Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, on Tuesday called for a legal framework to facilitate access to publish works for the blind and visually impaired persons in institutions of learning in Ghana.
She said lack of a legal framework had left this category of students with very limited access to learning materials.
She said statistics from the Special Education Unit of the Ghana Education Service showed that as at 2013, there were 582 visually impaired pupils in Basic Schools, 201 in Senior High Schools, 61 in colleges of Education and 98 in universities.
?At the moment, it is the schools themselves and few organizations which produce few textbooks in accessible formats for the use by visually impaired students ? that notwithstanding, they write the same examination with their sighted peers,? she added.
Mrs Appiah-Oppong was speaking at the National stakeholders? Workshop on the Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate Access to publish Works for Persons who are blind, Visually Impaired, or otherwise Print Disabled.
She said in the case of visually impaired persons outside the school system, leisure reading was almost non-existent and ?it is for these reasons that ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty and the subsequent incorporation of limitations and expectations for visually impaired persons into our Copyright Act are imperative?.
The two-day workshop is being organised by the Copyright Office with support from World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World blind Union (WBU) to promote the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty and to consider proposals on limitations and exceptions for the blind and Visually Impaired Persons.
About100 participants made up of policymakers, legislators, copyright holders, beneficiary communities, and other stakeholders, as well as Resource Persons from the Copyright Office, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the World Blind Union (WBU) are attending the workshop.
The Marrakesh Treaty is an international treaty which seeks to facilitate access to publish works for persons who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled.
Mr Appiah-Oppong said the treaty was a historic one because of its distinctive objective of seeking to address the problem of the ?book famine? which is prevalent in many countries especially this part of the world.
She said a good copyright regime must have a balance between promoting the public interest in the encouragement and dissemination of works of art and intellect and obtaining a just reward for the creator.
That balance, she said, could be achieved through the provision of limitations and exceptions to the rights of copyright rights-holders in copyright legislation.
?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 added.
It is estimated that there are over 300 million blind and visually impaired persons in the world, 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries.
A survey conducted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2006 revealed that less than 60 countries have limitation and exception clauses in their domestic copyright laws which make special provision for Visually Impaired Persons .
The survey further revealed that even where there are exceptions, because copyright law is territorial, the exceptions oftentimes do not cover import and export of works in accessible formats even between countries with similar rules.
Consequently, organizations in each country are compelled to negotiate licenses with rights-holders to exchange special formats across borders or produce their own materials at great cost, an enterprise which ultimately limits access by visually impaired persons to printed works.
GNA
