President’s Blog

In this third posting in my series on access by blind people to everyday published information, I will briefly discuss the concept of copyright exemptions and explain why they are needed.

The starting point is to understand how blind people access information. Because publishers almost never publish books in an accessible format, it falls essentially to the mostly voluntary blindness agencies around the world to apply their own resources to create accessible versions of books. According to the World Blind Union’s Right to Read campaign, Limited resources mean that only some five per cent of books are accessible to blind people. In New Zealand, the primary agency that produces books in accessible formats for blind people is the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. They take a variety of everyday books and magazines and produce copies in accessible formats such as audio (talking books), braille, large print and DAISY (DAISY is an open standard for accessible digital information developed and maintained by the DAISY Consortium). But the Foundation is small by world standards, so it obtains much of its accessible format materials from larger cooperating blindness agencies around the world.

Regardless of the format or the method of producing it, the act of producing an accessible version of a published work generally involves making a copy of that work. Therefore, it is mainly the law of copyright that governs what agencies like the Foundation can and can’t do when they make accessible copies of published works. In the past, the process would start with the blindness agency writing to the publisher to request permission to make the copy. Generally, but not always, permission would be granted, but there would often be a lengthy delay. Of course, making that accessible copy without permission would be a violation of copyright law.

In 1994, New Zealand became one of the first countries in the world to provide a copyright exemption clause directly in law to allow registered agencies to produce accessible versions of published works without infringing copyright. Under section 69 of our Copyright Act, agencies such as the Foundation can make accessible copies of published works without obtaining permission. The exemption means that as long as they follow the procedures detailed in that section of the Act, they can make these copies without infringing copyright. This clause was not without its critics, and I am sure that some detailed research into the relevant papers at the time would reveal some notable authors who publicly expressed their opposition. Perhaps they thought blind people were wanting a free ride, something for nothing, but I suspect that the opposition that was expressed at that time was simply based on the principle that the copyright holder has the ultimate right to retain control of their work and this exemption would have been seen as a violation of that principle.

But that was fifteen years ago and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. Now, all the major countries we relate to in New Zealand have similar exemptions. In the past, when the blindness agencies obtained permission directly from the copyright holders, that permission could be given so the agency involved could make copies for blind people throughout the world, or in English speaking countries, etc. So the blindness agencies were generally able to exchange accessible format materials with relative ease. Now that permission is generally not needed, the agencies making accessible format copies under the relevant exemption in their country are generally only allowed to provide those copies to blind people in the country they serve.

Ironically, this causes a serious problem for small countries like New Zealand. It is now much harder, and sometimes just impossible, to get accessible books from the big agencies in other countries. They can now plan their production runs without having to worry about getting permission from the copyright holders. If New Zealand wants to buy from them, presuming they are willing to sell, it is generally required that the agency in New Zealand must produce a letter from the copyright holder giving permission to the selling agency to make and sell the copies we need. But even if that permission can be obtained, the selling agency might not be in a position to schedule production of the copies we need without significant expense, which the Foundation has to pay for.

Another problem arises because accessible formats nowadays are conveyed digitally and are essentially accessible to sighted people. In the past, talking books were recorded onto tape in a non-standard format so they could only be played on talking book players that would generally be only available to blind people. Braille was produced directly on paper and would only be readable to someone who knows how to read braille. The accessible books we used in the past had little value to sighted people. Nowadays, many talking books are now produced on CD and other formats and are readily playable on everyday MP3 players and the like. Braille might still be read on paper but the files are produced on computer and can be easily copied and decoded to get back to the original print which can be read without any knowledge of braille. This all means that the accessible format copies we use nowadays are valuable to the general public. Publishers now see these copies as posing a significant risk because end users can easily get at the content and freely copy it on the internet. No longer do blind people enjoy the protection that was inherent in the specialised formats we used to use.

I should point out here that it is perfectly feasible to use standard encryption and security technology to prevent illegitimate copying or at least to discourage it. Some blindness agencies already do this. But managing the technology can be problematic, particularly given the increasing variety of players we can use today, and no such technology is completely secure, so it is certainly not universally used.

I’m sure you can see now how complicated this all gets. The simple fact is that it is now significantly more difficult and expensive for the Foundation in New Zealand to obtain accessible format books from other agencies, and in some cases the books are just not available at all. You would think that today’s technology would make it easier, but in some ways it is proving to be counter-productive.

One solution is seen by many to be the adoption of some sort of treaty or agreement by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) that would provide a means for blindness agencies around the world to exchange accessible format copies of books. Agencies such as the World Blind Union and the DAISY Consortium have been actively lobbying for something like this. The idea is that ultimately WIPO would agree on how this could be done, ie it might be done by means of a new copyright treaty or by amending an existing treaty.

In May this year, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay proposed a treaty along these lines. Word in the blogosphere was that at first at least countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, the EU and even New Zealand acted to block it or prevent discussion. It was said that this was as a result of intense lobbying by publishers, particularly in the USA.

I am not in a position to know how New Zealand conducted itself at the recent talks. But the outcome in the end was that the proposed treaty is still on the table. It will be evaluated further by the various countries and discussed again at the next session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.

I don’t think we can expect any solution very quickly on that front. Even if agreement could be reached, it would be of little value unless each country we deal with amends its domestic legislation to implement the treaty. When you consider the time it might take for countries to fine-tune and ultimately agree on such a proposal, and the time it will then take for the various countries we deal with to amend their domestic laws, I think it could be more like ten years before international copyright exemptions really make a difference. Of course another option is for New Zealand to try to establish bilateral arrangements with the countries we deal with the most, and the Association of Blind Citizens is actively promoting that as an alternative approach.

