By Gbemisola Adesola

The umbrella body representing the blind and virtually impaired persons in Nigeria, The Nigerian Association of the Blind (NAB) recently organised a capacity building workshop for Nigerian publishers and authors on the benefit of accessible publishing and its importance to the publishing industry.

The event which took place in Lagos had in attendance representatives of various prominent publishing outfit in Nigeria.

The Head Education Committee and immediate past president of the association Mr Okon David, during his presentation stated that the aim of the gathering is to advocate to publishers and authors on the need to make materials accessible for the visually-impaired and people with reading disabilities so as to skip the rigorous process of scanning and transcribing printed materials into accessible formats.

He also said that the lack of reading materials in formats accessible to persons with reading disabilities has impeded the level of literacy amongst such persons.

“We found out that as a group of people who cannot access print the way others do, we have been lacking reading materials. We found out that in developed countries where things are very good, we have less than 5% of the published works that are available to persons with reading disabilities.

“In Nigeria, we have less than 1% meaning that if you have 100 books in your library, a person with reading disabilities may have just one. This has hampered the literacy level of the affected people because they have to wait for people to read to their hearing what they can actually read for themselves if provided the appropriate materials in accessible formats.”

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“We are not advocating for just the blind, but also for persons who cannot ordinarily read printed materials, maybe because they don’t have limbs or have some muscular defects.” he added.

In his Goodwill message, Mr Mike Akpan on behalf of the Director General of Nigerian Copyright Commission, Mr John Asein called for the support of the concerned stakeholders in making sure that the copyright draft is passed by the National Assembly.

“The basis of any success or national integration would be first and foremost, the enactment of a law that accommodates these provisions and that is why the copyright bill is important. We will need all stakeholders to join hands and pursue the enactment of that bill.

“That is an area every stakeholder should look at. Beyond that, there may be need for subsidiary to address some of the issues. When we talk about authorized entities being able to establish and follow procedures probably it has been advocated in some quarters and I buy into it that at the point of implementation, there may be need to define guidelines.

“It may come by the way of subsidiary regulation, it may also come by way of industry circle regulation which is what NAB can consider working with other interest groups.”

He also suggested collaborations regionally and internationally amongst stakeholders and advised publishers to be proactive in the issuance of accessible format copies of their publications alongside normal print copies.

“We need more international collaborations between our national association and other interest groups responsible for providing access to accessible format copy.

“The international collaboration may not address sufficiently the local needs so there may be need for collaboration regionally in terms of creating contents that are nationally beneficial to our stakeholders.”

“Going forward, the publishing industry must consider simultaneous issuance of regular prints as well as accessible format copies.

“It shouldn’t be that you wait till they consult you. A person who is visually impaired should not have to resort to anybody to provide, they should be able to walk into the bookshop and see reading text that are available to them just like any other person.” he said