Last Updated on May 15, 2025, 5:11 pm ET
Recently I was asked to introduce and facilitate a session on web accessibility and repositories for accessible scholarly works. As I prepared for the session the focus was slightly revised to be on the Marrakesh Treaty in addition to web accessibility and repositories. This shift took me down the rabbit hole into not only refreshing my knowledge of the Marrakesh Treaty, but also United States copyright law, Canadian copyright law, and the European Accessibility Act. Luckily, since this is not my direct field of scholarship, we had two panelists who were well versed in Canadian and US copyright, plus work that supports individuals and institutions for accessible scholarly work repositories.
The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled was adopted in June 2013. It was significant due to it being the first World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty with a human-rights focus at its core and it is the first user-rights treaty in WIPO history. The goal was to end the book famine due to the existence of less than 10% of works available worldwide for those with print disabilities. Canada adopted the treaty in 2016 and the United States in 2019. Prior to and subsequent to adoption, copyright laws were amended for Marrakesh Treaty compliance: 2016 in Canada and 2018 with the Chafee amendment in the United States. In the United States new Title II guidelines for accessibility that must be enacted by April 2026 are also helping to ensure that materials are accessible.
For me, the most overlooked, but potentially the most effective act is the European Accessibility Act (EAA). Originally proposed in 2011, the act was built to complement the European Union’s Web Accessibility Directive, which became law in 2016. The EAA was encoded into law in 2019 and adopted by individual European Union nations starting in 2022. Key to EAA is that providers and services must make their products and services accessible to people with disabilities by June 2025. The European policy applies a design-for-all principle on digital technology but is not a requirement and obligation for microenterprises providing services within the scope of EAA (those with fewer than 10 employees and with sales less than 2 million Euros per year).
So, you might be wondering why I think the EAA may be the most influential act for the creation of web-accessible materials from information vendors. I base this upon the influence Plan S had on the global scholarly information market to increase open access (OA) to research data and publications. While some vendors still monetized OA with their embargos, levels of OA publishing, and the hefty author publishing charges (APCs), it provided options for scholars to consider beyond the impact factor of publications, such as where they can share their research for the broadest common good and reach of dissemination. Where the European Union and its markets go, so goes the scholarly research world. If vendors, publishers, and service providers can work under the EAA, then there is no reason they cannot provide the same level of accessibility in Canada and the United States. My prediction is that enacting web-accessible materials for ARL member institutions will become routine due to the influence of the EAA.
For more on the EAA, please see this Scholarly Kitchen Guest Post: “How Libraries and Scholarly Publishers Can Work Together Toward Born-Accessible Publishing.”
