Accessibility and IP Checklist: Authorised Entity Status, Format Conversion, Circumvention Exemptions, Vendor Terms, and Records

By Casey Scott McKay · 2024-11-18

This checklist builds and audits an accessible content programme against the statutory permission most organisations do not realise they hold. Phase one writes the authorised entity determination and the eligibility process, the two documents that convert a long legal review into a short one. Phase two runs the conversion workflow in the order that removes work: check for an existing accessible edition, request the publisher source file, and only then convert. Phase three isolates the circumvention question, which is the single genuine legal exposure in the area and the one where good motives do not help. Phases four and five fix licences and procurement, and phase six covers Marrakesh, records, escalation, and the three numbers that show whether readers are served.

IP and Technology > Copyright | Checklist | Published 18 November 2024 - Updated 29 December 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us

Summary. This checklist builds and audits an accessible content programme against the statutory permission most organisations do not realise they hold. Phase one writes the authorised entity determination and the eligibility process, the two documents that convert a long legal review into a short one. Phase two runs the conversion workflow in the order that removes work: check for an existing accessible edition, request the publisher source file, and only then convert. Phase three isolates the circumvention question, which is the single genuine legal exposure in the area and the one where good motives do not help. Phases four and five fix licences and procurement, and phase six covers Marrakesh, records, escalation, and the three numbers that show whether readers are served.

Keywords: accessibility checklist · authorised entity determination · eligible person verification · section 121 conditions · statutory notices · accessible format quality · image description · circumvention exemption check · triennial cycle diary · trafficking gap · licence carve out · source file request · procurement conformance · vendor accessibility report · born accessible acquisition · Marrakesh export practices · escalation triggers · conversion records · time to delivery · reader feedback

How to use this checklist

| Field | Detail | |---|---| | Who runs it | Accessible services lead, with procurement, acquisitions, and counsel | | When | On standing up a programme; annually; and at every triennial exemption cycle | | Time required | One week for the legal foundation; six months for procurement | | Gates | Entity determination signed; circumvention check embedded; procurement clause adopted | | Output | A one-page determination, a running workflow, a reviewed contract portfolio | | Companion documents | Building an Accessible Content Programme and Making Works Reachable |

The matter. A university disability services office receives forty conversion requests in the first fortnight of term. It buys converted textbooks from a specialist supplier at eighty dollars a title. Median delivery is thirty-one days. The courseware platform adopted last year has no accessible mode and its licence prohibits extracting content. Nobody has looked at the current circumvention exemption text since 2021. The library's database subscriptions are silent on conversion. Legal has asked for a risk assessment before the office converts anything itself. The provost has asked why the accessibility budget doubled.

Phase 1. The authorised entity determination and eligibility

[ ] Write the determination as one page and sign it. Why. 17 U.S.C. § 121 permits an authorised entity to reproduce and distribute previously published literary works in accessible formats exclusively for eligible persons, with no permission, no licence, and no fee. The determination is what lets counsel approve the programme in five minutes. Trap. Treating it as obvious and never writing it, which guarantees the six-week review instead.
[ ] Apply the primary mission test to the unit, not the institution. Why. A university does not have a primary mission to provide specialised services for persons with disabilities; its disability services office does. Trap. Concluding the organisation fails the test because the parent body would.
[ ] Quote the unit's mission from a governing document. Why. A determination resting on what everyone knows the office does is weaker than one quoting the charter. Trap. Paraphrasing.
[ ] Re-check the determination on reorganisation. Why. Restructuring can move the function into a body whose stated mission is something else. Trap. A 2019 determination naming a unit that no longer exists.
[ ] Where the organisation does not qualify, note that fair use remains. Why. A commercial publisher, a technology company, or an employer acting for its workforce cannot use the exception, and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust supports the same activity under 17 U.S.C. § 107 — for a single-reader workplace accommodation the analysis is short and comes out the same way. Trap. Refusing an accommodation on copyright grounds that do not survive examination.
[ ] Administer eligibility as the statute defines it. Blindness; a visual impairment or perceptual or reading disability that cannot be corrected to substantially equivalent visual function; or a physical disability preventing holding or manipulating a book or focusing or moving the eyes. Why. Dyslexia and physical disabilities are squarely within it. Trap. Running the programme as though it covered blindness alone, which under-serves readers the statute plainly reaches.
[ ] Use documentation the organisation already holds. Why. Requiring a fresh medical certificate from a student whose reading disability the institution itself assessed is a barrier the statute does not impose. Trap. A verification step so heavy that readers stop asking.
[ ] Record the determination, not the diagnosis. Why. The file needs to show eligibility was established and by what route; holding clinical detail creates a data protection obligation the programme does not need. Trap. A conversion file full of medical records.
[ ] [Gate] Limit distribution to eligible persons by an access control, not a policy statement. Why. Exclusivity is a statutory condition. Trap. Posting converted files openly because they were lawfully made.