The Association recently met with representatives of our Government’s Ministry of Economic Development and discussed the approach New Zealand will take to discussions on copyright exemptions in future. We acknowledged the concerns of publishers, but we got them also to acknowledge that there are human rights issues at stake here. Yes, we claim the right to read the same books, at the same time, and at the same price as everyone else, and we argue that in today’s modern world, publishers who do not make a reasonable effort to produce their material in an accessible (even if copy protected) format are discriminating against us on the grounds of our disability and breaching the laws in many countries. That will be the subject of my next and hopefully the final blog on this most complicated, yet fascinating, topic.

In this second posting in my series on access by blind people to everyday published information, I will look briefly at the situation that developed earlier this year when Amazon released its Kindle 2, and what we learned from that.

Amazon is a well-known publisher of electronic books or e-books. These books are electronic files you read using a portable electronic device often called an e-book reader. In Amazon’s case, their reader is called the Kindle. The second iteration of the Kindle, the Kindle 2, was released in February this year. This caused considerable controversy in the blind and intellectual property communities as I will explain shortly. To my knowledge, the Kindle experience is so far only available in the US because of various import/export laws and other restrictions.

The concept of the e-book aims to deliver much the same reading experience through electronic means as people get from reading a printed book, paperback, newspaper or magazine, except that the typical e-book reader gives the advantage of being able to read many thousands of books through the one portable device. The more recent Kindles have a screen that even attempts to emulate the look of ink on paper. So the basic idea is that you choose something to read and it comes up on the screen, and you essentially read it like you would a piece of paper. The controls on the unit let you turn pages and move through the text at will.

The Kindles have built in memory for holding a large number of books and they also work wirelessly so you can access books and other content directly from Amazon. And you don’t even have to have your own internet service because Amazon makes this available directly to Kindle users by an arrangement with a major US telecommunications company.

The idea of course is that the customer buys content from Amazon, and reads it on this highly portable reader. As long as the customer is in a coverage area (rather like using a mobile phone), they can switch on and directly access Amazon to get more content and, I believe, surf the web and access other information as well. Of course Amazon is not actually the publisher; no doubt they in turn pay publishers and authors for the rights to publish their content in this way.

The Kindle 2 introduced a new innovation into this fast changing world of e-books, built-in high quality text to speech. This means that when you open up an e-book to read, instead of reading it on the screen, you could make the Kindle 2 read it to you in its synthetic voice. Text to speech technology has tended to be rather specialised. It is used a lot by blind people when we access information on computers, and also quite extensively in telephone-based ordering systems. The technology has developed amazingly in the last twenty to thirty years, but it still does not really approach the qualities of a professional narrator who can deliver human emotion and expression that is appropriate to the content. But text to speech is certainly much better than it used to be, and it has become very affordable, and Amazon clearly saw benefits in bringing it to its customers. They would be able to read books in the car while driving, for instance, well, you know, while still keeping their eyes on the road.

There is already a growing and competitive market for audio books. Some people who really want to have something read to them in the car have demonstrated that they are willing to pay a much higher price for that privilege. You can well imagine the concerns of audio book publishers when they realised that a device like the Kindle 2 could seriously erode their sales, because it would let people pay just the standard fee to Amazon to get the book and they could then choose whether to read it on the screen or have it read to them by the machine itself. Sure it might not match what a good narrator could do, but on the other hand almost any book available to Kindle users could be read this way, ie there would be much more choice than the audio book market currently offers.

It seems that Amazon, naively perhaps, may have under-estimated the significance of their new text to speech functionality when they released it earlier this year. Ironical perhaps when you realise that Amazon also sells audio books. The Wall Street Journal quoted the Authors Guild’s Executive Director, Paul Aikin, as saying “they don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.” The essence of what he was saying is that any reading of a book out loud is a potential infringement of copyright. Of course their stance sparked howls of outrage as people pondered on the possibility that even reading bed time stories out loud to their children might be a breach of copyright.

The blind community immediately took a stance based on human rights, upholding the principle that we should have the same right to access published information as sighted people. The President of the National Federation of the Blind said: “blind people routinely use readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio. Up until now, no one has argued that this is illegal, but now the Authors Guild says that it is. This is absolutely wrong. The blind and other readers have the right for books to be presented to us in the format that is most useful to us, and we are not violating copyright law as long as we use readers, either human or machine, for private rather than public listening. The key point is that reading aloud in private is the same whether done by a person or a machine, and reading aloud in private is never an infringement of copyright.”

So here we all were, ready for a major slugging match that might really have defined our legal rights. But then, Amazon gave in. Remember Amazon’s business model relies on cooperation with authors and publishers. In the end, they agreed that publishers would be given the facility to disable the Kindle’s text to speech function so it can’t be used on their specific content. So the matter was concluded on the basis of commercial reality, leaving the battle over the important legal principle it raised to be fought another day.

Blind people dream of a world in which we can have access to the same information as what sighted people already enjoy. When I was younger, we just accepted that it was physically impossible for us to read, so we made do with the assistance of others to do the reading for us. But that was before today’s world of information being published electronically. Nowadays, virtually everything that is published has come from a computer. The development of the e-book and the ability to pay for content directly through a system such as the one run by Amazon means people can completely bypass paper altogether. All the technology building blocks are now in place that let me as a blind person order my copy of today’s best seller from an online publisher and have it transmitted to me so I can read it with my choice of technology. It can even be secured so that only I can read it, in case I should be tempted to pass copies to other people. But can I access all the books out there? Well there are some organisations that make this possible for a limited range of titles, but generally speaking the answer is no, I can’t.

In essence, the reason today why blind people can’t read the same books as everyone else is not because books are published in print and it is physically impossible for us to read that. Nor is it because technology hasn’t developed enough. NO, the barriers that prevent us from reading much of what is published are man-made. They arise from the fundamental changes taking place right now in the way content is published.

