Hi Tom.
personally I'm of the opinion that after 20 years of trying to get
accessible rp books, fantasy literature etc and being repeatedly stone
walled on the issue, copywrite can kiss my rear end!
In around the year 2000 I bought a cd which contained word documents of all
the old D&D 2nd edition books in order to start tabletop rping, however of
course once I started i found that 3rd edition had replaced 2nd. I then
wrote a letter to wizards of the coast asking if they sold any accessible
versions of the D&D 3rd ed books, explaining that I was a blind person and
so couldn't read their printed copies.
Their entire response was as follows:
"Dear Mr. Hewitt.
We have no plans at this time or in the future of producing electronic
copies of our works. Thank you for your interest. yours sincerely etc etc"
Well, thanks a Heap! I therefore had to muddle along somewhat cadging rules
from the Gm, which wasn't too much fun.
Luckily, drivethru rpg now sell a lot of books in pdf form which mostly
convert to text, so I have several source books for games. If however they
aren't available there or in any other accessible form, my feeling these
days is that I have no respect for a law which does nothing but promote
corporate interest and money grabbing stupidity over any sort of fair
access.
So, myself I suggest you just stick them on the site anyway. You could
protect your back slightly by having them available only on request when
someone mails you (perhaps have a page about the group and a mail for more
information type of link where you send the books), or having a specific
access related password to the archive which you send out by mail on
request, thus insuring that not just anybody can come along and grab them.
However if they aren't as equally available to visually impared people as
anyone else, then you have every right to redistribute them.
I would however suggest you check drivethrurpg first, just in case they are!
available as pdfs.
All the best,
DArk.
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