Phase 2. The conversion workflow, in the order that removes work

[ ] Question one: does an accessible edition already exist? Commercial accessible ebook, a partner institution's collection, a shared accessible library. Why. Acquiring is faster than producing, and where a usable commercial accessible edition exists it also keeps the fair use fallback on the right side of the market-failure reasoning. Trap. Converting a title that was available to buy in an hour.
[ ] Question two: can the publisher supply a structured source file? Why. This is the highest-value request in the programme — it removes the conversion, removes the circumvention question, and produces a better file than any remediation. Trap. Treating it as a courtesy step rather than the primary route. Build it into acquisitions, not into the conversion queue.
[ ] Question three: does conversion require defeating a technical measure? Why. If yes, Phase 3 governs and the copyright analysis does not answer it. Trap. Proceeding because the underlying use is plainly lawful.
[ ] Confirm the work is a previously published literary work. Why. That is the scope of 17 U.S.C. § 121. Unpublished works and non-literary works are outside it. Trap. Running the statutory route on a film or a photograph collection. Use 17 U.S.C. § 107 there and write the analysis down.
[ ] Produce structured digital text as the default output. Marked headings, correct reading order, real lists and tables, language declarations, navigable contents. Why. One well-structured file serves screen readers, refreshable braille, synthetic speech, and reflowed large print. Trap. Delivering an image-only PDF and calling it an accessible format. It is a picture of a book.
[ ] Describe informational images and mark decorative ones as decorative. Why. A textbook with unlabelled diagrams is inaccessible however good its text markup is, and marking decorative images takes seconds. Trap. Describing nothing because describing everything was impossible.
[ ] Choose additional formats by reader need. Human-narrated audio where synthetic speech performs badly; braille where readers use it; large print for low-vision readers who do not use screen readers. Why. Formats serve different populations. Trap. Producing one format and reporting it as coverage.
[ ] Distinguish narrated audio from a commercial audiobook. Why. Different product, different market, different population — a distinction worth stating plainly if a publisher raises it. Trap. Producing narrated audio of a title with an active commercial audiobook without noticing that the market-harm analysis is materially different there.
[ ] Apply the statutory notices to every copy. A notice that further reproduction or distribution in a format other than an accessible format is an infringement, and a copyright notice identifying the owner and the date of original publication. Why. Both are section 121 conditions. Trap. Remembering them per title. Build them into the template.
[ ] Ask readers which formats they use. Why. It varies by population, subject, and age, and it is knowable by asking. Trap. A programme designed around what the team can produce.

Phase 3. The circumvention check

[ ] Treat this as the only genuine legal exposure in the programme. Why. 17 U.S.C. § 1201 prohibits circumventing a technological measure controlling access, separately from infringement. Trap. Folding it into the copyright analysis, where it does not belong and cannot be answered.
[ ] Understand that good motives do not help here. Why. Universal City Studios v. Corley held fair use is not a defence to a section 1201 claim; MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment held section 1201(a) creates a right distinct from copyright with no required nexus to infringement, disagreeing with Chamberlain Group v. Skylink Technologies; the split is unresolved; and 17 U.S.C. § 1203 supplies civil remedies. Trap. Assuming a lawful purpose cures an unlawful access.
[ ] Read the current operative exemption text. Why. The triennial rulemaking has granted and renewed accessibility exemptions, and the conditions about who may circumvent, for whom, and on what material live in the text. Trap. Relying on a summary, a blog post, or the previous cycle's rule.
[ ] Diarise the triennial cycle. Why. Exemptions expire on a three-year rhythm and renewal is not automatic. Trap. A programme discovering in year four that it has been operating without an exemption.
[ ] Know the trafficking gap. Why. The exemptions permit acts of circumvention; the trafficking provisions are not suspended, so an organisation may be permitted to circumvent and unable to lawfully obtain a means of doing so. Trap. Assuming a permitted act implies an available tool. Prefer the source file request.
[ ] Record the check in two lines. Which measure, which exemption, which text, which date. Why. It is the whole evidentiary record for the one real exposure. Trap. An undocumented conclusion that the exemption "covers us".
[ ] [Gate] Escalate genuine uncertainty rather than proceeding. Why. This is the one place where "we thought it was fine" is not a defence. Trap. A conversion team with authority to proceed but no authority to stop. Use the circumvention framework for the fuller fit analysis.