First, while there certainly are open standards for e-books, the big publishers like Amazon use proprietary formats designed to ensure that you can only read the content they make available through their equipment. Compare that with the traditional physical book. Once a physical book is out in the community, it can be read by anyone with good eye sight who knows how to read. It can be loaned to your friends and passed on to others at used book stalls; in fact one physical copy might last for centuries and be read by hundreds of people. But that’s because when you buy physical books, you own them and they are self-contained. You might not be legally able to copy them but they are still your books and physically you can do with them what you want. But that is not so true for e-books. The new approach, now made possible by today’s technology, is that you don’t own your book; you simply own the right to access it using prescribed equipment that is under the on-going control of the company that sells you the content. This is not something you can easily lend or even sell to someone else.

The big publishers now have an ability they never had before to control access to their content right to the end user. So we’re seeing a battle between the big players in which each one hopes to corner the lion share of the market. The same technology revolution that has the potential to open up the whole world of information to blind people has given publishers new ways to slice and dice their content into different formats targeted specifically to different markets and specific regions, and it gives them much finer control over who can read that content and by what means they can read it. As the wider community warms to new technology-based ways to read, publishers now see new ways to clip the ticket thus creating new revenue streams. And the race is on to see who can corner the biggest share of the market.

In essence, this development has only been a reality for a short time and as a global society we have not yet developed a social consensus on what constitutes acceptable behaviour. The laws that control this activity are grounded in commerce and copyright, but in my view the traditional copyright laws are inadequate to deal with today’s reality because in the past there has always been a degree of separation between the way content is produced and the way it is consumed. The new technology takes away that separation, and society as a whole must consider the consequences.

At the same time, the blind community now considers that the right to read is a fundamental human right. The World Blind Union launched its Right to Read campaign in April last year. We are not demanding a free ride. The catch phrase for the World Blind Union’s Right to Read campaign is “the same books at the same time and at the same price as everyone else”. It seeks to persuade publishers to openly include the blind community in their markets, and they encourage the adoption of new copyright exemptions to promote the availability of books in accessible formats throughout the world. That will be the subject of my next blog.

Remember that old folk song “rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham”? Yes go ahead and Google it if you’re too young to remember. I wonder if boy scouts sing that song today around the campfire like we used to. The words that come to my mind at the moment are “so high, I can’t get over it, so low I can’t get under it, so wide I can’t get round it…”. That’s what it’s like when you come up against a barrier. Right? Well, yes, but only if it is a physical barrier.

The thing about physical barriers is that they are easy to see and understand. When the disability movement really took off in the late sixties and seventies, it built on the gains won by earlier movements that fought for racial equality. The first focus of the disability movement was to claim our right to live in the mainstream of society, to fight against discrimination in areas such as employment and access to public spaces. In this regard we have been largely successful I think, with many countries now having legislation to ensure that public spaces are basically accessible to people with disabilities and to prevent discrimination on the grounds of disability in various aspects of life.

It was easy for Society to confront the need for places like schools to be physically accessible, so people with disabilities could have equitable access to education. It was also easy for Society to understand what to do. You build buildings more appropriately, with ramps and other facilities for people with disabilities, and over the last thirty years I guess that has become pretty much an established practice for a lot of public buildings. Sure there are always arguments over resources and it’s not a perfect world but I think no one can deny the progress we have made in that respect.

I can recall writing an article in the early 1980s I think. It was in the early days of mainstreaming blind students in ordinary schools in New Zealand and I commented that now the school library was physically accessible it would mean that people with disabilities could physically go to the library, browse the shelves and read the books there. Right? Well not blind students. Blind students have always been able to physically get to the school library but we have never been able to read any of the books there. Our problem has never been one of physical access.

The problem with what we call the information barrier is that it isn’t physically there; you can’t actually see it. It can take a while for the penny to drop. I can recall comments from those earlier days like “we’ve done so much and still you’re not satisfied”. No we weren’t satisfied because, basically, stairs are not a problem to us. Those comments came from people who just hadn’t stopped to think about accessibility in terms of the final outcome. They only thought of it in physical terms. That was why I painted the picture in that article of the blind student in the “accessible” library, surrounded by books she can’t read. And I’m not sure it’s that different today, with many schools running their own intranet and e-learning centres which are still largely inaccessible to blind students.

But let us not forget though that in those days it was before the computer, well to be more precise, before computers became commonplace, because I recall I did have an Apple IIE in those days. In those days there was no practical solution that would give us access to that whole wealth of information on the library shelves. Blind people would have to wait, in the meantime relying on specialised blindness agencies such as our own Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind to help us get the information we need.

Now let’s fast-forward to today, some 25 years later. You might think that in today’s electronic world, blind people should at last be able to access all the information we could want. Surely, we blind people should at last be satisfied. Well the answer is no, I’m afraid we aren’t yet satisfied, and for good reason.

Over the next week or so I will be publishing three articles on this blog on the subject of overcoming the information barrier, and I hope these will help improve understanding of why this is still a fundamental issue for blind people. Actually I would say it is probably now the single most important issue for us.

The first will give you my take on the recent outcry that occurred when Amazon released its Kindle II e-book reader that has built-in synthetic speech. Synthetic speech is a major access technology for blind people, but for those of you who don’t know what happened, you will learn how Amazon had angered the publishers of information, what they chose to then do about it, and how that caused outrage in the blind community. I will give you my commentary on what I think are the implications of that episode for blind people.

The second article will look at the issue of copyright and why copyright exemptions are needed to ensure that materials in formats blind people can use can be readily moved from one country to another. It used to be for instance that blind people in small countries like New Zealand could readily borrow books on cassette from the big producers in the USA, the UK and other countries. This was a great way for blind people, particularly students, to obtain more specialised reading that we couldn’t expect to get from a local source such as the Foundation of the Blind.

