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

Part2:Country studies

Australia

Funding sources and adequacy

General

Vision Australia

Vision Australia gets most of its funding (70%) from donations and the sale of services. The remainder comes from Australian Federal and State Governments, specifically from the Department of Family Community and Indigenous Services (postal subsidy) and the Dept of Veteran Affairs (equipment and services).

Vision Australia Information Library Service has a budget of A$4m 2006-7. It has 16,000 clients for materials. Funding has been static and is not adequate. Vision Australia believes that in each state they should be funded as a public library at A$7m+ per annum, with matching or more Federal funding.

Higher education

CAUL estimates the funding at approximately $342 per capita, estimated from total funding divided by approximate number of university students with disabilities, for all programs, not direct services to students, and not specifically library services.

The number of students with a disability in 2000 was 18,775 of whom 3,505 had a visual disability.
[ university accessed 30 August 2006].
It appears that the 2002 participation rate for students with visual disability is around 0.5%
[Accessed 30 August 2006].

Macaquarie University also made the following comments:

“It is difficult to obtain national data regarding this as responsibility for providing library services for students with vision disabilities is undertaken by different spheres of the Australian education and print disability service systems. These are operated by different state and territory governments which have jurisdiction over different levels of education, private education institutions owned and managed by churches and other bodies and registered charities (blindness service agencies) providing support to people with vision disabilities in the general community.

Unfortunately, funding of library services for students with vision disabilities in the Australian tertiary sector appears to have increased only marginally over recent years. It is not adequate. Considerable funds need to be injected in to the tertiary education library system to purchase and house a greater range of reference sources, maps and other data, journal holdings and other material in a suitable common electronic file format for access by students with vision disabilities.

Funding also needs to be increased to allow sufficient opportunity for upgrade and replacement of assistive technology needed to access electronic material. Greater training budgets for use in equipping library staff and students with the skills they need to make best use of available and required technology is also needed. Braille production equipment and training in its use also needs to be available in educational libraries to reduce the amount of time taken to access material from external sources in this format for use by students with vision disabilities. At least 300 million dollars is needed to establish/enhance the above-mentioned services offered by Australian tertiary education libraries to students with vision disabilities. Funding would then need to be provided on a continuing basis to ensure these services are adequately maintained.”