Borghino spoke on a panel about the social responsibility of publishers and governments with Professor Hesham Azmy, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Culture. The session was moderated by Ahmed Rashad, member of the IPA’s Executive Committee. Borghino spoke about the IPA’s commitment to making books accessible for people with visual impairment through its support of the Marrakesh Treaty and membership of the board of WIPO’s Accessible Books Consortium. He described the recent European Accessibility Act and the forthcoming Americans with Disabilities Act as examples of government policies that addressed the need for more publishing to be ‘born accessible’. He encouraged Egypt to accede to the Marrakesh Treaty and to include provisions for remuneration for creators as well as acknowledgement when accessible works were already commercially available.
Jobava and Borghino met with Dr Ahmed Fouad Hanno, the Egyptian Minister of Culture, encouraging him to attend the IPA Congress in Kuala Lumpur in July. They took advantage of being at the Book Fair to meet with former IPA Vice President Ibrahim El Moallem, as well as the full board of the Arab Publishers Association. There were also meetings with other individual IPA members from Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE, 2019 Prix Voltaire laureate Khaled Lotfy, members of the IPA Freedom to Publish Committee, Sherif Bakr and Simon de Jocas, and Cairo Calling coordinator Fatima Abbas.