But that’s all history now everyone has gone digital. I’ll be telling you why in this second article. The matter was recently discussed at a meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. So did New Zealand behave itself when the matter was discussed? You’ll find out later this week.

The third and final article in this series will give you my take on where to from here. Why is it that as we progress more into the digital age, it seems to be harder for us to confront the issue and get over the barrier. It is sometimes said that there are none so blind as those who will not see. Is that the problem here? Is it just that the world still just doesn’t get it? Maybe, but I suggest also that our problems are to some extent of our own making and we really need to make sure we send a clear and consistent signal to the world to let them know what we want. I will be suggesting there is some conflict in the signals we are currently sending and we need to get our own act together.

Greetings again. The colder weather only serves to remind us that we are just about half way through the year. Where has it gone?

I want to bring you up to date with the latest developments concerning the Foundation’s governance proposal. This is important because it is all about our ability as members to directly govern those specialised services that are there to meet our needs as blind people.

Some of you reading this won’t know what this is about so perhaps some background is in order. The Foundation of the Blind is New Zealand’s primary provider of services to blind and vision impaired people. It is governed by a Board of Directors which, apart from one seat, is elected by its roughly 11,000 consumers. The change to this model came about in 2002, when the Foundation changed its name from the “Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind” to “the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind”. The change from “for” to “of” heralded a new era, what we referred to at the time as an era of self determination. It was not won lightly. It came after some years of concentrated and purposeful advocacy that saw the whole active blind community unite in the pursuit of change.

Late last year, The Foundation’s Board circulated a proposal that would significantly change the way that Board is elected. It would see us electing six directors, with the other three appointed by the Board itself.

While still only a proposal for discussion, it arose out of growing concern that the Constitution, now nearly seven years old, is perhaps not delivering as much as we had hoped. Even in 2007, the Association raised some concerns with the Foundation’s Board, hoping that this would encourage them to carry out a review of the Constitution after its then first five years of operation. Among other things, we were concerned about the process of cooption, the lack of information about how individual directors perceive their role and perform their duties as directors, and the fact that elections have always favoured candidates who are already on the Board.

While we acknowledge that the Foundation’s Board is committed to consulting with consumers and stakeholders and is genuinely motivated by the need to ensure high quality governance of the Foundation, we were disappointed that the Board developed its proposal on its own and without discussion with stakeholders. We felt that the wider blind community must first engage in genuine dialogue about problems people might perceive in the Constitution before any proposal could be considered in detail. We also wanted to see an independent group steer the process from here, rather than the Board develop a final proposal on its own. Of course the Board would have a view which is valued, but governance is something that is even above the Board itself.

In March, we formally asked to meet with the Foundation’s Board to discuss our concerns. I am pleased to advise now that that meeting has taken place and we have reached genuine agreement over the way forward. A joint statement has now been released which I am including here for you:

Statement on prospective amendments to the governing rules of the RNZFB

Representatives of the Board of Directors of the RNZFB and representatives from the Board of the Association of Blind Citizens of New Zealand Inc met at Awhina House the evening of May 14th to discuss procedures around proposed changes to RNZFB governance.

We agreed the following:

“That there is a consensus around the need to establish an independent review group to evaluate, and if necessary make recommendations on, resolving perceived problems concerning the current rules and processes governing the RNZFB. By extending the period of consultation with stakeholders over the next year, we believe there will be greater understanding of, and agreement around, resolving any issues standing in the way of sound governance of the RNZFB.

The independent review group of around six persons will have an external facilitator and members will be selected for their experience of consumerism, stakeholder relations and governance. Terms of reference are currently being developed and, along with review group membership, will be subject to agreement by key stakeholders. It is anticipated that in 2010 a Special Meeting of Members will be called to endorse or otherwise, any recommendations for amendments to the constitution of the RNZFB. It is hoped that any changes will be in place in time for the 2010 election of Board Directors.

Law firm, Buddle Findlay have tabled their draft report on the external review of the Foundation’s current constitution. This 40 page report is available to interested stakeholders by phoning Raewyne Lovich, 09 355 6920.”

D M McKenzie
Chair
RNZFB Board of Directors

Clive Lansink
National President
ABC NZ

We think this is good news because an independent group will now be formed to not just consider the current proposal and any submissions people may make on that, but also it should take more time to canvas the issues with members in general, and if this group feels the need to recommend any change to the Constitution, it will be one that will hopefully have widespread support. The terms of reference for that group will hopefully be drawn up very soon.

I hope this means now that we will enter a constructive debate on just what is good governance when applied to an organisation like the Foundation?

The Association is not strongly advocating any particular model of governance. We believe that governance is something that in the end is for the entire blind community and other stakeholders to discuss and resolve. However one principle that I believe the Association continues to uphold is the principle of self determination, which means blind people taking charge of our own services.

We applaud the Board for its willingness to step aside from directly managing the review process. Directors will of course be welcome to participate in the discussion like anyone else.

PS, for those of you who wonder about the significance of my reference to “quest for equity”, it is the title of the history of the first fifty years of our Association, as written by Greg Newbold. It charts the organisation’s progress as it led the way from the days in which blind people lived in institutions and worked in sheltered workshops to today’s world in which we demand to play our full part as citizens of the community.

Gosh, I am embarrassed to realise that it is now a month since I updated the blog. I do have some excuses but you don’t want to know. So my humble apologies.

One section of the blind community that is often not heard is that of young people. On this occasion, I’m referring to blind and low vision people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. These are young adults, old enough to have left school, ready to take on the world, yet still at that age where it isn’t exactly cool to be going to meetings of an organisation like our Association. I can easily recall my attitude at eighteen years of age. I certainly had no time for meetings and commitments.

