The Constitutional Court is hearing Blind SA’s case, requesting that previous exceptions contained within the copyright act be resuscitated. These exceptions would allow persons who are blind and visually impaired to convert books into formats like braille, without the consent of the copyright holder.

In October, Blind SA, represented by Section27, launched an urgent case in the Constitutional Court against the president, for his failure to sign the Copyright Amendment Bill.

Christo De Klerk is the President of Blind SA, “We wanted the court to compel him to sign the bill because we felt that he had not done his work properly, that he did not attend to this. He then gave all sorts of reasons for not having done that. He said that he had concentrated on bills that required his signature to make the elections run smoothly, which is absolute nonsense if you look at all the bills that he signed which were many. Only two of them had anything to do with the elections. One of the bills he signed was for the private use of dagga. I don’t know whether that was necessary to make the elections run smoothly.”

Blind SA says visually impaired people struggle to access books in braille