Blind people facing uphill battle to access Braille reading material as exemption to Copyright Act expires

JOHANNESBURG - Starting this weekend, blind and visually impaired people will no longer be allowed to turn published works into accessible formats without permission from copyright holders.

This is due to the exemption against 1978 Copyright Act expiring on Saturday.

On 21 September 2022, the Constitutional Court ruled part of the act unlawful and gave Parliament 24 months to rectify this.

While both houses of Parliament have passed the Copyright Amendment Bill, it is still awaiting a signature from the president’s office before it is made law.

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For blind or visually impaired people, the only way to access books, textbooks and any other published works is mainly through Braille.

However, the process of transcribing alphabets into Braille is expensive as Braille paper is significantly more costly than normal sheet paper.

Chairperson of Blind SA's advocacy and information committee, Tommie Lehmkuhl, said that this was further complicated by publishers wanting to be compensated.

"This leads us to a huge shortage of accessible material that we are able to read, study and get information from. For us in the blind sector, this is a huge problem, that's why we have been advocating for this discriminatory system we have to be changed."

The president’s office says the bill is being processed but no timeline on when it will be signed into law has been provided.