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

Part2:Country studies

Australia

Gaps between policy and practice

General services

The major gap identified is in the uneven provision across different states, due to the lack of a national special library service, as Vision Australia covers only some of the states ? albeit the most populous ones.

Higher education

Respondents identified a number of gaps between the policy of equitable access and the reality. These can be categorised as follows:

Time lags

One of the biggest challenges is to provide material in a timely way. Gaps arise due to the time and resources required to prepare alternative format information resulting in delays in the timely provision of alternative format material to students. Often reading lists are not provided with sufficient lead time to allow the preparation of alternative format materials in the timeframe they are required. This can be the fault of the teaching staff or it can be because students do not advise the institution at the time of their enrolment of the full extent of their support requirements. Case studies of individual students referred to in the HREOC’s report already cited identify other time-related issues, such as lecturers not realising that providing ad hoc reading material for immediate discussion in classes without advanced notice poses problems for visually impaired students and puts them at a disadvantage.

There is a time lag between the development or upgrading of mainstream software programs and the upgrading of assistive software (e.g. screen readers) relied upon by people with a disability and used in conjunction with mainstream software.

Formats

Other gaps arise from the challenges in providing description of visual content (diagrams, images etc) in information resources, in particular if the significance of the illustrative material is not apparent to the transcriber.

Assumptions in relation to technology and online resources

As computers are used more and more to deliver library services, there is an expectation that all users will have the technology and skills needed. For vision impaired people, much of this technology is quite expensive which places individual items out of their reach. Furthermore, libraries in the sector are not satisfactorily meeting the individual training needs of these users and a number of library systems do not comply fully with web accessibility and other standards for providing material to people with vision disabilities in a suitable format. Resources provided on the web for students may not always be accessible ? e.g. some PDF documents, some library databases, etc. At times material may not be considered for alternative formatting because it is already available electronically and assumed to be accessible. However users of screen reading software at times find that documents in electronic format are not accessible via their screen reader. Some PDF documents are particularly problematic.

Training

There is a lack of training in accessible software and accessibility standards by people responsible for webpage and coursework design and for digitisation of resources such as course readings.