Phase 4. Licences and contract terms

[ ] Read the restrictions clause, not just any accessibility clause. Why. A general prohibition on modifying content or circumventing measures is a conversion prohibition even where nobody drafted it as one. Trap. Searching a contract for the word "accessibility" and concluding it is silent.
[ ] Recognise a conversion prohibition as a contract problem. Why. Whether such a term is preempted or unenforceable against a statutory exception is genuinely unsettled, and copyright analysis does not dissolve it. Trap. Proceeding on the theory that a statutory right must override a contract, which is an argument, not an answer.
[ ] Put a conversion carve-out in the contract template. Permission to reproduce and convert licensed content into accessible formats for eligible persons notwithstanding other restrictions, plus an obligation to supply structured source files on reasonable request. Why. Publishers agree readily at negotiation and refuse during disputes. Trap. Relying on someone to remember it per deal.
[ ] Sweep the existing portfolio at renewal, ranked by request volume. Database subscriptions, ebook platforms, courseware, enterprise content, streaming media. Why. Renewal is the only leverage point. Trap. Trying to reopen everything at once and achieving nothing.
[ ] Where a carve-out is refused, ask for a supply commitment instead. An obligation to provide accessible files on request with a service level. Why. For practical purposes it is better — it removes the conversion entirely. Trap. Treating refusal of the carve-out as the end of the conversation.
[ ] Log the refusals with dates and names. Why. A pattern of refusal from one vendor is a procurement argument at the next tender. Trap. Informal refusals nobody recorded.

Phase 5. Procurement, which is where the queue comes from

[ ] Accept that most inaccessible content was bought that way. A platform rendering text in a canvas no screen reader can parse; scanned PDFs with no text layer; video with no captions; a database that cannot be operated by keyboard. Why. Every one is a purchase order that created a remediation obligation. Trap. Treating accessibility as a conversion problem when it is an acquisition problem.
[ ] Name a standard and a level in the contract. Why. WCAG conformance turns "accessible" from an adjective into a testable specification. Trap. Requiring accessibility without saying against what.
[ ] Require conformance as a warranty, not a roadmap. Why. A commitment to be accessible by a future release is a commitment to remediate at the customer's expense. Trap. Accepting a product plan as a contractual term.
[ ] Require a conformance report and test a sample against it. Why. The gap between a self-assessed report and a usable product is where most complaints originate. Trap. Filing the report unread.
[ ] Require remediation obligations with severity levels, timelines, and a remedy. Why. Without a consequence, the obligation is advisory. Trap. Timelines with no remedy attached.
[ ] Put accessibility in the acceptance criteria. Why. This is the provision that changes behaviour, because it makes a non-conforming delivery a failure to deliver rather than a future project. Trap. Leaving it in a schedule nobody applies at acceptance.
[ ] Require source file and format commitments from content vendors. Why. It removes conversion work permanently. Trap. Negotiating price and access and never asking about files.
[ ] Check whether Section 508 or a state analogue binds you. Why. For federal agencies and their contractors, and for many public bodies, these provisions are mandatory rather than advisable. Trap. Assuming voluntary adoption where a statute applies.
[ ] Run the discrimination obligations in parallel. Why. The Americans with Disabilities Act and state analogues are enforced by different plaintiffs on different theories and are unaffected by a perfect copyright position. Trap. Believing a section 121 file answers a website accessibility claim.
[ ] Make accessibility metadata an acquisition criterion. Why. The EPUB accessibility specification declares what a file supports before you buy it, and a born-accessible file needs no conversion, no exception, no circumvention analysis, and no remediation. Trap. Buying on price between two comparable titles when one declares conformance.
[ ] [Gate] Route every content and platform acquisition through one desk. Why. Departmental purchasing of cheap tools is how an organisation acquires forty inaccessible systems nobody reviewed.

