Potential use under the disability exceptions in the Copyright Act

The Copyright Act includes access provisions for persons with a disability to provide more equitable access to copyright material:

1. fair dealing for the purpose of access by persons with a disability (S113E), and
2. use of copyright material by organisations assisting persons with a disability (S113F).

These provisions include allowances for persons with a disability to have access to copyright materials in the same way as other users. For application with genAI, this could be using tools to generate alt-text for images or making accessible copies of material.

Dealings under S113E by students or staff for their own use must be ‘fair', which imposes restrictions similar to the fair dealing options included in the accordion above.  The easiest way to be 'fair' in this situation would be to use a 'closed' genAI tool like the University's enterprise access to Microsoft Copilot that does not train its model on user prompts.

While staff assisting persons with a disability under S113F do not need to consider whether the use is 'fair', they will need to satisfy a commercial availability test. S113F cannot be employed where the material is already available in the format required. Where no suitable version is commercially available to meet the needs of the person with a disability, it may be reasonable to apply S113F to generate alt-text or create accessible copies of materials using genAI tools.

For more information about these access provisions, please contact the Copyright Advisor