Today we have technology to make potentially every existing book accessible to vision-impaired people thanks to e-book readers (even if that technology is still badly (un) unsed very often, see these real world examples). There is, however, a refusal to use it in this way:
_“The technology exists for blind persons to access most books; it seems the political will does not. The Commission and many European Governments, while paying lip service to the “book famine” suffered by blind persons, simply reflect the result of years of heavy industry lobbying against any international exception to copyright, even if it would have negligible or no economic impact on the publishing trade”/i>.
Of course, no ones seems to want to openly assume the responsibility of slamming the door in the face of millions of visually impaired persons around the world. More details about what’s happening on this front in Bruxelles are at European blind people lead the way, EU leaders hide shamelessly.
Personally, I think that this is bad. At the same time I also think that in general, when it comes to using digital documents, vision-impaired people also need much more information, and the awareness that they need to think more about certain issues. I’ve explained why a few years ago in: