The Back Alley Archives

Last week, wediscusseda recentWe The People petitionat the White House, asking the administration to support the treaty for the blind, which would make it easier to access creative works for the blind by creating a few small "exceptions" to copyright law (i.e., returning rights to the public) for the sake of sharing formats that are accessible to the blind across borders. However, some blind advocacy groups have discovered that, if you happen to be blind/visually impaired,it's basically impossible to sign the petition.[INDENT]
The glitch, the group says, is in those often annoying tests that require users to type in a set of numbers and letters to prove they are human. On the White House web site, blind users can select an audio version of the test, but the audio is incomprehensible, according to federation spokesman Chris Danielsen.

And if users want to send email notifying the White House about the problem, well, that also requires a computer-human test with garbled audio, too, he said.

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That's certainly convenient for an administration that has increasingly moved away from its earlier stance that it supported this treaty. Now, making it almost impossible for the actual stakeholders to express their opinion reallyshould drive home why increased accessibility is important. Hopefully the White House will quickly fix this bug, but more importantly, it would be nice if they actually supported the damn treaty.