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

Part I: Summary Report

Preferred situation

We asked respondents to describe the 'ideal' service for their country, including who would fund it, how it would be organised and how materials would be delivered to the end user. People interpreted 'ideal' in very different ways, which to some extent reflected how satisfactory the current situation seems to them to be. So for some people, relatively incremental changes appeared very ambitious, while for others, nothing short of delivering anything any user wanted when they wanted it and via whatever delivery method they preferred would constitute an ideal situation. Perhaps the fault lay in the question but the intention was to draw out some ideas about how models could be changed and how organisations would work together.

Funding sources

The overwhelming majority of respondents wanted services to be funded by governments. The Netherlands wanted government funding to continue to be supplemented by private foundations and EU funding and donations.

Sweden saw the ideal situation as funding by the publishers, rather than the taxpayers, and Denmark and some Australian respondents in the education sector think that publishers should contribute along with the government. This is perhaps most understandable in the context of Danish (and other Scandinavian countries) disability politics, where the concept of 'sector responsibility' is important. That is, the obligation under disability discrimination legislation for organisations to make their products and services accessible to all their users. Most countries' legislation on discrimination on grounds of disability does not place obligations on the manufacturers of goods, however, but on retailers and others with premises open to the public, transport and public services. There are exceptions in some cases e.g. makers of telecommunications equipment.

How services would be delivered

Most respondents envisaged services being delivered as far as possible through mainstream public libraries, schools and universities, in fact anywhere sighted readers would expect to find them. Special provision would be made for immobile people. The role of direct digital downloading in relation to library mediation was not entirely spelled out, but generally seen as operating in parallel. Some respondents also named bookshops and internet shops as delivery channels.

Clearly, public and educational libraries also need to be generally well-funded, in order to provide the number of outlets and trained staff to make them effective. Any model which places mainstream libraries in the forefront of service delivery implies good levels of public support as a precondition for delivering high quality services to visually and print impaired people. The country studies show that this is not necessarily the case everywhere.

How organisations would work together

Here most respondents envisaged a clear division of labour with skills in alternative format production, whether provided by voluntary or public bodies, being separated from skills in delivery to the end user and the ability of each part of the system to perfect their role in a complementary way to the others. Respondents in Sweden and the Netherlands essentially saw the organisational structures they currently have as perfectly functional, but supplemented by new channels of delivery and more automated production. Respondents in Canada and the UK mentioned national co-ordinating bodies and strategies. Greater international co-operation was desired by everyone.