Call to advocacy for accessible information

I just received the following in an email from The Victor Reader Stream Newswire and felt it needed to be shared. It is a call for users and providers to raise your voice and be heard by contacting your country's representative to the WIPO. Hurry, though, as they will meet in ten days!

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Message from the DAISY Consortium...

Dear DAISY Members and Friends,

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will be considering a copyright treaty proposed by the World Blind Union (WBU) at the WIPO November 3 Standing Committee Meeting. The treaty, called "WIPO Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons" is available online at:

http://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/tvi/tvi_en.html

We are asking all of you to contact your country's representative who will
be attending the WIPO Standing Committee meeting and advocate in favor of this draft treaty. We need you to act now, because the meeting will take place in ten days.

Information and links to supporting documents are provided immediately below in this email. We also offer some guidance on who to contact in your country and some assistance finding the right person.

On the front page of the DAISY Website under "Recent News" is the link to an article that provides further detail. It also contains links to the draft treaty in HTML, DAISY 2.02, and in DAISY 3. DAISY home page:

http://www.daisy.org

Direct link to the news entry:

http://www.daisy.org/news/news_detail.shtml?NewsId=458

The WIPO Standing Committee will be meeting November 3-7, 2008 and the WBU proposed treaty is the first substantive item on the agenda. The agenda can be found at:

http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=108373

DAISY Members and Friends should send their email letter in support of the proposed treaty to the department/minister that is going to represent their government in the SCCR/WIPO meeting. This information can normally be found within the department of foreign affairs and education in your country. If anybody has difficulties finding their SCCR representative we have provided names of those who attended the last meeting. This can be found at:

http://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/tvi/wipo_delegates_sccr16.html#toc17

If you are unable to find the name of the representative in your country at the link provided above, please contact Judit Rius Sanjuan
judit.rius@keionline.org

and/or Thiru Balasubramaniam
thiru@keionline.org

The treaty proposal put forward by the WBU is an extremely important document which addresses information access on an international level. We suggest you familiarize yourself with the proposal, and ask that each of you contact the government representative in your country who will attend the SCCR/WIPO meeting. Background and talking points are available at:

http://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/tvi/tvi_memo_en.html

Best

George Kerscher, Secretary General, DAISY Consortium
George Kerscher Ph.D.
Access to information is a fundamental human right in our Information Age.

Senior Officer, Accessible Information
Recording For the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D)
http://www.rfbd.org

Secretary General, DAISY Consortium
http://www.daisy.org

Co-chair Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a division of the W3C
http://www.w3c.org/wai

Board Representative to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
http://www.idpf.org