Question 5940 — people with disabilities

Summary

Ms. Nadia Essayan draws the attention of the Minister of Solidarity and Health to the persistent difficulties in accessing books experienced by nearly 1,700,000 French visually impaired people. In recent years, the regulations governing the disability exception have evolved significantly. In particular, the possibility for approved organizations to access publishers' source files marked a remarkable step forward. The joint efforts of Ministry of Culture and Communication as well as publishers to make publishing natively accessible go in the right direction and should facilitate access to general literature. However, given the increasing complexity of works, particularly school or university works (paper or digital version), their editions will probably never be natively accessible. Indeed, adaptation work is and will still be necessary to transcribe them into braille, large print or audio version. While, thanks to the support of public authorities, most children have all their school textbooks available free of charge from the start of the school year, the situation is different for students who are unable to read and particularly blind or severely visually impaired children. Adapted versions are only available after several months and at the price incredible efforts of adaptation artisans who are sorely lacking in resources and support. Less than 5% of works published each year in France end up one day being accessible. In the field of school books more particularly, the shortage reflects indigence. This constitutes discrimination in access to education for young people with disabilities. It seems paradoxical that in the country of human rights which is also that of Louis Braille, the less and less widespread use and teaching of braille has recently been criticized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Also, it asks what measures it intends to take with regard to the implementation of recommendations 10 and 11 of the report “Structures having an activity of adapting works for the benefit of people with disabilities”: recommendation 10; entrust the National Library of France with responsibility for the collective catalog of the adapted edition in the interests of optimizing public resources and in order to simplify access to the adapted edition offer and recommendation 11; launch a feasibility study on the methods of creating a single reference base for adapted or accessible publishing in France in order to facilitate access for beneficiaries to the entire existing offer and protect authorized structures against legal risks. She asks him what his intentions are regarding the appointment of a project manager to facilitate the implementation and monitoring of the 26 recommendations of the report and to ensure interministerial coordination on the subject of adapted edition.

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