Tomorrow is World Disabilities Day, and the Government of India is contemplating a gift in the form of an amendment to the Copyright Act to benefit persons with disability.

Currently, the Copyright Act restricts conversion of copyrighted works into formats accessible by persons with disability and the procedure for obtaining permission from individual right holders for such conversion is cumbersome, lengthy and expensive.

The Government has been mulling an amendment to the Act since 2006. The proposed amendment in its current form exempts the reproduction and distribution of work in a format specially designed for the use of persons suffering from a visual, aural or other disability preventing the enjoyment of such works in their normal format.

However, various groups representing the disabled sector are not impressed. Their primary objection revolved around the use of the phrase 'specially designed', which narrows the scope of the exemption only to Braille and Sign Language and excludes screen readable electronic text, audio, and other formats. Consequently, their stand was that the distinction was not warranted and was unconstitutional, as it discriminates against a large population of the disabled who are not familiar with or capable of using Braille or Sign Language.

In November, a group of individuals representing the visually impaired sector met Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal and proposed that the Government modify the amendment to include Braille, audio recordings, digital copies compatible with screen readers or Refreshable Braille and Audio-Visual works with audio and/or Text Description.

Bar & Bench contacted G.R. Raghavender, Registrar of Copyright to ask about the discriminatory provision. He confirmed, "Yes, a group of people representing the visually disabled sector met the Minister and suggested changes to the amendment. We have ensured that we have incorporated such changes."

This is one of the few instances where the Government has, in less than 3 weeks, responded positively to active public participation in policy making. If the proposed amendment does in fact contain no restriction to special formats, then more than a 100 million people in India will have reason to celebrate.