No Excuses: Reading for All, Including People with Disabilities. Foreword to Paul Harpur’s Discrimination, Copyright and Equality: Law Opening the eBook for the Print Disabled.

Abstract

This article is the foreword to Dr Paul Harpur's 'Discrimination, Copyright and Equality: Law Opening the eBook for the Print Disabled' (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Given that copyright is one of the most widely debated, researched, and legislated public concerns in digital culture –– as evidenced in the commons debates, the furious arguments about illegal downloading, or the affirmative policy in favour of open access publishing –– that the issues of copyright and the print disabled are not widely known. Why are these issues not routinely raised, in the mainstream, when we talk about the opportunities and discontents of digital technology for society and culture? The continuing oppression of print disabled readers, and their exclusion from the world of books, can no longer continue –– and it is something that should be an integral part of our university courses, research, public debates, and public policy discussion on digital technology. A very important addition to this indispensable Cambridge University Press series, this is a book that must be widely read. Harpur’s study deserves an engaged reception across a range of disciplines, not just law and policy studies –– but also disability studies, sociology, media and communication studies, literary studies, and elsewhere in the humanities, social sciences, as well as engineering and technology sciences. Equipped with Dr Harpur’s fine book, we are equipped with the resources to take these issues mainstream, and secure proper action, so that everyone in the world, by 2030, or sooner, can indeed be a reader.