Posted in Announcements Books Archive
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 6:12 am
The goal of the Marrakesh Treaty is to help to end the “book famine” faced by people who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled. Currently only 1% to 7% of the world’s published books ever become available in accessible formats. This is partly due to barriers to access created by copyright laws–something the Treaty helps to remove.
The Marrakesh Treaty removes barriers in two ways. First, it requires ratifying nations to have an exception in their domestic copyright laws for the blind, visually impaired, and their organizations to make books and other print resources available in accessible formats, such as Braille, large print, or audio versions, without needing permission from the copyright holder. Second, the Treaty allows for the exchange of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works across borders, again without copyright holder permission. This will help to avoid the duplication of efforts across different countries, and will allow those with larger collections of accessible books to share them with visually impaired people in countries with fewer resources.
The first 20 countries to ratify or accede to the Marrakesh Treaty were: India, El Salvador, United Arab Emirates, Mali, Uruguay, Paraguay, Singapore, Argentina, Mexico, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Australia, Brazil, Peru, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Israel, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala and Canada. People in these countries will soon start realizing the tangible benefits of providing access to knowledge to those who have historically been left out.
To date this material has only been available to students and scholars within Ontario’s university system. The Marrakesh Treaty now makes it possible for these works to be shared more broadly within Canada, and with the other countries listed above. Hopefully the rest of the world will take note, and join forces to provide universal access to all knowledge.
With tens of thousands of items in the archive.org stacks that telemarketing data are in some way running in-browser emulations, we’ve got a pretty strong library of computing history afoot, with many more joining in the future. On top of that, we have thousands of people playing these different programs, consoles, and arcade games from all over the world.
Therefore, if anything goes slightly amiss, we hear it from every angle: twitter, item reviews, e-mails, and even the occasional phone call. People expect to come to a software item on the Internet Archive and have it play in their browser! It’s great this expectation is now considered a critical aspect of computer and game history. But it also means we have to go hunting down what the problem might be when stuff goes awry.
Sometimes, it’s something nice and simple, like “I can’t figure out the keys or the commands” or “How do I find the magic sock in the village.”, which puts us in the position of a sort of 1980s Software Company Help Line. Other times, it’s helping fix situations where some emulated software is configured wrong and certain functions don’t work. (The emulation might run too fast, or show the wrong colors, or not work past a certain point in the game.)
The Marrakesh Treaty removes barriers in two ways. First, it requires ratifying nations to have an exception in their domestic copyright laws for the blind, visually impaired, and their organizations to make books and other print resources available in accessible formats, such as Braille, large print, or audio versions, without needing permission from the copyright holder. Second, the Treaty allows for the exchange of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works across borders, again without copyright holder permission. This will help to avoid the duplication of efforts across different countries, and will allow those with larger collections of accessible books to share them with visually impaired people in countries with fewer resources.
The first 20 countries to ratify or accede to the Marrakesh Treaty were: India, El Salvador, United Arab Emirates, Mali, Uruguay, Paraguay, Singapore, Argentina, Mexico, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Australia, Brazil, Peru, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Israel, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala and Canada. People in these countries will soon start realizing the tangible benefits of providing access to knowledge to those who have historically been left out.
To date this material has only been available to students and scholars within Ontario’s university system. The Marrakesh Treaty now makes it possible for these works to be shared more broadly within Canada, and with the other countries listed above. Hopefully the rest of the world will take note, and join forces to provide universal access to all knowledge.
With tens of thousands of items in the archive.org stacks that telemarketing data are in some way running in-browser emulations, we’ve got a pretty strong library of computing history afoot, with many more joining in the future. On top of that, we have thousands of people playing these different programs, consoles, and arcade games from all over the world.
Therefore, if anything goes slightly amiss, we hear it from every angle: twitter, item reviews, e-mails, and even the occasional phone call. People expect to come to a software item on the Internet Archive and have it play in their browser! It’s great this expectation is now considered a critical aspect of computer and game history. But it also means we have to go hunting down what the problem might be when stuff goes awry.
Sometimes, it’s something nice and simple, like “I can’t figure out the keys or the commands” or “How do I find the magic sock in the village.”, which puts us in the position of a sort of 1980s Software Company Help Line. Other times, it’s helping fix situations where some emulated software is configured wrong and certain functions don’t work. (The emulation might run too fast, or show the wrong colors, or not work past a certain point in the game.)