Copyright
Does your national copyright legislation contain exceptions and other special provisions for people with visual impairment?
Do these exceptions allow for making copy of a book without the publisher's permission?
Do these exceptions allow for scanning books (in particular is an individual with visual impairment allowed to scan a book for him/herself, or does a special organization have to do it?)
Do these exceptions allow for sharing books produced on accessible formats? (in particular is an individual with visual impairment allowed to share with friends books he/she scanned?)
Are there special copyright provisions regarding accessible text books and other educational material?
1. Does your national copyright legislation contain exceptions and other special provisions for people with visual impairment?
Czech copyright law specifies so called license for persons with disabilities. Within this license a copy of published work may be created and both made available as well as disseminated. This may not happen for direct or indirect financial or business profit.
Furthermore a special exception for benefit of visually impaired persons has been implanted in Czech copyright law. This special license allows to provide a recording of audiovisual work (i.e. film) with an audio track verbally describing the video track of the work. Such an enriched recording may be copied, made available and disseminated, again for nonprofit purposes, be the profit direct or indirect, financial or business. For use of disabled persons may originals or copies produced in such a way be even lent. This license thus provides disabled persons with a free (unpaid) access to copyrighted works in a form accessible to them. * The above mentioned may be found in par. 38 of Copyright Act, i.e. Law No. 121/2000 Coll. On copyright, as ammended *
* My personal comment beyond the scope of questions asked: Works published as accessible are quite a different case. The above described exception is in my opinion not applicable to them.
2. Do these exceptions allow for making copy of a book without the publisher's permission?
Yes, they do.
3. Do these exceptions allow for scanning books (in particular is an individual with visual impairment allowed to scan a book for him/herself, or does a special organization have to do it?)
The above mentioned license allows disabled persons to scan a published work for their personal use, and so does allow special organisations to scan such works for needs of disabled persons, without a copyright holders' permission.
4. Do these exceptions allow for sharing books produced on accessible formats? (in particular is an individual with visual impairment allowed to share with friends books he/she scanned?)
Yes, a disabled person who scanned the work for his/her personal use, may provide other disabled person with it, again for personal use only.
5. Are there special copyright provisions regarding accessible text books and other educational material?
No, for textbooks and other educational material same rules apply.
Information provided by Luboš Zajíc and Jan Urbánek
International department
Czech Blind United (SONS)