Well, to answer your first question, Tom was asking for money to help
get existing laws enforced. Certainly, you must be aware that even in
first world countries like the USA, getting accessability laws enforced
can be difficult.
As for your second question, the problem bookshare currently has is that
there is a patchwork of laws and treaties around the world and it has to
deal with each country's laws individually. The World Intellectual
Property Organization recently did adopt a treaty, known as the
Marrakesh Treaty, that would make it easier for bookshare to share
materials globally. It hasn't been ratified by all of the countries of
the world. In fact, I don't know of it's status in the USA which
obviously is critical to the succes of the treaty. I'm pretty sure the
USA has not ratified the treaty but I don't know where it is in the
process. For more on the treaty see this link
http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2013/article_0017.html
As for your third point, I'm not sure what you are getting at. Who is
writing about blind people as if they are uniformly the same person?
Perhaps you can expand on that a little in order to help me understand
what you mean. Organizations like the NFB and ACB, the Benetech
Foundation, and Knowledge Ecology make it easier for blind people to
work together to accomplish their goals. But I don't think that implies
that we are all the same. We do share some goals.
Sometimes I think blind people, especially those in the United States,
are unaware of the amount of effort being expended on their behalf. The
Chafee Ammendment, the 21CVAA, the Marrakesh Treaty, the Benetech
Foundation, Knowledge Ecology, bookshare and everything else didn't just
happen. People worked hard for those things. And each of them took a lot
of work. We all think we've made it on our own and I don't want to take
away from anybody's hard work. But no one makes it entirely on their own.
On 12/07/2014 10:34 AM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
I would wonder what is wrong with the already existing channels. the
United nations Trudie for the rights of people with disabilities...which
carries the rule of law, and packs greater punch then say the ADa.
Second, Bookshare is internationalalready now.
While I certainly respect that such issues differ around the world, I
firmly believe that writing about and advocating for those experiencing
sight loss as if they are uniformly the same person simply leads to
greater discrimination.
It is one of the *many* things that is disturbing about the NFB, their
forced state of blindness at their training centers, instead of
supporting the very existence of diversity among the more than 400
million people on the planet experiencing blindness is not something i
would want fortified internationally to be sure.
Kare
On Sat, 6 Dec 2014, Pia wrote:
If this is legitimate, then maybe Tomas could provide more details for
us, because threats to and disregard of our basic human rights as
blind people is defiantly an international problem and a problem that
should concern us all as decent human beings.
On Sat, 6 Dec 2014, John G. Heim wrote:
When we created the International Association of Visually Impaired
Technologists, this kind of thing became a huge issue. Lots of us
happen
to live in countries where our rights are better protected than they
are
in other parts of the world. Are general discrimination issues
relevant to
being a technologist? I maintained that we needed to stick to things
directly related to doing the job of working with computers. But a
lot of
people disagreed. I'm afraid we lost some people immediately because of
it.
But I still think what we really need is an international version of
the
NFB. Whatever you may think of the NFB, it does have it's good side
especially when it comes to advocacy. I've had enough trouble even
getting
people interested in helping with IAVIT and what we have is totally
inadequate for dealing with issues like this. I wish I had the guts to
quit my job and get to work on it. I was just reading up on James Love,
the founder of Knowledge Ecology, and it says that he used to be a
commercial fisherman. Knowledge Ecology is the group that has been
working on getting a treaty through the UN that would essentially allow
bookshare.org to go international.
Anyway, I'd be reluctant to just dismiss stuff like this as spam. I've
contacted Tom. I'll see if we can get more specifics. We'll try to
flesh
out the details a little. After that, each of us will have to decide on
our own whether the cause is worthy of our attention.
On 12/04/2014 02:51 AM, Pia wrote:
> Warning this looks like spam. On the website there is no details
about
> the supposed case, just a bunch of requests for money in poorly
written
> English. Also, the website redirects you to a crowdfunding site.
> > On Wed, 3 Dec 2014, Tomáš Cerha wrote:
> > > Dear list members,
> > > > I am sorry for cross-posting an off topic message, but I
believe
this
> > is an important precedence that must be heard.
> > > > I would like to very kindly ask you for sharing an important
> > information about a case, where a blind man decided to defend his
> > rights and the rights of other blind and visually impaired people
> > against the state. More details at http://DefendTheBlind.com
> > <http://defendtheblind.com/> .
> > > > It is now really important to get the message across!
> > > > The possibilities are:
> > 1. Share our Facebook post:
> > https://www.facebook.com/a11yltd/posts/368404846670835
> > <https://www.facebook.com/a11yltd/posts/368404846670835>
> > 2. Re-tweet our message:
> > https://twitter.com/a11yltd/status/540105668636999680
> > <https://twitter.com/a11yltd/status/540105668636999680>
> > 3. Publish a message about DefendTheBlind.com
> > <http://defendtheblind.com/>
> > > > If you have some other idea how you could help us, please
let us
know!
> > > > Thank you for understanding and apologies for wasting your time
if
> > this doesn’t interest you. If you decide to reply, please do so
> > personally to avoid discussing this off topic message on the
list!
> > > > Best regards
> > > > Tomas Cerha
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
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