Copyright law to be reviewed to favour visually impaired
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, has given the assurance that the Copyright Law (Act 690), will be reviewed to incorporate the rights of the visually impaired.
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Mrs Appiah-Oppong said Sections 19 and 23 of the Copyright Act contained a plethora of limitations that did not benefit the visually impaired.
“I wish to assure you that with the processes which we have set in motion, this gaping omission will be corrected in the next few months,” she said.
She made the remarks at the opening of a two-day stakeholders’ workshop to explain the Marrakesh Treaty to stakeholders and solicit their views before the review of the Copyright Law.
Marrakesh Treaty
The Marrakesh Treaty is an international treaty signed by over 50 countries in Marrakesh, Morocco, on June 1, 2013 with the aim of influencing copyright laws globally to ensure an increased access to published material for the visually impaired.
Mrs Appiah-Oppong stated that the prime objective of a copyright system was to protect the rights of authors and creators, adding that a good copyright regime had to strike a balance between the promotion of the public interest and the achievement of a just reward for the creator.
She said governments around the world enacted intellectual property legislation to ensure that the rights of creators and inventors were protected.
Statistics available
Mrs Appiah-Oppong said the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that there were more than 314 million visually impaired persons in the world, with majority of them living in developing countries.
She added that a 2006 survey report by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) discovered that less than 60 countries had limitation and exception clauses in their copyright laws that made special provisions for the visually impaired.
According to her, statistics from the Ghana Education Service (GES) indicate that in 2013, there were 582 visually impaired pupils in basic schools, 201 in senior high schools (SHS), 98 in colleges of education and another 98 in universities.
“In the absence of a legal framework to facilitate access to published works, the blind and visually impaired persons in the various institutions of learning stated above have very limited access to learning materials,” she said.
Increased access
The Deputy Director of the Blind Union, Dr Peter Obeng Asamoah, who spoke to the Daily Graphic, indicated that “education for the blind, visually impaired or, otherwise, the print disabled has not been an easy task so far”.
According to him, many books supplied to schools in Ghana are not disability - friendly, a situation that has resulted in an unfair competition between visually impaired and sighted students.
He said an amendment to the copyright law would increase access to published materials by visually impaired persons.