In November, WIPO announced that the Accessible Books Consortium’s Global Book Service had uploaded 42,000 new titles bringing the catalogues total to over 243,000 titles. The service implements the Marrakesh Treaty by making these works available to visually impaired persons for cross-border exchange. The recent additions came from Quebec, Israel, Sri Lanka and Uruguay. You can read the full announcement here.
Announcements kept coming in November where IPA Vice-President-elect, Bodour Al Qasimi signed a Memorandum of Understanding with WIPO for accessibility training for publishers in the United Arab Emirates. You can read more about the agreement here and see the video below
IPA’s President-elect, Hugo Setzer, despite being in Guadalajara for the International Book Fair, also ended up on the big screen at WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights meeting. In the short film made by WIPO, Hugo shared the reasons behind his commitment to accessible publishing. You can read more here and see the video below:
These announcements demonstrate the great work being done by publishers and others to ensure more accessible books reach visually impaired persons. If you know any particular projects that you think deserve recognition, nominate them for the ABC International Excellence Awards 2019.
Finally, we would like to encourage you to complete Inclusive Publishing’s 2018 Survey. Inclusive Publishing is an excellent new source of accessible publishing news and they would like to hear back from their readers.