On October 8, 2019, EBU Spanish member, ONCE, announced in the headquarters of Cervantes Institute in Madrid the availability of its digital library, the largest in the world of excellent quality texts in accessible formats in Spanish, thanks to the Marrakesh Treaty.
Spain, represented by ONCE, becomes the first country in the EU that materializes the Marrakesh Treaty and makes its bibliographic collection available to users and authorized entities around the world: almost 34,000 titles in Daisy format, 27,000 in Braille and more than 3,000 musical scores.
As an authorized Spanish entity, under the Marrakesh Treaty, ONCE offers all these works free of charge to users and other authorized entities, whose countries have adhered to the Treaty and have incorporated it into their national legislation, always for non-profit use and for the personal use of its beneficiaries.
The Marrakesh Treaty was promoted by the World Blind Union (WBU) - of which ONCE and European Blind Union (EBU) are members - and adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in June 2013, contributing this way to the real need to facilitate access to published works for the blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled.
From EBU´s official Twitter and facebook accounts, our President, Wolfgang Angerman, congratulated ONCE´s work and initiative and our 2nd Vice President, Barbara Martín, in a video, encouraged the rest of EBU members to ratify the treaty if they have not, and start sharing their libraries as soon as possible to contribute to decreasing the book famine.