RE: DRM and the European Accessibility Act

Thanks, Cristina

Are there any DRM models that we know about that present problems?

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Principal
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Cristina Mussinelli - Fondazione LIA <cristina.mussinelli@fondazionelia.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 4:31 PM
To: Johnson, Rick <Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com>
Cc: Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com>; public-publishingbg@w3.org; public-epub-wg@w3.org; Gregorio Pellegrino - Fondazione LIA <gregorio.pellegrino@fondazionelia.org>
Subject: Re: DRM and the European Accessibility Act

⛔
This is an external email.

Dear Tzviya and Rick,

I understand your concerns and I confirm Rick’s point of view: in my opinion the EU Act do not intend to impede the use of DRM in general, but to avoid that DRM do not allow assistive technologies to be used thus making the content inaccessible.



There are vendors who use DRM and allow accessibility.

Furthermore DRM is also a way of managing licenses and for example in Italy the most important library loan platform moved to LCP also in order to comply with accessibility requirements.



I hope it helps.

Cristina

Cristina Mussinelli

Inviato da iPhone


Il giorno 11 nov 2021, alle ore 16:59, Johnson, Rick <Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com<mailto:Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com>> ha scritto:

I want to add an emphasis to one of Tzvia’s sentences:  “DRM __CAN__ get in the way of accessibility.”

I just want to caution that we do not make the assumption that a vendors DRM will always get in the way of accessibility, and thus DRM is by default ‘bad’.  Bad DRM is bad code, like other (non accessible) code.  A vendor (and, in reality the whole supply chain from authoring thru to end user reading) should (and can) support accessibility, and we should make sure there is transparency about each link in that chain.  DRM is a feature that content owners require for distribution in specific markets, and a well implemented DRM will not ‘get in the way’.


Rick Johnson | Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Strategy and Accessibility
VitalSource Technologies, LLC
get.vitalsource.com <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/get.vitalsource.com/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!6EjQQlUYhErkEZP3aM1BueAofdhRkDZ6kmZ3AhbhQ4pQ5Pp_YBQ3_n3mNoJyTQ$>



From: Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>
Date: Thursday, November 11, 2021 at 7:34 AM
To: cristina.mussinelli@fondazionelia.org<mailto:cristina.mussinelli@fondazionelia.org> <cristina.mussinelli@fondazionelia.org<mailto:cristina.mussinelli@fondazionelia.org>>
Cc: public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org> <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>, public-epub-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-epub-wg@w3.org> <public-epub-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-epub-wg@w3.org>>
Subject: [External] FW: DRM and the European Accessibility Act

Hi Cristina,

We are exploring this question at Wiley, and I think this affects all of us. The European Accessibility Act (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32019L0882<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX*3A32019L0882__;JQ!!N11eV2iwtfs!6EjQQlUYhErkEZP3aM1BueAofdhRkDZ6kmZ3AhbhQ4pQ5Pp_YBQ3_n2BbYIfMQ$>) says in Section IV f about DRM and Accessibility:

The provision of services in order to maximise their foreseeable use by persons with disabilities, shall be achieved by including functions, practices, policies and procedures and alterations in the operation of the service targeted to address the needs of persons with disabilities and ensure interoperability with assistive technologies:
Ebooks:
(f) ensuring that digital rights management measures do not block accessibility features.

Most of us distribute our ebooks with DRM. The ebook files we sell direct to consumer have DRM, and the files we sell via 3rd party retailers have DRM applied by retailers. DRM can get in the way of accessibility. Do we need to change our DRM practices? Do we need to remove the hooks for DRM in EPUB spec?

Thanks,
Tzviya

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Principal
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

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