which became U.S. law in 1998, makes it a felony to develop or use technology to get around security provisions of various classes of intellectual property including software, ebooks, DVD movies and audio, among others. The Librarian's ruling provides an exemption for: "Literary works distributed in eBook format when all existing eBook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling of the eBook's read-aloud function and the enabling of screen readers to render the text into a specialized format." Additional information about the DMCA and on this ruling, including copies of all testimony, can be found on line at, http://www.copyright.gov/1201/. -- Ann K. Parsons email: akp at eznet.net WEB SITE: http://home.eznet.net/~akp "All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost." JRRT
