Harmonisation of the Copyright Law throughout the European Union — A Challenge for All Print Disabled People

On May 22, 2001 the European Parliament and the European Council launched the “Directive on the Harmonisation of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society” [1]. This paper wants to stress the importance of this directive for print disabled people in all European countries. The directive on the one hand is a chance to guarantee access to the information society — a thing all other citizens take for granted. On the other hand, the lobbying pressure of the publishing industry may cause more difficulties in the future. Following the directive, it is up to the national legislation to decide on exceptions and special paragraphs to take the needs of groups like print disabled people into account. This paper will present the most important aspects of the directive form the point of view of service providers for print disabled students. “integrated studying” is an Austria wide service provider for print disabled students who has managed to get more than 80% of the documents which have to be prepared for print disabled students in digital formats. Further on, this paper will review activities throughout Europe and outline activities how international exchange could and should support the lobbying at national level.As a concrete example, the situation in Austria will be discussed: We shall outline the most important regulations of Austrian Copyright that are relevant for disabled users. Next, we shall closer discuss those aspects of the Directive that concern access to works for the print disabled. Finally, we shall present a proposal how a non-discriminating implementation of the Directive into Austrian Copyright Law could look like.