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The World Blind Union with its local partner, the Ghana Blind Union has urged government to speed up action on the ratification of published works treaty to facilitate accessibility for blind persons. The Union leaders say, out of the world published materials, less than five per cent are made available in accessible format to blind persons while the cost of re-engineering the works is too high. Last year, Ghana signed onto the �Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled.� Addressing stakeholders at a meeting in Accra to discuss the road-map on expediting action to ratification, Dr Peter Obeng, Executive Director of the Ghana Blind Union said government needed to seal the deal by ratifying the treaty. Currently, government textbooks for public and private schools are not in audio or brail or any accessible format for blind students, a phenomenon Dr Obeng said reinforced inequality and breached equal opportunity principle. Later he told the Ghana News Agency, that the present copyright laws restricted transformation of books into accessible format for blind persons but with the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty, published works could be transformed even without prior permission of the publisher and made available to beneficiaries. The Treaty would allow cross-border sharing of published materials and pave way for blind persons to actively participate in the daily discourse of national and family life, said Mr Christ Friend, Technical Advisor of the World Blind Union Right to Read Campaign. He observed the autobiography of former President of South Africa Mr Nelson Mandela is confined to South African borders, unavailable to blind persons, and had to be re-engineered at a cost of 5000 dollars for persons with print disabilities. He called on government to prioritise and fast-track the ratification process to ease access to public information otherwise available in inaccessible format for beneficiary persons. Ms Yaa Atafua, Acting Copyright Administrator said a road-map towards ratification would be put in place to facilitate smooth approval of the treaty. She said, for a good road-map, broader stakeholder consultations would be carried out to create awareness and elicit ideas to put the treaty in a balanced and comprehensive dimension. She urged Members of Parliament to fully support the ratification bid when the treaty was finally laid before it