HOMEWIPO SCCR 19: European Commission's Statement on Exceptions and Limitations
"For persons with disabilities, the Commission believes that the problems of accessibility could be improved at the European level in a relatively short timeframe through goodwill and constructive discussions among stakeholders. It is for this reason that it has set up a Stakeholder Dialogue for the visually impaired and reading disabled. The first meeting of the stakeholder dialogue took place in Brussels on December 4th, 2009. This first meeting of the Stakeholder Dialogue brought together representatives from the European Blind Union, the European Federation of Publishers, the European Writers Council, the Publishers Licensing Agency, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations, the European Disability Forum, DEDICON (which provides information and works in accessible formats) and various European Commission departments."
"I am pleased to inform this SCCR meeting that the discussions were open and very constructive. It was agreed that tangible added value at the EU level could be found in identifying measures to improve the online and offline distribution of works in accessible formats. These measures will be set out in a Memorandum of Understanding (which we hope will be agreed to by the Summer of 2010) and should include steps towards establishing trusted intermediaries in every EU Member State with guidelines on their functioning, the setting up of an electronic inventory of available works within the EU and the free circulation among EU Member States of a product that has been legally produced under a copyright exception in another EU Member State." More information is available on the Knowledge Ecology International blog.
