Stevie Wonder strikes chord in appeal for disabled people

Blind US soul music star Stevie Wonder struck up a singalong at a UN agency as he urged countries to unlock access to copyrighted material that disabled people need for their education and livelihoods.

“What I would like to do today is launch what I call the ‘Declaration of freedom for people with disabilities’,” he told delegates at the opening of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) assembly in Geneva.

“It’s a call to action, a plan that will empower the independence of people with disabilities by providing them with the tools to learn and grow,” he said. Mr Wonder said millions of intellectually capable disabled people are being deprived of information and knowledge essential for their education and other opportunities. The Motown legend struck a chord with the grey-suited diplomats and legal experts, eliciting humming and hesitant singing to classics like I Just Called to Say I Love You, My Cherie Amour and You are the Sunshine of My Life.

“I gave the example with the songs, people know the songs because they were able to hear them,” he told journalists afterwards.

“There are people who have probably even far more to offer than myself who are locked into this kind of prison because information is not available to them,” he said.

WIPO’s 184 members are at loggerheads over broader access to copyrighted material for people with disabilities that would allow it to be copied more readily into braille for the blind or provided in an accessible digital and audio form.

About 314 million blind or visually impaired people alone stand to benefit, according to the agency.

One of Mr Wonder’s aides estimated that five per cent of printed materials and books are available in a readable form for the blind or visually impaired in industralised nations, and just one per cent in developing countries.

African nations, Latin American countries, the European Union, and the United States are among those that tabled different approaches for an agreement at WIPO. The agency first put the issue on the table 16 years ago.