electricbookworks/constitution

The South African Constitution # The Constitution of South Africa We're making a readable, public-domain, print- and mobile-optimised version of the South African Constitution. ## About this project Twenty years ago, many South Africans will remember, you could pick up a pocket-sized printed copy of the new constitution in every official language. It was an exciting time. But over the years, those little editions became harder and harder to find. > in the 2013/14 financial year, for the 54 million people living in South Africa, merely 30 000 constitutions were printed. Despite the fact that less than 10 percent of South Africans are first language English speakers, all of these constitutions were in English. > > This year, to date, only 11 000 constitutions have been printed. To the department’s credit, these were produced in each of South Africa’s national languages and in Braille.—The Star, 10 Dec 2014 Today, to read the constitution, you have to find it online. That's pretty straightforward if you can read English, and have a good Internet connection. You can read it on gov.za, on the Department of Justice site, Acts Online and on the Constitutional Court website. Those editions are up to date, too, in that they include all the amendments made to the constitution (about one each year) since it was first made law in 1996. However, there are problems from there: * If you don't read English, you have to download a PDF version. There are no plain-HTML versions of the constitution in all official languages. The official PDF versions are on the DOJ's site. Thing is, if you're using a basic phone on a slow, expensive data connection, a PDF is not going to work for you. Not only is it slow to download, it's hard to read a PDF on a small screen, if your phone opens PDFs at all. * PDFs are also unsuitable for accessibility: many people who're visually impaired (or disabled in other ways) use software that reads text to them. PDFs are often difficult for this software to read properly. For instan …