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Funding and governance of library and information services for visually impaired people: international case studies

Part2:Country studies

Australia

Definitions and their effects

There are several definitions used in Australia, in general trending towards including print disabilities as well as visual impairment

Vision Australia referred in its response to the “government definition, shared by special libraries” as follows:

“a person without sight, or whose sight is severely impaired; a person unable to hold or manipulate books or move his or her eyes; a person with a perceptual disability which limits the ability to follow a line of print.”

A similar definition was also incorporated into the Copyright Amendment Act 1998, but omitted the words “... disability which limits the ability to follow a line of print” from the last point.

It also has strong similarities to the definition of print disability set out by another respondent, the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities [http://www.e-bility.com/roundtable/about.php]:

“People with a print disability are those who cannot obtain access to information in a print format because they:

• “are blind or vision impaired
• “have physical disabilities which limit their ability to hold or manipulate information in a printed form
• “have perceptual or other disabilities which limit their ability to follow a line of print or which affect their concentration
• “cannot comprehend information in a print format due to insufficient literacy or language skills”

In the library context, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) stated that that “in Australia in contexts such as legislation and elsewhere the broader term ‘persons with print disabilities’ is often used in preference to persons with a vision impairment when referring to the needs of persons for information in formats other than standard print.”

Different definitions are also in use locally: The University of Tasmania library uses 6/60 as the definition of legally blind, but provides services to any student with a certification of visual impairment from any authorised medical practitioner, and also takes a flexible approach to the definition of print impairment, including learning difficulties.

It was generally felt that the above definition was broad enough to permit libraries to offer services to people with vision and perceptual disabilities on a rights basis rather than on a narrow clinical or overly medical definition. However, a point was raised by one university library that the standards used by the government to determine the number of students with a vision disability are directly linked to funding for overall resources and services, while the standards used by the libraries themselves revolve around individual demand for specific services, and not all people with a vision disability identify their needs to libraries.

Interestingly, while the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 ^*2 http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/0/3/11/top.htm] was frequently referred to, there was some confusion as to whether the DDA actually contained a definition of visual impairment. In fact the Act defines the obligations of institutions in relation to the rights of disabled people, rather than defining specific disabilities.