Phase 6. Marrakesh, records, escalation, and metrics

[ ] Consider 17 U.S.C. § 121A in both directions. Why. The Marrakesh framework permits export and import of accessible copies between authorised entities and eligible persons in participating countries, which means importing an existing conversion instead of producing a new one. Trap. Never checking the international collections before converting.
[ ] Document the export practices the statute requires. Establishing eligibility, limiting distribution to eligible persons and authorised entities, discouraging unauthorised reproduction, and maintaining due care over copies. Why. For an organisation already running Phases 1 and 2 properly, this is a documentation exercise that opens the export route. Trap. Assuming it requires a new operation.
[ ] Confirm the counterparty's country and status before exporting. Why. Adherence is wide and not universal. Trap. Treating any foreign institution as an authorised entity.
[ ] Keep the conversion record as a by-product of the workflow. Work, publication status, file source, technical measure and exemption relied on with date, formats produced, notices applied, distribution control. Why. Records requiring separate effort stop being kept in the third busy month. Trap. Assembling records retrospectively for an audit.
[ ] Write two paragraphs for every fair use conversion outside the statute. Why. It supplies the reasonable grounds that trigger remission of statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2) for a qualifying nonprofit employee. Trap. A file full of speculative worries, which is worse evidence than a clean short analysis.
[ ] Set the escalation triggers. Non-literary or unpublished work; uncertain circumvention exemption fit; a licence prohibition the vendor will not amend; a first export under section 121A; rightsholder contact; or a reader whose eligibility is genuinely unclear. Why. Everything else must run without legal review. Trap. A workflow requiring counsel per title, which does not run.
[ ] Give the conversion team explicit authority to proceed and to stop. Why. Both halves matter; a team that can only proceed will proceed through the exceptions. Trap. Authority granted informally and withdrawn after the first problem.
[ ] Handle rightsholder contact centrally. Why. These are rare — publishers do not sue accessibility programmes and the statutory permission is clear — but an ignored contact escalates. Trap. Letting individual staff respond.
[ ] Measure time to delivery, coverage at acquisition, and reader-reported usability. Why. The first is what readers experience, the second determines whether the queue shrinks, and the third catches files that were delivered and could not be used. Trap. Reporting conversion volume, which rises reassuringly and says nothing about whether anyone was served.
[ ] [Gate] Track internally the proportion of conversions requiring circumvention and the proportion satisfied by an existing accessible edition. Why. The first locates the legal exposure; the second shows whether Phase 2 is actually being run.

Phase 7. Working the sample matter

[ ] Write the entity determination this afternoon. Why. The disability services office almost certainly qualifies under 17 U.S.C. § 121, and legal's request for a risk assessment is answered by one page rather than by a project. Trap. Commissioning the risk assessment first, which delays the term's conversions by a month for a question with a known answer.
[ ] Stop buying titles you can produce faster. Why. At eighty dollars a title with a thirty-one-day median, the supplier is being paid for structured digital text the office is entitled to make — and could make in days from a publisher source file. Braille embossing and professional narration are what suppliers are genuinely good at. Trap. Reading the doubled budget as a demand problem rather than a sourcing one.
[ ] Attack the thirty-one days at the front, not the back. Why. Course adoptions are known months before term. Converting from the reading list rather than from the request collapses delivery time without adding staff. Trap. Hiring to clear a queue that pre-emptive conversion would have prevented.
[ ] Send source file requests to the publishers of the top forty adopted titles. Why. It is one email per publisher, it removes conversion work permanently, and it produces better files than remediation. Trap. Requesting per student request rather than per adoption.
[ ] Read the current circumvention exemption text today. Why. Nothing has been checked since 2021 and exemptions run on a three-year cycle, so the programme may have been operating on a lapsed rule. Trap. Assuming continuity. Renewal is not automatic and the conditions change between cycles.
[ ] Treat the courseware platform as two separate problems. A contract problem — the licence prohibits extraction, so escalate to renewal and seek the carve-out or a supply commitment — and a procurement failure, because a product with no accessible mode should not have passed acceptance. Why. Neither is a copyright question and the copyright analysis cannot fix either. Trap. Converting anyway on the strength of the statutory permission, which does not reach the contract or the technical measure.
[ ] Raise the courseware vendor's discrimination exposure alongside the contract point. Why. The disability statutes create obligations for the institution that the vendor's product defeats, and vendors move faster on that than on a licence amendment. Trap. Framing it solely as a copyright request.
[ ] Get the conversion carve-out into the database subscriptions at renewal. Why. They are silent, which means the position is uncertain rather than favourable, and renewal is the only leverage point. Trap. Reading silence as permission.
[ ] [Gate] Give the provost the sourcing answer, not the budget answer. Conversions moving in-house, delivery falling from thirty-one days to under a week, supplier spend redirected to braille and narration, and one platform escalated as a procurement failure. Why. The budget doubled because the office was buying what it could make. Trap. Requesting more money for the same operating model.

