HealthLawProf Blog

Editor: Katharine Van Tassel
Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Towards Ending the Information Poverty Among Persons with Print Disabilities: A Proposed Draft (Amendment) Bill for Disability Diversification of the National Library of Nigeria

Bizibrains Okpeh (Nigerian Bar Association), Towards Ending the Information Poverty Among Persons with Print Disabilities: A Proposed Draft (Amendment) Bill for Disability Diversification of the National Library of Nigeria, SSRN (2021):

Globally, there is less information available or accessible to persons with print disabilities (PWPDs), or otherwise the print disabled. These are persons who are blind or have visual impairments or perceptual or reading disabilities, which cannot be improved to give visual function substantially equivalent to that of persons who have no such impairments or disabilities and so are unable to read printed works to substantially the same degree as persons without impairments or disabilities, or are otherwise unable, through physical disability, to hold or manipulate a book or to focus or move the eyes to the extent that would be normally acceptable for reading, regardless of any other disabilities.

Available data from the World Blind Union shows that of all books published globally, only between 1 and 7 percent are available or accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled, who number about 285 million, most of whom are domiciled in underserved areas in developing countries. This number is put at 300 million in some publications. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), at least, 2.2 billion people worldwide have near or distant vision impairment. Notwithstanding the paucity of data, at least, 4.25 million Nigerians are blind or visually impaired.

It is recorded that in the developed world, 95% of published works are inaccessible to PWPDs. The situation is even direr in the low-income, middle-income, and developing world such as Africa, including Nigeria, where less than 1% of all published work is accessible to PWPDs. This means that 99% of published works are inaccessible to the print disabled in Nigeria.

This global information poverty or “book famine” remains a veritable barrier to the quest for sustainable, equal, and inclusive education and access to quantitative and qualitative information.

There is a greater need, therefore, for a more targeted and robust solution to the information poverty in Nigeria, one that does not only address the problem from a place of gross generality (as is the case with the National Disability Act), or from the past (already published works), or targets intellectual property, or copyright holders, or publishers after publication (as is the case with the Marrakesh Treaty), but one that also takes due cognisance of future publications, having regard to the very specific needs of the print disabled, by targeting copyright holders or publishers at the point of production or publication. And there could be no better place to start other than the National Library – the citadel of educational materials and information repository in Nigeria.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/healthlawprof_blog/2022/02/towards-ending-the-information-poverty-among-persons-with-print-disabilities-a-proposed-draft-amendm.html

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