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

Part2:Country studies

Australia

Rights and attitudes

Rights

The main rights, including access to buildings and services, are laid down in the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act, 1992.

Libraries operating out of educational institutions are also required to comply with subordinate legislation in the form of the Disability Standards for Education, August 2005 [http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/programmes_funding/forms_guidelines/disability_standards_for_education.htm which clarify the obligations of education and training providers to ensure that students with disabilities are able to participate in education without experiencing discrimination.

Case law is clarifying the provisions of the DDA.

Attitudes on equal access

General

Most visually impaired people expect to get access to material, even if their expectation is that access should be responsibility of specialist blindness services. Older and more recently visually impaired people have lower expectations ? they are not aware that they can ask for accessible material and would be supported by anti-discrimination laws. Many visually impaired people do rely on family and friends, especially for personal mail and email.

Students

Visually impaired students are generally well aware of their rights but most are also somewhat accepting of the difficulties in providing the volume of information resources available to sighted students in the timeframe available. In particular, expectations would be that required reading is made available, but that recommended reading is not automatically available as it would be to sighted students. Visually impaired students would also expect assistance with research and any training needed to use unfamiliar equipment and help with computer and information literacy.

In contrast with the general observation that those who have lost their sight recently expect less, one university felt that students losing their sight had greater expectations, along with those who have been educated in mainstream schools.

Another university observed that “complaints lodged against educational institutions by people with vision impairments have increased, with outcomes slowly building case law in the form of court decisions.”