Phase 8. Where section 121 does not reach

[ ] Run non-literary works under fair use and write it down. Film, standalone musical works, standalone images. Why. 17 U.S.C. § 121 covers previously published literary works only, and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust supports the same purpose independently: serving a population the ordinary market did not, with market harm difficult to demonstrate where no accessible product exists. Trap. Declining the work because the statute is silent.
[ ] Treat captioning and audio description as the big categories outside the statute. Why. Captions for institutional video are the highest-volume accessibility need outside text and sit wholly outside section 121. Trap. Assuming the fair use position is uniform — it is strong for institutional and educational material and weaker for commercially distributed film where a captioned or described version is sold.
[ ] Handle unpublished works under fair use with the second factor in mind. Why. Unpublished status weighs against without barring, and an accommodation serving one identified reader is a strong case. Trap. Treating institutional reports and unpublished manuscripts as unreachable.
[ ] Recognise that software interfaces are outside copyright's reach entirely. Why. A screen reader cannot rescue an application never built to be operated non-visually, and no exception fixes it. Trap. Escalating an interface problem to the copyright office, where it will sit.
[ ] Give employers a written internal position. Why. Employers cannot use the exception, the fair use analysis for a single-reader workplace accommodation on a purchased copy is short and favourable, and discrimination obligations apply regardless. Trap. Leaving individual managers to refuse on copyright grounds nobody examined.
[ ] Check commercial availability even though the statute does not require it. Why. It tells you which side of the market-failure reasoning you are standing on, and where a usable commercial accessible edition exists, buying it is faster. Trap. Producing narrated audio of a title with an active commercial audiobook without noticing the analysis has changed.
[ ] Name the two things no exception fixes. Timeliness and cost. Why. A converted textbook arriving in week six excluded the reader for half the term with a perfect copyright file throughout, and braille embossing, narration, and image description at scale are expensive whatever the law permits. Trap. Funding legal review and not production capacity.

Phase 9. Sector adaptations

[ ] Higher education: convert from the reading list, not the request. Why. The entitlement is clearest here and the turnaround is worst, and adoptions are known months ahead. Trap. Treating a predictable annual workload as a series of emergencies. Tie it to the institutional copyright programme so acquisitions and course adoption talk to each other.
[ ] Public libraries: write the determination for the accessible services function. Why. Many library systems buy everything from specialist suppliers without realising the function qualifies. Trap. Applying the primary mission test to the whole system and concluding it fails.
[ ] Schools and districts: lead with procurement. Why. Districts buy centrally across many schools on multi-year terms, so one clause has the largest reach of any intervention available. Trap. Sequencing as though the organisation were a university.
[ ] Government bodies: test the conformance report. Why. Section 508 or a state analogue makes the procurement provisions mandatory rather than advisable. Trap. Accepting a self-assessment and never operating the product with a keyboard.
[ ] Cultural institutions: sequence accessibility first in the digitisation programme. Why. It is the strongest-footed component of that whole operation, with a statutory exception and an independent fair use holding. Trap. Funding it last, behind the harder rights categories, in the digitisation programme.
[ ] Publishers: audit whether usable backlist source files exist. Why. They own the rights and do not need the exception; their obstacle is that files produced before structured workflows frequently do not exist in usable form, which is the single largest reason older material stays inaccessible. Trap. Announcing an accessibility commitment before checking what the archive actually contains.
[ ] Everyone: check the international collections before converting. Why. 17 U.S.C. § 121A makes importing an existing conversion lawful, and somebody may already have done the work. Trap. Converting a title in parallel with three other institutions.

