However, the very properties of electronic documents which are so valuable for the blind and partially sighted also underlie one of the biggest hurdles, that of the copyright problem. Publishers are reluctant to provide electronic copies of their texts to organisations of and for the blind or to individual users because of legitimate fears about losing control of their intellectual property rights. Without very clear safeguarding of intellectual property rights, and in particular, a well developed mechanism for collecting payments for the use of such rights, it is doubtful whether publishers will be willing to provide easy access to electronic versions of their publications. Access to information The key enabling technologies for increasing access to information for blind and partially sighted people are structured electronic documents and the developing infrastructures of the Internet and the World Wide Web. These transformations can be made at a fraction of the cost of transcription from the printed word.
Sighted people obtain much information by rapid visual scanning of the visible structure of a page.
Blind and partially sighted people have little or no ability to scan visually, so such structural features must be present explicitly in the electronic document. The most significant form of structuring electronic texts is by using SGML - the Standard Generalized Markup Language. Blind and partially sighted people can gain greatly enhanced access to information when using structured electronic documents. The developing infrastructures of the Information Society, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web are of immense significance to blind and partially sighted people. For the first time, it is possible to have online access to global information by using relatively cheap off the shelf components.