Forum on Library Services for People with Disabilities

The Worms’ Eye View: Blind and Vision Impaired Australians’ Access To Libraries

Dr Lynne Davis, Blind Citizens Australia, for the Forum on Library Services for People with Disabilities, March 2002

Introduction

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the so-called ‘information age’ with its ‘knowledge economy’, blind and vision impaired Australians have shockingly limited access to published information. Although the goal of public policy on disability since at least the mid-1980’s has been full participation in society, the fact is that in almost every aspect of our lives we are constrained by our limited access to the information which others take for granted. This is true across the board - whether we’re referring to newspapers and magazines, advertising material, bank statements, Weight Watchers materials, the programme for the Olympic Games, school newsletters, best-selling novels or serious reference works. Blind people, both individually and collectively, have struggled long and hard to change this state of affairs, with surprisingly few results thus far.

Libraries clearly play a central role in providing access to published material (more than half of all Australians belong to a public library). So how do blind and vision impaired Australians use libraries, and with what results?

Blind Citizens Australia, the peak organisation representing blind people in Australia, last year conducted an audit of library services and surveyed the experiences of blind people as users of these services. As a result of what we found, we have prioritised the issue of libraries for our organisation this year. In the remainder of this paper I want to outline some of the findings from that audit. Before embarking on that exercise, though, I’d like to make the point that the quality of library services is arguably even more important for blind people than for the rest of the population because blind people have few alternative sources of information.

Buying books, for instance, is not a feasible alternative: only a tiny fraction of published books is ever made available in alternative formats such as large print, Braille, audiocassettes or CD’s; most of the books available commercially in audio format are abridged; and the cost of the small selection of unabridged books in alternative formats is prohibitive (for example: Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Blind Assassin’ costs around $20 in paperback, $50 in hard cover, and $90 on audiocassette; catalogue prices for best-selling novels from Australia’s principal supplier of large print books range between $30 and $70, with very few at the low end of the range). For Braille readers there is the additional problem of storage space for personal libraries (a thriller by Jonathan Kellerman, for example, is in 14 Braille volumes which occupy well over half a metre of shelf space).

Survey Findings

Blind and vision impaired Australians use both the mainstream public library system and specialist libraries for people with print disabilities. Although I intend to focus on the public library system in this discussion, many of the issues faced by library users are common to both systems and it is worth saying a little by way of background about the specialist libraries.

Prior to the mid-1990’s specialist libraries for blind people were locally based, mainly attached to state-wide blindness agencies, and reflected more about the character of the particular host organisation than any standardised approach to the administration and delivery of library services. In addition, they were very unevenly dispersed around the country - again, to some extent, reflecting the relative age, size and wealth of the host organisations. As a result, a blind person’s access to library services was highly dependent on where they lived: the range of books available, the formats in which they were available, whether one had to provide the equipment needed to read them, even whether the book titles were readable.

Since that time there has been a certain amount of consolidation. There are, in effect, now 2 quasi-national specialist library services for blind people in Australia, and these two services are currently discussing a possible merger. However, the terms and nature of service provision still vary by state, depending on the particular history of services and amalgamations which has led up to this present point. A confused picture indeed, and one full of anomalies for blind people whose desire is solely to gain access to the books of their choice in the format of their choice.

In our survey we found that very few people used only one library. Most used 2 or 3, and a significant number used 4 or more. Local public libraries were widely used: two thirds of our respondents reported using their local public library, usually in combination with one or more specialist libraries. A surprising finding was the number and range of overseas specialist libraries which people reported using. Some respondents had developed very sophisticated strategies to gain access to the materials they wanted to read, investing much time and in some cases money to do so.

The principal problems which our respondents identified were

  • obtaining the material they wished to read in a format that they could read [collections]
  • knowing what was available to read [catalogues]

Collections

The biggest problem faced by most blind readers is getting access to the material they want or need to read. The two quasi-national specialist services have a combined total of around 16,000 unique titles, around 2500 new titles being added annually. There are 95,000 audio books and 40,000 Braille books available for borrowing. By comparison, local government libraries in Australia have 36 million books and other materials available as lending stock, and the state and national libraries hold a further 15 million books and other materials as non-lending stock.

