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

Part2:Country studies

South Africa

What is driving change?

Technology

Blindlib is moving services to a digital platform with the intention of moving to Audio Daisy and creating an online catalogue. Tape Aids for the Blind is continuing to focus on cassettes.

In common with other countries, technology is making some kinds of information more accessible, but the overall income level of many visually impaired people in South Africa and the continuing wide inequalities inherited from the past must make it especially important to avoid disadvantaging those clients who lack access to digital equipment. While there is the possibility of leaping over technological stages in equipping new libraries for example, there will surely be more persistent legacy issues with say, audio cassettes being phased out than in some countries.

Blindlib has very recently been granted R5m by the government, for which it had been campaigning for 3 years, to provide Daisy players for poor clients.

Policy frameworks

• Inclusive education
• “A culture of reading” initiative

As referred to earlier, there was a policy initiative to create a culture of reading in South Africa, which covers illiteracy, the provision of public libraries, the paucity of titles published in South Africa (and the fact that 80% are textbooks) and the provision of alternative format materials for visually impaired and print-disabled readers. The campaign started in 2001 within the ministry of education, and results were evidently mixed. Views have been expressed publicly by some campaigners that the initiative needs to be broader than from the education ministry.

• Policy is changing because the rights of the disabled are a major political issue which the government is taking very seriously. Change is essential, which is easy to align with, but, all change requires capital expenditure and skilled human resourcing ? this is what is not being addressed in South Africa.

Service expansion

In Blindlib's case realisation for the necessity of expanding its formats to include Large Print and tactile materials. Also that Braille literacy needs greater focus.