Dear Minister Duncan,

The Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB) applauds your government’s decision to seek a long term solution for making materials available to people with print disabilities in alternate formats. Government has given CNIB more than $20 million since the year 2000 to create alternate format materials. The “book famine” experienced by Canadians with Print Disabilities has not been much diminished by those federal dollars.

Our access has improved largely due to increased accessibility of commercial sources, such as iBooks, Kindle, and Audible.com. Much remains to be done to make these commercially produced materials part of public libraries so that those people with print disabilities who have limited funds can read them. Nevertheless, it should be noted that funding the kind of production CNIB has done will continue to have little impact on access.

You are currently experiencing extreme lobbying pressure from CNIB to continue their previous level of funding. We urge you to resist those pressures and redirect any available money toward developing policies and projects to ensure that books born digital are also born accessible. Please do not allow a campaign based on frightening blind people and arousing pity among the sighted to derail your efforts to help people with print disabilities achieve truly equitable access to the printed word. We have lived with tokenism for far too long.

Sincerely yours,

Mary Ellen Gabias, President
Canadian Federation of the Blind

P.S. Books produced by CNIB with federal funding should be publicly owned and available to people with print disabilities through all public libraries. Instead, CNIB retains ownership and licenses them to libraries for a fee. As a result, books paid for by the Canadian government cannot be accessed by all Canadians who need them.