How the right of persons with disability are protected under Copyright Act, 1957?

The Amendment of the Copyright Act in 2012 largely aimed at making Copyright Act, 1957 complaint with the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) and most of the international treaties and conventions in field of copyrights. Of the numerous changes brought about in the new Indian copyright regime, exceptions and limitations for persons with disabilities were incorporated in the following provisions: Section 52(1)(zb) of the Copyright Act : An author of the copyrighted work is granted with exclusive rights of use, reproduction, etc. but there a few exceptions wherein a copyrighted work can be used, copied or reproduced without obtaining the consent from the copyright owner. This section basically deals with such exceptions to copyright infringement and empowers individuals, educational establishments and non-profit organizations to reproduce all types of copyright-protected content in accessible formats for the benefit of disabled persons. To this extent, the Act provides that it would not be a copyright infringement if any individual or any organization working for the benefit of the persons with disabilities and on a non-profit basis creates accessible format copies or distributes them to persons with disabilities. Section 31B of the Copyright Act : Any person or an organisation working for the benefit of disabled persons on a profit basis or for business can undertake conversion and distribution by applying for a license from the Copyright Board in accordance with the procedure laid down in this section. These provisions in the Indian Copyright Act are inclusive and accommodating for print disabled persons. It gives greater access to creative work and the right to convert the work i.e copyrightable work in any accessible formats through any organisation or themselves without the need to purchase a license. The Marrakesh Treaty is mainly to facilitate access to copyrighted works of authors for visually disabled, visually impaired or print disabled persons. A conference by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, (WIPO) along with the support of the US delegation in Morocco adopted the Marrakesh Treaty. There are eighty-eight signatories and has been ratified by thirty-three countries. India has made practical efforts in recent times to accommodate the print disabled person by ratifying the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired, 2013. Through this treaty it has been made mandatory for member countries to enforce exceptions or limitations as need be in their Copyright laws regarding the right to reproduce copyrightable work in accessible formats and also other laws to make education, research more accessible. Digital technology has the potential to transform the lives of sensory-disabled people. For example, the synthesizers that convert text-to-speech allow the words displayed/typed on the screen to be read out loud and the images so displayed to be described orally. This allows the blind people to understand the text by hearing. Also, software that allows a computer to respond to the commands given orally, instead of written commands by keyboard or a mouse helps the visually impaired people to operate the computer with ease. Screen readers which decode the electronic text into Braille are also available. Awkwardly, DRMs restrict the above activities. For instance, e-books from Adobe have the inbuilt capacity to be read out loud by a computer, but the owners of rights use technological protection methods to turn off this application by Adobe. These measures block the access for blind people, even when they have authentically purchased the original work. Such things override the exceptions provided by copyright law even when no legal barriers exist, and create technological barriers. International IP agreements and national laws in some countries prohibit users from evading or bypassing measures for protection for legitimate access purposes.