The public libraries’ collections include both large print and audio titles, but these are a fraction of the size of the standard print collections, often quite old, and far more limited in diversity. Many of the audio books held in public libraries are in abridged forms, and often in poor condition. With the exception of the Canberra Library, public libraries in Australia do not hold Braille collections (although Braille is the preferred literacy medium of many blind people).

Catalogues

It may surprise people who have had little personal or professional contact with blind people to know that they have very limited access to library catalogues, either in the public or specialist libraries.

So how do blind people select the books they read? In our survey, people reported using the following methods:

  • seeking sighted assistance (either to read the library catalogue or to find books on the shelves)
  • selecting titles from some kind of catalogue or booklist and ordering the selected titles
  • requesting specific titles and authors recommended by friends, reviewed on radio programmes, required for study or research, etc.
  • accepting whatever books were sent - mostly on the basis of some sort of predetermined ‘reader profile’

Obviously, these methods vary in terms of the amount of independent access afforded to the library user. Some people seemed quite happy to receive books selected according to a ‘profile’, while for others this was clearly second-best and for some it was quite unacceptable.

On the whole, the public libraries offered the least in independent access to collections. Few had accessible online catalogues; some were willing to provide staff assistance if it was available, others relied on the borrower bringing their own sighted assistance. Many public libraries offered a home library service which was appreciated, not because the borrowers were housebound (as I think many librarians assumed) but because of the difficulties of managing bulky audio books on public transport. However, such services minimise the library borrowers’ knowledge of available resources.

The following quotation illustrates the lengths to which some readers went to select their books in public libraries:

”I can go to most librarians and ask them to look up the computer for me for a particular subject and take me to the right part of the library. I can use the book jackets to help figure out which books I want to read, I take a flat bed scanner and a laptop to the library and I usually pull a number of almost suitable books off the shelves and use the scanner to help figure out which books to borrow.”

In public libraries the problem of inaccessible catalogues is compounded by the lack of accessible labelling on the books themselves, and a lack of attention to the physical accessibility of the collections. The labelling of both audio and large print books seldom takes account of the needs of the potential readers; the collections are often housed on floor-to ceiling shelving, thus denying the need of some readers either to feel the items or to get within a few inches of them; and little consideration seems to be given to the lighting requirements in the areas where these collections are housed.

Sadly, even in those libraries which have shown a willingness to make their services more accessible to people with disabilities there seems to have been little understanding of the fundamental access problems of people who are blind or vision impaired. The problems outlined above have not received the attention they deserve. Instead, many libraries have acquired expensive technological ‘fixes’ such as reading machines and computers equipped with screen readers, which do not address the really fundamental collection and catalogue issues. In addition, it is not infrequently the case that these ‘fixes’ remain unused or underutilised because there is no-one on the library staff who knows why they are significant, can use them, or can instruct others in their use.

I have scarcely touched on issues relating to physical access to libraries here. I will simply note that, inasmuch as libraries have addressed the question of how people with disabilities get into and around them, their considerations have been almost wholly restricted to facilitating the access of people with physical disabilities. The concept of environmental access definitely needs to be expanded to include people with sensory disabilities.

Resourcing Accessible Libraries

Finally, it is a shameful reflection on Australian society that the provision of accessible library services in this country remains largely the province of charity. Last year the national, state and local government libraries spent a total of $125.5 million on acquisitions alone: a miniscule fraction of this was spent on the acquisition of accessible materials. By contrast, the 2 principal specialist libraries for people with print disabilities (a group estimated to be around 4.4% of the population) spent less than $2 million on acquisitions: the principal source of these funds was charitable donations.

It will be very hard to redress any of the problems outlines above without a significant commitment of public funds to the provision of accessible library services for Australian citizens who happen to have a print disability.

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