The Blind Flaneur makes an important point in a recent blog post, Preserving the Future’s Creative Raw Material in the Public Domain. These days, authors and musicians protect their work online using Digital Rights Managment (DRM). DRM, however, almost always makes the content being protected inaccessible to the visually impaired. DRM is not inherently designed to block disabled users, but the implementations often effectively cut blind users off. DRM-protected content is restricted to software that can ensure that the content is not used inappropriately. Restricting the file format of the content may not allow blind users to access that content in accessible software.
As the Blind Flaneur points out, James Boyle has released his new book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, both in traditional paper format and as a freely accessible PDF file in the public domain. By not restricting the electronic version of his text, Boyle makes this book easily accessible to blind readers.
PDF is not a panacea. Only in the last few years has the tagged PDF format, which is the accessible version of the format, allowing relfowing for natural reading of enlarged text as well as access by screen readers, become available. Unfortunately, not all PDF software automatically produces properlytagged files. Several years ago, I posted about the problems with the way LaTeX, used to produce most scientifitc papers, produces PDF files,LaTeX: Changing the Font Size. There is also no way to go back and fix all the older, untagged PDF files.
Regardless of the problems with PDF, I look forward to more content buing palced into the public domain.
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I now have Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro both at home and at the university. My screenreader has been able to read some PDFs that may have been created before tagged PDF came along. If you open one of these in Acrobat Pro, can it convert it to tagged PDF?
As I wrote to James Boyle, I’m still making peace with PDF, and I now try to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I feel less warm & fuzzy about the use of DRMs by RFB&D on its Daisy books. Having to use an access code every time I want to read an “accessible” book is one more barrier to me, and I’ve had enough barriers to reading. What do you think?
I avoid pdf whenever I can. If it is not tagged, I often print it out 11×14 which enlarged the text proportionally from 8×11. Not fun, but sometimes worth it.
I have not tried the DAISY system yet. I got so frustrated with the endless cassettes that, when Audible.com came along, I jumped on the bandwagon. I have been listening to their audiobooks with a long succession f MP3 players and iPoeds. I was an early subscriber, so I have their cheapest plan, two books per month for under twenty bucks. The last time I checked, which was more than a few years ago, the DAISY devices were in their infancy and expensive. If the devices are decent and affordable and the library big enough, it would be worth checking out again. What do you think?