There’s a qui­et as­sump­tion built in­to most books. That the per­son read­ing them can see. Not in­ten­tion­al­ly. Not ma­li­cious­ly. Just… by de­fault.

That’s the thing about de­faults. They don’t feel like de­ci­sions. But they are.

I don’t al­ways no­tice it right away. Some­times it shows up lat­er, in ways that are easy to over­look if you’re not the one ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it.

It’s in the mo­ment some­one rec­om­mends a book with gen­uine ex­cite­ment: “You have to read this.” For a split sec­ond, I’m in that mo­ment with them. Cu­ri­ous. In­ter­est­ed. Al­ready halfway in­to the idea of it. Then a qui­eter ques­tion slips in: Can I ac­tu­al­ly get this? Not whether I’ll en­joy it. Not whether I have time. Just… whether it ex­ists in a for­mat I can use.

Some­times the an­swer is yes. In­stant­ly. Seam­less­ly. The way it should be. Some­times it’s “give it some time.” As if ac­cess comes with a de­liv­ery win­dow.

That sounds rea­son­able, un­til you re­alise time is ex­act­ly what every­one else didn’t have to spend.

Some­times, there’s noth­ing. No braille. No ac­ces­si­ble dig­i­tal ver­sion. No au­dio. Just a book that ex­ists, slight­ly out of reach. It’s a small in­ter­rup­tion. Easy to dis­miss from the out­side.

But it hap­pens of­ten enough that it stops feel­ing like an ex­cep­tion and starts feel­ing like a pat­tern. You learn, qui­et­ly, not to as­sume ac­cess. Not to get too at­tached too quick­ly. To pause where oth­er peo­ple just pro­ceed. That pause? That’s the part most peo­ple nev­er see.

World Book and Copy­right Day was cel­e­brat­ed on April 23rd around the world. There was a lot of con­ver­sa­tion about the pow­er of read­ing, how books open doors, con­nect cul­tures, and shape per­spec­tives.

All of that is true. It lands a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly when ac­cess isn’t guar­an­teed, though.

What ex­act­ly are we cel­e­brat­ing if the ex­pe­ri­ence of read­ing is still con­di­tion­al?

For an es­ti­mat­ed 253 mil­lion peo­ple around the world who are blind or have print dis­abil­i­ties, this isn’t the­o­ret­i­cal. It’s every­day life.

What makes that hard­er to ig­nore now is this: it’s no longer a ques­tion of whether ac­cess is pos­si­ble.

We al­ready have the tools. Braille isn’t new. Ac­ces­si­ble dig­i­tal for­mats ex­ist. Au­dio­books are more main­stream than ever. So when ac­cess doesn’t ex­ist, it doesn’t feel like a lim­i­ta­tion of tech­nol­o­gy. It feels like a de­ci­sion that was made, qui­et­ly and rou­tine­ly, with­out us in mind.

That’s where the con­ver­sa­tion shifts. Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is of­ten framed as some­thing ex­tra. Some­thing thought­ful. Some­thing to be added lat­er, if there’s time, bud­get, or de­mand.

From this side of it, it doesn’t feel like an ex­tra. It feels like some­thing ba­sic that keeps get­ting post­poned.

That’s why or­gan­i­sa­tions like the In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Ed­u­ca­tion of Peo­ple with Vi­su­al Im­pair­ment and the World Blind Union are push­ing for what they call “Born Ac­ces­si­ble” pub­lish­ing. Not adapt­ed af­ter the fact. Not con­vert­ed months or years lat­er. But built from the be­gin­ning to work for every­one.

When you hear it framed that way, it al­most sounds am­bi­tious. Un­til you re­alise what it ac­tu­al­ly is. It’s not in­no­va­tion. It’s cor­rec­tion. It’s long over­due.

The cur­rent sys­tem does some­thing sub­tle but sig­nif­i­cant: it sep­a­rates read­ers in­to those who can start im­me­di­ate­ly and those who have to wait.

Wait­ing doesn’t just de­lay ac­cess. It changes your re­la­tion­ship with read­ing it­self. It teach­es you to ap­proach things dif­fer­ent­ly. To ask first, in­stead of as­sume. To man­age ex­pec­ta­tions. To ac­cept that some­times, be­ing in­clud­ed means be­ing in­clud­ed lat­er. Over time, that starts to feel nor­mal. It shouldn’t.

The im­pact doesn’t stay con­fined to books. It shows up in ed­u­ca­tion, when ma­te­ri­als ar­rive af­ter every­one else has al­ready moved ahead. In pro­fes­sion­al spaces, where in­for­ma­tion isn’t equal­ly ac­ces­si­ble at the same time. In con­ver­sa­tions, where ref­er­ences are shared ca­su­al­ly, as­sum­ing a lev­el of ac­cess that isn’t al­ways there.

These aren’t dra­mat­ic bar­ri­ers. They’re qui­et ones. That’s prob­a­bly why they last so long.

So yes, read­ing is pow­er­ful. Ac­cess to read­ing is what makes that pow­er re­al. With­out it, the idea of books as gate­ways to knowl­edge, op­por­tu­ni­ty and con­nec­tion be­comes un­even. Avail­able to some. De­layed for oth­ers. Com­plete­ly ab­sent for too many.

Maybe that’s the part worth sit­ting with. Not just cel­e­brat­ing books, but ques­tion­ing the sys­tems that de­cide, of­ten in­vis­i­bly, who gets to reach them eas­i­ly, and who has to find a workaround. We have got­ten bet­ter. But if ac­cess still de­pends on ex­tra steps, ex­tra time, or ex­tra ef­fort, then it isn’t re­al­ly ac­cess. It’s ac­com­mo­da­tion. Those two things are not the same.

So while the world cel­e­brates World Book Day, there’s a qui­eter ques­tion un­der­neath it all: What would read­ing look like if ac­cess wasn’t some­thing you had to think about at all? No sec­ond-guess­ing. No de­lays. No “maybe lat­er.” Just read­ing. The way it was al­ways meant to be. The right to read isn’t a priv­i­lege. It’s just a right.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com

Phone: (868) 624-4675

What­sApp: (868) 395-3086