While equality laws operate to enable access to information, these laws have limited power over the overriding impact of market forces and copyright laws that focus on restricting access to information. Technology now creates opportunities for everyone in the world, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, to be able to access the written word - yet the print disabled are denied reading equality, and have their access to information limited by laws protecting the mainstream use and consumption of information. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the World Intellectual Property Organization's Marrakesh Treaty have swept in a new legal paradigm. This book contributes to disability rights scholarship, and builds on ideas of digital equality and rights to access in its analysis of domestic disability anti-discrimination, civil rights, human rights, constitutional rights, copyright and other equality measures that promote and hinder reading equality.

This book explores how restrictive copyright laws deny access to information for the print disabled, despite equality laws protecting access.

About the Author
Paul Harpur is Senior Lecturer at T. C. Beirne School of Law, the University of Queensland. He has participated in a number of prestigious research fellowships, including as an International Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy, Institute for Lifecourse and Society, National University of Ireland, Galway and as a Distinguished International Visiting Fellow at the Burton Blatt Institute, College of Law, Syracuse University, New York. He has led a range of projects, including an International Labour Organization project assessing labour rights in the South Pacific, with a particular focus on the rights of persons with disabilities.


Book Information
ISBN 9781107119000
Author Paul Harpur
Format Hardback
Page Count 359
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 630g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 23mm