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

Part2:Country studies

South Africa

Library and user group data

The incidence of visual impairment

When considering the statistics on disability, it also has to be remembered that South Africa suffers from high levels of illiteracy and unemployment.

In a speech in 2004 at the Centre for the Book, Elinor Sisulu stated that:

“As things stand, South Africa has at least 3 million adults who are completely illiterate ? unable to read the instructions on a medicine bottle or to complete a job application form without assistance. There are millions more people (estimates range from 5 to 8 million) who are functionally illiterate ? unable to function adequately in the modern world due to under-developed reading and writing skills. Less well known is that there are tens of millions of South Africans who are aliterate ? able to read but who don’t read! This a major consequence of not having a culture of reading.”

As already noted, Statistics South Africa classifies 1.14% (533,404) of the entire population (Census 2001) as having some form of sight disability.

These statistics are considered by the South African Blindness authorities to be highly controversial and although they do give some idea of the national problem, there is no breakdown into different categories of visual impairment. Blindlib also points out that in some communities cultural beliefs lead to a tendency to ‘hide’ disabilities from public view. Hence the gathering of statistics excludes an unknown number of people.

Readers

Blindlib is not aware of an accepted figure for readers throughout the country. Many readers will read with different organisations e.g. Blindlib and Tape Aids for the Blind.

Blindlib serves a constituency of 7,000 readers, or approximately 1% of the official number of people with a sight disability, but obviously there are more who read at school or at a tertiary institution, are attending Braille literacy classes and downloading their own books. At present Blindlib provide this essential service to 1% of this particular constituency

The incidence of print impairment

There is no accepted information about the numbers or percentage of print impaired people.