Information
society
The advent of the information society provides for the development
of both applications specific to the needs of people with disabilities and
more general-purpose applications of particular relevance for these groups.
These applications have provided new opportunities for access to remote services
(e.g. telemedecine), for carrying out transactions from home (e.g. teleshopping),
for new forms of participation (e.g. distance learning and teleworking) and
for interpersonal communication (e.g. videotelephony).
The European Commission has set up several programmes and initiatives supporting the work and development in areas of importance for the establishment of of a disability friendly information society.
Copyright in the information society
The draft directive for a European Parliament and Council Directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society has for objective to adapt legislation on copyright and related rights to reflect technological developments and, in particular, the information society, and to transpose into Community law the main international obligations arising from the two treaties on copyright and related rights adopted within the framework of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in December 1996. The Draft Directive sets out that authors shall have an exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of the originals and copies of their works, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. The so-called "making available right" is also enshrined to the benefit of other rightholders, such as performers, phonogram producers or broadcasting organisations. A further exclusive right recognised in the proposal and of importance for people with disabilities is the reproduction right.
Because disabled people often cannot access information from conventional sources and, for instance, need to transfer information from one format to another for their personal use, the proposal authorises Member States to provide for limitations to the exclusive right of reproduction and the right of communication to the public, including the "making available right" in respect of uses for the benefit of visually handicapped or hearing impaired persons, which are directly related to the disability and are of a non-commercial nature. Following the first reading in Parliament, the Commission, in its amended proposal, has widened this exception so that it will benefit all people with disabilities.
