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

Part I: Summary Report

Contextual factors

Definitions of visual and print-impairment

Some countries have very inclusive definitions, such as 'inability to follow a line of printed text' while others have quite clinical definitions. These undoubtedly affect estimates of the size of the potential user group, but they can also seriously constrain the ability of libraries to serve some groups if they cannot obtain the necessary certifications. Even if they can, there may be deterrent effects to the take up of services. Definitions used in copyright exceptions can also affect the ability of libraries to serve some groups.

Anti-discrimination legislation

Though details vary from country to country, in general there are laws in place which in theory grant equal rights to everyone in access to education and cultural life. In most countries, laws also cover access to buildings, products and services (though these may be hedged about in the law and certainly the situation on the ground may be very different). There are rarely specific legal rights to library and information services. Depending on the legal system in place, test cases in court can also act to clarify duties by service providers and act as precedents.

Social attitudes

The question of expectations on the part of visually-impaired readers in relation to library services was a question addressed in the survey and opinions were quite divided as to whether visually impaired people expected the same level of service as sighted people. Some respondents from the same country disagreed.

This could be because the notion of expectations could be interpreted in different ways: users could at the same time feel that they have a right to expect equality, but know that in reality, they can reasonably expect to be treated equally but not to have access to the same range of material as a sighted person.

Some respondents agreed that expectations vary according to age and onset of sight loss, with older people who have recently suffered sight loss having lower expectations. However, in one case concerning university students, a respondent felt that students who had recently lost their sight had higher expectations, and students who had been educated in mainstream schools also had high expectations.

Cultural issues

Cultural factors were referred to most strongly in Japan, Korea and South Africa as affecting services negatively. In Japan, respondents felt that although there were formal laws and policies against discrimination and in favour of recognising the rights of disabled people to full and equal participation, attitudes lagged well behind, especially in relation to perceptual disabilities. In South Africa, among poor rural people there can persist an attitude which results in hiding disability from public view. On the positive side, disability politics is most advanced in Scandinavia in terms of placing full onus on providers of goods and services to make them accessible and in shifting the emphasis away from seeing disabled people as having to be helped by social and welfare services to being enabled to full social participation. This is related to long standing attitudes which tend to privilege social solidarity, compared with more individualistic approaches in for example, the UK and USA.