11/06/2013

Available for over a year

Charities and blindness organisations claim that there is a book famine for blind and partially sighted people: they say only between 1% and 7% of books are made accessible for visually impaired readers. In the UK, the number is thought to be closer to 7%, but in developing countries, access to written material is much lower. We speak to Dan Pescod, who has been co-ordinating the World Blind Union's negotiations with the Intellectual Property Organisation a subsidiary of the United Nations, for an international copyright treaty for books for blind people. The final round of negotiations is due to begin in Marrakech this week. However, the World Blind Union (WBU) says that the UK government has asked to include a clause that would require charities, like the RNIB, to check the "commercial availability" of books in other countries, before allowing them to send books to those countries. The WBU claims this would make the treaty unworkable. We also hear from a couple of visually impaired internet radio enthusiasts, about their hobby and the skills they have learned while pursuing it. Finally, we speak to John Cooper, a man who is blind and has been a volunteer at the telephone help service The Samaritans for the past ten years.