Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
Universal design is almost always a better, more inclusive choice than "special", limited, gate-kept access like the small access programmes which require medical certification.
FYI, print disability encompasses far more than legal blindness. A variety of sensory, developmental, or physical disabilities may be involved. And I'm not speaking specifically of the USA; the Marrakesh Treaty is perhaps more relevant in a global group. Australia's service - or the only one I've been able to find out anything about after a fair bit of digging - is run through Vision Australia, is not promoted to people with non-visual disabilities, requires those with physical disability to be completely unable to hold all paper books in order to access the service (there is a huge spectrum of physical print disability that is left out here); and they don't include ebook lending anyway, only audio format. They refer clients who need ebooks to the public library system.
A library is far more than shelves of paper books. A public library's core purpose is to provide information and resources in a variety of media to the full spectrum of its community, and to reduce barriers to access (including but not limited to financial barriers). All the librarians I know would state equity to be very much a core value, and none would say that digital services and accessible formats (including ebooks and audiobooks) are an optional extra.
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I disagree. I've found that many times a solution that works well for 90 percent of the customer base and then handle to edges as special cases is a better approach.
One of the great follies is trying to be all things to all people. Sometimes known as the old saying "jack of all trades, master of none".
I do understand that many librarians (and teachers for that matter) tend to have a certain back ground and world view. I've mentioned that worked in libraries quite a bit in high school, both at my local library in a summer job as well as in my high school library during the year.
But when dealing with the realities of limited budgets, it's not always a wise use of resources. Many libraries specialize. When we are talking about online resources, rather than walk in resources, there is no reason not to use centralized resources.
As far as Australian resources go, well, that's something to be solved by Australia. The US put in it's own exception to copyright law to handle the situation. Perhaps more countries should do the same.