From time to time we have talked about a youth branch, and that may happen at some stage if enough young people want to get behind a concept like that. But in the meantime we want to give blind youth an opportunity to have their say on issues important to them, and I’m pleased to announce that our Board decided recently to host a one-day forum for blind and low vision youth.

We should have a formal announcement out by the end of May and we plan to run it in August some time. As already stated, the target age group will be eighteen to twenty-five. Once announced, we will publicise this as widely as we can and we will be inviting blind and low vision people in this age group from all over New Zealand to contact us with some sort of indication as to why they would like to attend this forum. Our plan is to select up to sixteen people and bring them together for one day at our expense.

We hope the young people who attend will feel encouraged to speak openly about the things that most concern them about their situation as a blind or low vision person. We will provide a facilitator so even the ones who are the most shy will speak up, but apart from that, the older folks will stay away and not influence the process. No strings; no obligations.

I’m sure we all remember what life was like when we were young but I don’t think any of us who are much older than this age group can really appreciate life for people in this age group today. Young people today have to deal with a vastly different world. On the one hand, they face challenges we never had to face when we were young, but on the other hand there are new opportunities now which we could only have dreamed of.

The Association has always cared a lot about the next generation. I can remember older blind adults who helped and encouraged us when we were growing up, and it was only when I became an adult that I realised they were Association members. Now we are older, we have the same commitment to the next generation. We are committed to ensuring that what comes out of this forum will influence our programme of advocacy over the next few years. And if it is really successful, I hope we’ll be planning the next one before too long.

For a number of years, the Association has been quietly working with the banking industry to push them towards introducing talking ATMs. ATMs, or automatic teller machines, often called cash machines, bank machines etc, are all over the place so people must use them.

Sighted people, that is. Blind people have not been able to use them because even though we can at least on some models learn which button is which, we can’t actually interact with these machines because we can’t read what is on the screen. Sure it’s possible on some machines to learn a series of actions that might result in getting a certain amount of money, but there is always the risk that something might go wrong, and ultimately the machine is likely to take your card if you persevere and as a blind person you wouldn’t know the reason why. We just think that access to ATMs is a human right since banks have some obligation to serve us to the same standard as they serve others, and technology has existed for some time now to make ATMs accessible to us.

I’m pleased to say that in the last couple of years there has been a bit of a “quiet revolution” going on, thanks largely to our Association’s continued advocacy and the favourable response of the banking industry. We must remember that these machines are often upgraded or replaced, and we always hoped that in time the banks would start to buy new machines with the capability of talking to us so we too could use them.

The first talking ATMs to appear were installed in 2005 by the New Zealand Association of Credit Unions. Though not a trading bank, they led the way in making banking more accessible to blind people.

But since then several banks have started to install them, and the numbers are growing.
At the time of writing and according to information the Association has recently gained from the banks, ANZ the National Bank should have a massive 400 audio enabled machines installed by the end of May (we believe), Westpac now has 113 installed, ASB Bank has 79, and the Association of Credit Unions has 51. So basically that’s over 600 audio enabled machines in total either installed or coming very soon. That’s a tremendous and positive change.

Other banks are a little slower, but we are in touch with them and we believe they are making progress. We particularly hope that New Zealand’s own KiwiBank will install talking ATMs when their ICT infrastructure upgrades are complete.

The machines vary in detail, but the basic principle is that you plug a standard pair of headphones into the machine. It senses this and automatically starts to talk, giving the blind user full control over their transaction. Some machines even blank the screen during an audio transaction, which we think is a positive move because a blind person cannot always be sure no one is watching.

It is understandable that the banks did not want a lot of publicity during the early installations because even their own staff have had to find out about them.

But now we think it’s time to start telling people about our success. What we need now is publicity so particularly blind people with one of these machines close by can be aware of them. It may take a while for us to start using them because, let’s face it, we have had to get along pretty much without them, and often we can get cash from shops etc when we buy something using EFTPOS. But now that these machines are here, and a good number of us will have at least one machine in our area, I hope we will start using them like sighted people already do.

Today I was riding in a taxi, as I often do, and I said to the driver just drop me off along here where you see the driveway down into the basement garage car park. I quickly realised the driver didn’t stop so I just said just stop anywhere along here please. Now I know that often there are a lot of cars parked along this stretch of road and taxis can’t always stop so I wasn’t too concerned when we travelled still further. Then when we did stop, the driver asked “Is here OK”? By this time I was thinking anywhere to get out would be better than nowhere. “Yes this is fine”, I said, and paid the bill. He did kindly offer to help me walk back but really this stretch of street is pretty straightforward so I didn’t need help.

Now I had to walk back about a hundred meters or so which was no big deal, but it gave me a moment to ponder on why this had happened, particularly because I do this every day and quite often it seems drivers just don’t understand where I want them to stop. Like most drivers in Auckland, and I think more than anywhere else in New Zealand, English was not this driver’s first language. But it wasn’t as if he couldn’t converse at all in English. Believe me I know how frustrating it is when you end up with a driver who simply cannot communicate. This guy could communicate, but it was as if my words just didn’t register.

On another occasion with a different driver I think, we were going along and I decided that I wanted to stop quickly at a dairy that is part of a block of shops we were about to go past. So I just asked the driver to quickly pull in at the block of shops coming up on the left. The driver sort of grunted and I assumed he understood, but when we didn’t slow down and went through the next roundabout, I realised we were way past those shops. I asked the driver why he hadn’t stopped at the shops and I could tell by his response that he simply knew nothing of what I meant.

