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Originally Posted by sbroome
Where is that stated?
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It's not something that is "stated." It's what is evident from the existence of the law itself. (Speaking here of US law.)
In the US, if there were no statutory enactment of copyright, copyright would not exist. Good statement in Wikipedia:
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Common law copyright is the legal doctrine which contends that copyright is a natural right and creators are therefore entitled to the same protections anyone would be in regard to tangible and real property. The proponents of this doctrine contended that creators had a perpetual right to control the publication of their work (also see perpetual copyright).
The doctrine was repudiated by the courts in the United Kingdom (Donaldson v. Beckett, 1774) and the United States (Wheaton v. Peters, 1834). In both countries, the courts found that copyright is a limited right created by the legislature under statutes and subject to the conditions and terms the legislature sees fit to impose.
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So copyright holders in the US own ONLY what the legislature grants.
And there are other statutory enactments that specifically deal with disabilities:
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Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, Title III, Pub. L. No. 108-446, 118 Stat. 2647, 2807 (amending section 121, title 17, United States Code, to further expand authorized reproduction of copyrighted works for the blind or people with other disabilities), enacted December 3, 2004.
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Given our increasing concern with the treatment of disabled people in this country, it's pretty evident that it's entirely reasonable to expect copyright holders to address the needs of disabled people. Remember the objections that arose when Amazon wanted to get Kindles into universities, over the text-to-speech capabilities of the Kindle DX? That was premised on the idea that the Kindles weren't being made available to the blind when they lacked those capabilities.