ACE and four other higher education groups issued a statement (225 KB PDF) March 23 urging Congress to approve legislation that would provide print-disabled students better access to printed materials.
The bill, known as the Marrakesh Treaty Implementation Act (S. 2559),
was introduced in the Senate March 15 by Judiciary Committee Chair
Charles Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and
five other co-sponsors. It would ratify and implement the Marrakesh
Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are
Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled, which has been ratified by 35 other countries and entered into force on Sept. 30, 2016.
The treaty, signed by the United States in
October 2013, provides minimum standards for limitations and exceptions
to copyright law to create and distribute accessible formats for people
with print disabilities and allows for the cross-border exchange of
these formats.
According to the Association of Research Libraries, cross-border exchange is a critical feature of the treaty and could greatly alleviate what is known as the “book famine,”
a situation in which the National Federation of the Blind estimates
that no more than 5 percent of published works are created in an
accessible format,
“Our colleges and universities—among the
nation’s leading producers and consumers of copyrighted works—are
committed to providing equitable access to information,” the groups said
in their statement. “But students, faculty, and staff who have print
disabilities encounter significant, daily challenges in accessing
required course materials and essential scholarly resources . . . The
Marrakesh Treaty offers a fair and transparent way to remedy the
disadvantages that Americans with print disabilities confront when
seeking to lawfully access the world’s printed materials.”
The statement was also signed by the
Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and
Land-grant Universities, AUPresses, and EDUCAUSE.