These situations are not unusual, particularly in Auckland. I suppose we have to accept the reality that kiwis who speak English don’t seem to want to drive taxis. So we have a lot of drivers for whom English is a second language. But I am convinced that the problem I am referring to is not simply one of poor language. I have met plenty of drivers whose English is bad but who somehow still make the effort to communicate and engage, and I’m ok with that because we live in a multicultural world, and you can at least have a basic conversation.

The problem I am referring to is hard to describe but you know it when you find it. The driver is driving the car alright but seems to be completely disconnected from the job. Conversation breaks down because the responses you get which may still be in reasonably good English just don’t make any sense. It is as if the driver knows the words but not their meaning.

There is also a certain worldliness that is increasingly lacking in the industry. I have always believed that there is more to driving taxis than just taking people to a specified destination. Drivers are often expected to know about places to go, perhaps most important for visitors, such as where is a good restaurant nearby. There are many reasons why drivers need to be able to converse in a meaningful way with the passengers. I remember once getting hungry one late night in Brisbane and I had no idea where to go to get something to eat. I could have got over it but in the end I gave in. I called a cab and asked the driver to take me to where I could get a decent burger. I don’t know what I would have done if that driver didn’t know what a good burger was or where we could get one, but we drove to a late night place and I got a good feed, which put me in a much better mood to go to sleep.

My favourite burger place in Auckland for many years has been Al and Pete’s in Parnell. There was a time when every taxi driver knew where it was. But not anymore. I almost always have to tell them. But I don’t mind that so much. So typically I’ll say ok we’re going to such and such a place, and on the way I want to stop at Al and Pete’s which is a takeaway place at the top of Ayre Street on Parnell Road. Now that’s clear enough I think, but increasingly I find drivers just don’t understand, and so it then falls to me to find some other way to describe where I want to go.

I often wonder whether the problem I am describing affects blind people more because the drivers might be used to people pointing and using other visual signals, and of course that’s not what we do. But even so, these guys deliver a public service and blind people are part of the public. Is it too much to ask to just communicate in plain English?

The Taxi Federation was in the news last weekend saying that the recession has resulted in a decline in takings, and ultimately taxi fares may have to go up.

I already spend a fortune on cabs and perhaps that’s just the way it is. I realise that it’s great to have a fleet of people out there just waiting for my call. I know that the guy who turns up at a moment’s notice to drive me where I want to go, that guy has bills to pay and has to make a living too. So I accept that in the end prices may have to go up and I may have to pay more.

But I would feel better about that if the taxi industry showed more commitment to delivering a proper service. We all need reliable transport, and often people with disabilities, particularly blind people, need a reliable taxi service more than most. In obtaining their license, drivers should not only have good local area knowledge, and I don’t just mean roads, but they should be able to demonstrate an ability to actually communicate meaningfully. I do wonder sometimes how some drivers have got their license. I don’t expect a driver to debate the finer points of politics or nuclear physics with me, but I don’t think it is too much to expect a driver to know what a block of shops is or a basement parking garage for that matter. Apart from driving us efficiently to where we need to go, taxi drivers need to know some basic things like where are different kinds of restaurants, shops, doctors, pharmacies, bank machines, and yes, where to get a decent burger.

This Association continues to call for effective and accessible public transport so people with disabilities can participate fully in all aspects of society. This week in the news we heard that the Government is now not going ahead with a regional fuel tax that we were told would have funded critical developments in Auckland’s public transport infrastructure. The Government has instead opted for a lower nation-wide fuel tax. Not surprisingly, people around the country have not been slow to express their outrage at having to, as they might put it, pay for Auckland’s roads, but the more important point about this decision is that the funding from this new tax will be directed more to roads than to public transport. It seems to signal that the Government does not consider public transport to be strategically important.

Government and local authorities have an obligation to ensure that the urban environment is accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. I recently blogged about how people with disabilities have moved out of an era dominated largely by living in institutions to today’s world in which we live in the community. Living in the community means working, studying, shopping, socialising, enjoying entertainment, playing sport, and doing everything else that comes with being part of modern society. Without an effective public transport system, a city designed largely for people who drive cars is, frankly, likely to seriously impede the mobility of people with disabilities and other transport disadvantaged groups, preventing us from participating to our full potential in the community.

It is actually that simple. Think about the way life has changed in our larger and even our not so large cities. There might have been a time when we were content to just live and socialise in the neighbourhood, maybe get the bus to and from work and just shop at the local shops. Now we must travel much further to larger mega-centres to do even basic shopping. Now we are encouraged to attend large events such as shows and concerts held in big stadiums and events centres that might be many kilometers away. Cities are getting larger, and often it is economic pressure that forces people to live further away from the city centre. It is not unusual now for people to drive forty or more kilometers each way every day to get to work, which might be anywhere in the metropolitan area. Social networks now extend right across the metropolitan environment and are not simply centred in the local neighbourhood. Now it is not unusual for people to travel right across the region just to meet for dinner. People with disabilities have the same right to socialise and participate in the community as everyone else.

People with disabilities have always been much more dependent on public transport than people in general. Many of us just have no choice other than to use public transport. But as the urban environment changes, the public transport system is not keeping up. There once was a time when it was simply enough just to take the bus to town every so often. But not any more. If all of us are to go to cricket games, or to support our local rugby or league teams, if we are to go to concerts and other big events, if we are to support our kids when they play in inter-school sports, if we are to buy the things we need, if we are to meet up with friends, and so on, then all of us need to be able to travel comfortably and with dignity to all these places scattered throughout the urban environment. Social mobility should not be something enjoyed only by people who drive.

