That hearing was part of a consultation on the issue launched by the Copyright Office, which also included written submitted comments. Central to the consultation, according to the March 26 Federal Register notice, is a treaty on access for the visually impaired proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay in late May at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The proposed WIPO treaty, the subject of domestic consultations by governments in the coming months until the next WIPO copyright committee meeting, would create rules for import and export of works in accessible formats.

The reasons for a new global instrument, according to Manon Ress of Knowledge Ecology International, include: "The legal uncertainly over cross-border sharing of works, the very limited role of voluntary licensing of works, the recent disabling of text to speech by all Random House owned e-books, the enormous inefficiencies of making duplicative accessible format versions of works, and the paucity of works available to reading disabled persons, particularly in developing countries, or in foreign languages." Read CongressDaily's "Issue Of the Week" feature here.