Phase 10. The risk conversation and the failure modes

[ ] Answer "how exposed are we" with three numbers, not reassurance. Section 121 conversions: nil, because it is a permission rather than a defence. Documented fair use conversions by a qualifying nonprofit: ordinary infringement exposure, with statutory damages remitted under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2) where the employee had reasonable grounds. Circumvention outside a current exemption: a different exposure in kind, under 17 U.S.C. § 1203, with no fair use defence. Why. Only the third is a real risk and it has a checkable answer. Trap. A generalised caution that treats all three as equivalent.
[ ] Say plainly that publishers do not sue accessibility programmes. Why. The reputational position is impossible and the statutory permission is clear; the observed enforcement pattern over three decades is essentially nil. Trap. Treating an absence of enforcement as luck rather than as evidence.
[ ] Name the cost of overcaution. Why. In almost every other area of copyright the cautious answer and the correct answer coincide. Here caution has a cost borne entirely by someone else, and the reader who waits six weeks never appears in the risk register that produced the delay. Trap. A risk conversation with only one side represented.
[ ] Audit against the named failure modes. The perfect file delivered late. The compliant image-only scan. The narrow eligibility gate. The unread restrictions clause. The expired exemption. The unverified conformance report. The volume dashboard. The purchased conversion. The refusal on imaginary grounds. Why. Each is cheap to fix once named and survives for years unnamed. Trap. Auditing the legal file, which will be clean, instead of the outcomes.
[ ] Add the tenth failure mode: never asking readers anything. Why. Readers know which title they needed first, which format they can use, and which delivered file was unusable, and none of it reaches the programme unless somebody asks. Trap. A dashboard substituting for a termly conversation.
[ ] Feed what you learn back into acquisition criteria. Why. Ask, buy accordingly, measure delivery — that loop is the programme; the statutory analysis is the part you do once and file. Trap. Collecting feedback that changes nothing.

Phase 11. Sequencing and resourcing

[ ] Ninety days for the legal foundation. Entity determination, eligibility process, statutory notice templates, circumvention check embedded in the workflow, and one licence carve-out into one renewal. Why. It is a small amount of work and it unlocks everything else. Trap. Spending a year on it.
[ ] Six months for procurement. Six provisions into the template, buyers trained, conformance reports tested. Why. This is where the durable gains are, because it stops the queue growing. Trap. Treating procurement as somebody else's function.
[ ] Twelve months for the acquisition shift. Accessibility metadata as a purchasing criterion, source file requests built into acquisitions, a coverage target published. Why. Every accessible acquisition removes an item from the queue permanently. Trap. Setting a target without a measurement.
[ ] Ongoing: the triennial diary. Why. Missing a renewal is how a programme discovers it has been operating without an exemption. Trap. A diary entry owned by someone who has left.
[ ] Fund production, not just review. Why. The legal work is small and one-off; the conversion work is structuring, describing, and captioning, and it is ongoing. Trap. A compliant programme that delivers nothing in week six.
[ ] If only three things are possible, choose these. The entity determination, the procurement clause, and the source file request. Why. The first unlocks the permission, the second stops the queue growing, and the third removes most of the work from the queue you already have. Trap. Spending the budget on guidance material.
[ ] Name a successor for every standing obligation. The determination review, the triennial diary, the renewal sweep, the metrics, and the rightsholder contact address. Why. Each outlives the person who set it up. Trap. A handover listing systems rather than promises.
[ ] Write down what the programme deliberately is not doing. Retroactive conversion of legacy holdings, captioning of the historic video archive, and pursuit of every departmental tool at once. Why. A documented accepted limit is a governance decision; an undocumented one reads later as an oversight. Trap. Leaving the omissions implicit and being asked about them in a complaint.