Society in the end controls how our cities develop, where the roads go and which areas are dedicated to which activities. People can’t just build what they like where they like. Government and local authorities are primarily responsible for how our urban environments develop. The city planners who continue to expand and change the urban environment without ensuring public transport keeps up are failing in their obligations to people with disabilities and other segments of the public who can’t drive. In fact they hav let everyone down because they have created an environment in which people are really forced to drive if they are to do most things. They have created a self fulfilling prophecy: if people have no option but to drive if they can, then most people will have cars and they will expect to be able to use them all the time.

I don’t know to what extent politics has entered this issue, why National has now overturned Labour’s initiative, and while I do have my political views, this blog is not the place for me to air them. But in the end it comes down to this. There has been disinterest in and devaluing of public transport by successive governments and at both national and local levels for decades. We thought perhaps the recent sudden rise in petrol prices, the general economic crunch and increasing awareness of the environment had led people to recognise the true value of public transport to everyone, not just people who can’t or don’t drive. For those of us who depend on public transport, there was a real sense that at last things might be moving in the right direction. In fact, some of the initiatives that were to be funded by the regional tax were directly relevant to people with disabilities and would have improved the overall accessibility of public transport.

This latest announcement tells us that the power still rests with people who have little regard for public transport, and who just want to jump into their cars whenever they feel the urge and drive on an ever-expanding network of roads which we all must pay for. Yes, in the end, we all pay for it, either directly or indirectly, even those of us who don’t drive. The region will now have to find an alternative source of funds or scrap some of the plans altogether.

Somehow public transport is expected to pay for itself in a way that nobody ever expects of roads. Because roads in general don’t come with any direct income stream, our only way of assessing their value is in terms of the general public good, the idea that we can all drive freely on them so we all benefit. But it seems investment in public transport is often seen as an optional cost which tends to only benefit the poor or disadvantaged. It is only ever measured in financial terms and we fail to value it in terms of the general benefit to the public as a whole.

As long as this attitude prevails, people who can’t or don’t drive will not be able to participate to our full potential as members of today’s urban society. People with disabilities may no longer be in institutions, but we will be spending more time home bound if public transport does not catch up with the needs of today’s modern urban environment.

At our National Conference last year, we passed a remit calling on the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind to stop using the term “partially sighted”, and use instead “vision impaired” when describing the community it serves. So far the Foundation has ignored us.

So why does it matter? What’s in a label. Looking at the whole disabled population, we used to be handicapped or crippled. Some time later we were disabled, and then we were “people with disabilities”. We are even referred to sometimes as “people experiencing disabilities” or “people who experience disability”, though I have to say I draw the line at these terms as being just too cumbersome.

The fact that the way we refer to ourselves has changed over time reflects something of the journey that we people with disabilities have travelled.

Prior to the 1980s, society tended to view disability as an injury to be cured by medicine or rehabilitation, in order that the person could join or rejoin society. People with disabilities were perhaps encouraged to do our best to adapt to society, but often found ourselves largely segregated from it, living, learning and working in separate institutions. The term “handicapped” brought with it the idea that we might be shown some sympathy and forgiven for not being able to integrate and contribute fully.

Nowadays, we people with disabilities have moved to the point where we claim the right to fully participate in Society. The terminology we now use reflects the idea that I might have a disability of some sort, but the extent to which I can or cannot interact with Society is more the result of how Society itself is structured than the result of my disability. The term “people with disabilities” emphasises that we are people first, equal in value to any other people; it’s just that we have a disability.

Take blindness for instance. There are lots of things I can’t do because I’m blind: like driving a truck. No question there. But there are things you might think I can’t do because I’m blind, but which I could do if only society worked differently, like reading a newspaper or reading what a teacher writes on a board. You might assume for example that when I am in a class room or lecture, and I ask the teacher to read what they are writing, this is because I am blind and can’t read it for myself. Not so. The real reason why I might ask a teacher to read what they are writing is that the teacher who doesn’t read what they write on a board has simply chosen a visual method of communicating their thoughts that discriminates against me. If I ask a teacher to read what they write on a board, I am not asking for a special favour; if I am a person of equal value, then that teacher has a duty to try to teach me like anyone else, and he or she shouldn’t use communication that discriminates if it can be avoided.

Anyway, I have a tendency to digress and right now I must resist that temptation. But I hope this helps you understand that the terms we use are not adopted merely for political correctness; they can be deeply significant to our very soul.

Sometimes we come up with new terms which may or may not catch on, but if they do catch on, it is because they more correctly pick up the nuances that people in general feel are important, and this can change over time.

Blind people have been blind for as long as I can remember, but a number of terms have been used to describe people with at least some vision. When I was much younger, people with some vision were typically referred to as “partially sighted”, and more recently as “visually impaired”, “vision impaired” and “low vision”. “Partially sighted” and “visually impaired” have fallen out of favour for various reasons, and in recent years, I think the terms “vision impaired” and “low vision” have become the most accepted terms. So for some time, when describing the entire population it serves, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind would use the term “blind, deafblind and vision impaired”, and only a few years ago when the Blind and Low Vision Education Network NZ (BLENNZ) decided on its name, there was a clear preference for “low vision” over other terms.

The term “partially sighted” began to fall out of favour in New Zealand a number of years ago, I think possibly even since the 1980s. But it’s not as if such transitions are clearly defined. If I look at my own writings, I can find instances in which I used the term up to 2002, but not since then. It is widely used in North America (particularly Canada) and in the UK, and it often appears in World Blind Union documents. But when I looked into this recently, I quickly became aware that even in those parts there is some debate as to what “partially sighted” really means.

We generally don’t have commonly used words to indicate full capacity. The term “sighted” is an exception, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the main reason is that “sight” is used in different terms that describe the nature of what someone sees, even though the person is still fully sighted, and it has other meanings that are nothing to do with being able to see, meanings to do with the ability to perceive, imagine, predict. So not only do we have words like “near-sighted”, “far-sighted”, “long-sighted” and “short-sighted” which describe the nature of how some people see, but we also have words like “insight” and “foresight” which have nothing to do with seeing visually. So it seems to me the term “partially sighted” evolved as yet another variation of the type of sight anyone might have, but the term is not really suggestive of a disability.

