Submission to the Next National Cultural Policy from the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities

The submission calls on the Australian Government to make born-accessible publishing and distribution core elements of the next National Cultural Policy. More than 18% of adult Australians experience a print disability, yet Australia has no legislation requiring accessible publishing, and voluntary compliance has proven insufficient. The submission shows that accessible publishing cuts across all five pillars of the Policy and identifies five structural barriers: the absence of enforceable legislation, publishers’ lack of knowledge and resources for born-accessible workflows, precarious funding for alternative format producers, under-resourced libraries, and the unaddressed risks and opportunities AI poses for accessible format production. Drawing on precedents such as the European Accessibility Act and Canada’s Accessible Digital Books Initiative, the submission recommends legislating for accessibility, funding born-accessible publishing, securing ongoing funding for alternative format production, strengthening libraries as accessible reading infrastructure, and investing in accessibility data, research and AI governance. It argues that a Policy overlooking reading access will leave Australia’s Marrakesh Treaty and United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities obligations unfulfilled and undermine its own goal of an inclusive reading nation.