SCCR28 EIFL statement on other disabilities

WIPO STANDING COMMITTEE ON COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS

28th Session: Geneva, 30 June – 4 July 2014

Agenda item 7: Limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities

On behalf of Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), that partners with libraries and library consortia in more than 60 developing and transition economy countries, we would like to comment on the issue of Limitations and Exceptions for persons with other disabilities.

Mr. Chairman, EIFL was in the room on the last evening of SCCR/21 in 2010 when persons with other disabilities e.g. deaf people were excluded from the negotiations on a treaty for persons with print disabilities. Many of us who were that night were dismayed that a marginalized group – so marginalized that they weren’t even there – were removed from the negotiations that led to the adoption of the Marrakesh Treaty.

Deafness is described as an invisible disability because you can't see it in the same way as someone who has a physical disability. But that doesn’t make life any easier for those affected. The major barrier for deaf people is trying to communicate like everyone else does. Because of this communication difficulty, deaf people tend to rely on technologies such as subtitles and captioning for essential communication and interactions.

Many delegations have rightly described the Marrakesh Treaty, and the issue of access to accessible reading materials, as a humanitarian issue. Yet the copyright issues that occur in creating accessible format copies for deaf people, such as adding subtitles and captions to material, raise similar issues to those addressed in the Marrakesh Treaty.

EIFL respectfully suggests that the Committee would consider making a recommendation or agreed principle to the General Assemblies that the provisions of the Marrakesh Treaty apply mutatis mutandis to persons with other disabilities, so that the  equal treatment is granted to all persons regardless of their disability.

Thank you for your attention.

Intervention by the WIPO Secretariat on other disabilities (edited from the live transcript)

We just wanted to provide a little update on the study the Secretariat was asked to prepare if funds are available, which we think we can do, that is a scoping study on the intersection of copyright with other disabilities, meaning disabilities other than those that effect the blind, visually impaired and print disabled.

So we're in the process of identifying appropriate authors of that study. We would actually welcome suggestions, and have talked to some people and would welcome further suggestions. Our hope is to present that to the Committee if not for SCCR/29 but by SCCR/30. This would be a rather broad examination of areas where national copyright laws in different countries intersect, showing an intersection between copyright and disability laws, whether that is a very general provision that benefit persons with disabilities in a broad sense or whether it is in particular, for instance, in respect to the matter of captioning that was mentioned by one of the NGOs who just intervened.

So we welcome any suggestions both for potential study authors, and also to the extent that your country has in its copyright law a unique approach on this issue if you want to alert us. You can direct any comments or thoughts on this to the Secretariat or contact me or any other individual member of the Copyright Law division. Thank you.