For some reason, the Foundation has again started using the term in its writings. It was used in last year’s business plan, and again in its document released this year considering the organisation’s priorities looking out to 2020. We know that in July last year, one director expressed his objection to its use, but though the Board has not officially decreed that it be used, it seems that it is being used because of the influence of at least some other directors. This has caused some upset and people were moved to bring a remit to our Association’s National Conference calling on the Foundation to cease using the term and to use “vision impaired” instead. Despite the remit passing, the Foundation has so far not been moved to think again, and it is still using the term. We have again reiterated our view that the Foundation has no good reason for bringing the term back, and should cease using it.

If you focus on the community of people served by the Foundation, the problem with the term “partially sighted” is that there is a group of people who do not consider themselves blind enough to be called blind when they might have enough sight to, for example, see an object on the street and avoid it, but who also don’t consider they are sighted enough to be comfortable using that term. The terms “vision impaired” and “low vision” came into common usage because they more inclusively apply to the whole group of people with vision impairments.

When it comes to terminology, we all have our personal likes and dislikes, and we can generally give reasons for our views. People who favour the term “partially sighted” argue for instance that it reflects a positive attitude, like the cup is half full rather than half empty. They have even argued that a term like “vision impaired” has no logical basis and is simply politically correct. But people who don’t like “partially sighted” actually see this as the very problem. They argue that there is nothing wrong with being blind and people shouldn’t use terms that somehow avoid the very disability they do have. They reject the argument that the term is merely politically correct, noting that the anti-politically-correct brigade often trots that argument out as a desperation measure designed to trivialise the other view.

So why has the Foundation started to use “partially sighted” again? We know of no outcry against “vision impaired” which has been in use for some time. It could be that Management has simply made an error, but in that case they could have quietly changed their ways after our remit. They haven’t, and we believe the reason is that Management is being influenced by the personal views of at least some Directors. So is this an example of good foresight as the Foundation, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, seeks to take us back to something good from the past when the rest of us didn’t see its value? Sadly, I think it is more that the Foundation is being over-influenced by “our dim-sighted politicians” (James Adair, the history of the American Indians, 1840).

We urge Foundation Management to have regard for the remit passed by last year’s Conference, which we think continues to be the largest regular gathering of blind New Zealanders who make it their business to meet to discuss issues of concern to the blind community. We urge the Foundation to use terms that are regarded by our community as more inclusive and appropriate, and to avoid terms which have a tendency to cause upset. Do not be influenced by the views of Directors unless the Board as a whole has the courage to pass a formal policy decision on the matter. We have been moved to speak out on the issue and we expect the Foundation to listen, or give good reason why it should not. The opinion of individual directors should carry no more weight than anyone else’s personal opinion.

One area that takes up quite a bit of my personal time is education of blind children. I represent the Association on the Board of Trustees of the Blind and Low Vision Education Network (NZ) (BLENNZ). This is a relatively new organisation that combines the old school for the blind we used to know as Homai College with virtually all of the visual resource centres around the country.

Most blind children today attend local schools, and face immense challenges in their education. Subjects are often taught visually, and nowadays there is a lot of technology in the class room. But much of this is inaccessible to blind children so they can easily miss out on getting the same education that other children get. But these children also need to learn basic skils that relate to their blindness or low vision, such as learning braille, how to walk around safely, how to effectively use specialised technology, how to be independent, how to behave socially, etc. To teach these children everything they need to know takes a lot of extra time, and extra money for the specialist teachers these children need.

We’ve spent quite a bit of our time in the last few years lobbying for more specialist teachers. New Zealand compares rather badly with other countries when we look at the number of specialist teachers we have for the number of blind and low vision students.

Working closely with the parents of vision impaired, Ngati Kaapoo, other consumer organisations and the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, we achieved some success last year, in that the Government approved an additional fifteen specialist teachers to work with blind students in the mainstream. These teachers are starting work right now, and that will make a big difference to the support BLENNZ can give to these students starting this year.

I guess it does illustrate the point that often when it comes to advocacy, it is persistence in the end that pays off, and it is one example of service providers, consumers and parents working cooperatively together to pursue a common vision. But speaking of persistence paying off, this year will also see a fundamental change in the way BLENNZ is governed. The Minister of Education recently announced that BLENNZ will get a new Constitution. Although that sounds rather ho hum, it is important for a couple of reasons.

The vast majority of the roughly 1200 blind and low vision students in New Zealand attend local schools. So, even though they get support from the specialist teachers employed by BLENNZ, they are not formally enrolled with BLENNZ itself and so their parents have not had an opportunity to influence the governance of blindness education services. Under the new Constitution, these parents will be able to elect several parent representatives to the Board, alongside a parent rep for students who are enrolled with BLENNZ.

Another significant change in the new Constitution will be the formalising of partnership agreements between BLENNZ and this Association and the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. The Association is the largest generic consumer organisation of blind adults, and the Foundation is of course the largest provider of blindness services in New Zealand. Our two organisations will now be able to directly appoint trustees to the BLENNZ Board, whereas previously this was done by the Minister. Tangata whenua wil also be able to directly appoint a trustee.

The new BLENNZ Board is therefore going to have stronger links to the whole parent group, to the blind community and to the Foundation of the Blind itself. All parents want the best for their kids, and blind adults too want to ensure that the next generation of blind people has the best opportunity to learn to get on with maximum independence in a sighted world. I think the new Board gives us the best possible chance to achieve that vision.