print disabilities

CHENNAI: When G Udayaraj, a final year student, wants to read a book, he goes to the computer lab, dons a headset and listens to one of the 30,000 books
that Presidency College’s English department has converted into digital format.

Udayaraj has very low vision, which means everything from class notes to novels are easier to ‘read’ on the computer.

But a proposed amendment to copyright act might just change the way print- disabled people like Udayaraj ‘read’. The Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2010, introduced in RS on Monday, says there will be copyright exemption only for converting books into special formats such as Braille and sign language [Section 52 (1) (zb)

Palo Alto, CA ( PRWEB) April 14, 2010 -- To serve individuals and students with print disabilities and to provide timely access to digital books, Simon & Schuster has signed an agreement that will give Bookshare’s members access to an extensive selection of titles from all imprints.

Simon & Schuster, one of the world’s leading publishers of English language books, publishes under numerous well-known imprints including Simon & Schuster,
Pocket Books, Scribner, Gallery Books, Free Press, Atria Books, Fireside, Touchstone, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Simon & Schuster Books for Young
Readers, Little Simon, and Simon Spotlight.

Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of expert-authored, open content college textbooks, today became the first dedicated college textbook publisher to supply its digital textbooks to Bookshare, the world’s largest online accessible library for people with print disabilities.

Approximately one to two percent of the U.S. population has print disabilities that qualify for Bookshare. This agreement will benefit more than 75,000 Bookshare members who are blind or who have low vision, a physical disability or a severe learning disability that affects reading. In addition, the open content license will allow other users to benefit from accessible content: students who are English language learners, those who have mild or undiagnosed
disabilities and those who benefit from multi-modal reading with a combination of simultaneous highlighted text and computer-generated speech.