Phase 12. The conversations, scripted

[ ] "We need the publisher's permission." You do not, for a previously published literary work, if you are an authorised entity converting for eligible persons. 17 U.S.C. § 121 is a permission that exists before the copying does. Why. Asking is a courtesy that sometimes yields a source file. Trap. Treating it as a precondition and waiting.
[ ] "Legal says it is too risky." Ask which risk. Infringement exposure for a section 121 conversion is nil; the one genuine exposure is circumvention and it has a checkable answer. Why. An unspecified risk cannot be managed. Trap. Accepting the objection without decomposing it.
[ ] "The licence prohibits extraction." A contract problem with a contract fix. Escalate to renewal; meanwhile ask the vendor to supply the accessible file rather than extracting one. Why. Most will supply it. Trap. Arguing preemption instead of asking.
[ ] "The vendor says the platform is accessible." Ask for the report, then operate the product with a screen reader and a keyboard. Why. Self-assessments are generous. Trap. Filing the report as evidence of anything.
[ ] "We already buy converted books." Check which titles you could produce faster from a source file. Why. Suppliers earn their fee on braille and narration and are often slower and dearer for structured text. Trap. Assuming purchased means better.
[ ] "We cannot describe every image." Prioritise informational images; mark decorative ones as decorative. Why. The common failure is describing nothing because describing everything was impossible. Trap. Waiting for automated description to be good enough for technical figures.
[ ] "Nobody has complained." Complaints are a lagging and poor indicator, because readers stop asking rather than complain. Why. Measure time to delivery instead. Trap. Reading silence as satisfaction.
[ ] "The student got the book eventually." Week six is not eventually; it is exclusion for half a term. Why. Timeliness is what readers experience and the measure most programmes do not report. Trap. A perfect legal file and a missed course.

[ ] "Can we just wait and see whether anyone needs it?" No, because the readers who need it are already in the building and the ones who stopped asking will not tell you. Why. Demand for accessible material is systematically under-reported by exactly the process that measures it. Trap. Sizing the programme from last year's request count.

[ ] "Where do we start?" The one-page determination this week, and the procurement clause into the next contract that renews. Why. One afternoon and one email give the programme a foundation and a floor.

Outcome. A signed one-page entity determination naming the right unit. An eligibility process that uses documentation already held and reaches every reader the statute covers. A conversion workflow that checks for an existing edition and asks for a source file before converting anything. A circumvention check run against current text, diarised to the triennial cycle, with escalation on uncertain fit. A contract template carrying the conversion carve-out and a portfolio being swept at renewal. Six procurement provisions that stop the queue growing. And three numbers — delivery time, coverage at acquisition, reader-reported usability — that tell you whether the programme works.

The five things people get wrong

Treating copyright as the obstacle. 17 U.S.C. § 121 is an unconditional permission that exists before the copying does, and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust supplies an independent fair use basis. The obstacles are technical measures, contracts, procurement, and turnaround.

Folding circumvention into the copyright analysis. 17 U.S.C. § 1201 is a separate prohibition, fair use is not a defence to it, and the exemption expires every three years. It is the one place where good motives genuinely do not help.

Delivering a picture of a book. An image-only scan is not an accessible format. Structure, reading order, described images, and navigation are what make a file usable.

Buying what you are entitled to make. Paying a supplier for structured digital text you could generate faster from a publisher-supplied source file is a budget problem disguised as a compliance decision.

Measuring volume. Conversion counts rise reassuringly and tell nobody whether a reader got the right file in time to use it. Time to delivery is the number that matters.

Key Authorities at a Glance

| Authority | Proposition | |---|---| | 17 U.S.C. § 106 | Exclusive rights | | 17 U.S.C. § 107 | Fair use | | 17 U.S.C. § 108 | Libraries and archives | | 17 U.S.C. § 110 | Teaching exemptions | | 17 U.S.C. § 121 | Accessible formats; Chafee Amendment | | 17 U.S.C. § 121A | Cross-border accessible copies | | 17 U.S.C. § 201 | Ownership | | 17 U.S.C. § 501 | Infringement | | 17 U.S.C. § 504 | Damages; nonprofit remission | | 17 U.S.C. § 512 | Safe harbour | | 17 U.S.C. § 1201 | Circumvention; triennial exemptions | | 17 U.S.C. § 1203 | Civil remedies for circumvention | | Authors Guild v. HathiTrust | Accessibility conversion as fair use | | Authors Guild v. Google | Search and snippet display | | Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith | Transformative purpose narrowed | | Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music | Transformative use framework | | Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios | Substantial non-infringing uses | | Universal City Studios v. Corley | No fair use defence to 1201 | | MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment | 1201(a) distinct from copyright | | Chamberlain Group v. Skylink Technologies | Nexus requirement; circuit split | | Marrakesh Treaty | Cross-border framework | | Section 1201 accessibility exemptions | Triennial rulemaking | | Americans with Disabilities Act | Discrimination obligations | | Section 508 procurement standards | Federal procurement | | WCAG conformance | Technical standard | | EPUB accessibility specification | Born-accessible publishing |