We Should Not Have to Fight for the Right to Read

[Commentary] At the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), we have worked for nearly a century to break down societal barriers and eliminate discrimination by achieving equal access to the world of copyrighted works. But for all the promise of technology to provide equal access to copyrighted works, the copyright laws that protect those works have sometimes served to impede that technology.

While we were relieved in 2015 to see the Librarian of Congress adopt the Copyright Office's recommendation to once again recognize a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemption that allows people with vision loss to read their lawfully obtained books, there is something fundamentally wrong with a process that makes people who are blind or visually impaired have to, over and over again, beg for protection from potentially significant civil and criminal penalties, just for finding a way to access books they have a right to read. Consumers shouldn't be on the hook for needing to repeatedly explain themselves; our copyright law should reward those rights owners who don't shut out people with disabilities and should penalize those who do.

[Mark Richert, Esq is the Director of Public Policy at the American Foundation for the Blind]