Tag Archives: persons with disabilities

COVID has forced us to think again about service provision: can it offer longer term lessons for how we serve persons with disabilities?

Tomorrow, the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities starts, in New York and online.

It will have, as an overarching theme, ‘building back better: COVID-19 response and recovery; meeting the needs, realizing the rights, and addressing the socio-economic impacts on persons with disabilities’.

There’s clearly a lot in there, but there is already more than enough space to see how access to information – as a need, as a right, and as a driver of development – fits in.

At least two of the sub-themes offer an even clearer connection. ‘Living independently, being involved in the community’ ties strongly to the possibility for all to find and use information to take decisions for themselves, as well as to engage in community life, in all of its dimensions.

Similarly, ‘right to education; challenges with inclusive education and accessibility during COVID-19’ is again, to a large extent, about ensuring that everyone has the possibility to access knowledge and skills.

With a mission to serve everyone, there is already a strong community of practice in the library field focused on services to persons with disabilities. Within IFLA, sections on libraries serving persons with print disabilities, and serving persons with special needs, bring this expertise and enthusiasm together.

A key impact of the crisis, however, has been that many more library and information workers have found themselves needing to think about how to reach out to community members who are unable to come to the library in person or for whom ‘traditional’ service offers do not necessarily work.

This is because, thanks to the restrictions and precautions taken to counter the pandemic, almost all library services have had to be offered differently. Every library now, arguably, has to take into account principles of design thinking in order to meet needs.

In response, we have seen an explosion in digital offers, both collections and services. Libraries have shifted budgets towards buying eBook licences, sometimes benefitting from additional government support.

Activities such as storytimes or learning have gone online. New works, games and tools have been devised, websites have been updated, and there are new and easier-to-use consultation services, deliveries to users at home, and proactive contacts from librarians to community members.

There are many examples on our COVID-19 and libraries page, which details experiences from the first months of the pandemic.

This has allowed libraries, at least to some extent, to maintain services to communities, and indeed to reach new users. As the story of the pandemic is told in future, we will of course, hopefully, also see persons with disabilities having benefitted from better access to information.

Of course, this is not to forget the costs of decisions – however necessary – to curtail services which benefit people with disabilities and others, or the additional challenges that they have faced, over and above those facing the wider population.

 

Clearly, the transition to a new way of doing things has not been without challenges – such services often require additional resources and training to work effectively. In providing them, reducing health risks for staff and users is vital. Similarly, acquiring and giving access to digital works – often providing greater possibilities for access for persons with disabilities – often runs up against issues of cost and restrictive terms and conditions.

Yet with sustained support, and a focus on improved regulations (not least the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty and its extension to cover people with other disabilities), we can hope that there will be the possibility to sustain elements of pandemic-time services which will benefit persons with disabilities into the future.

What do we talk about when we talk about access? 10 Suggestions to support library advocacy

We talk a lot about the importance of access to information in advocacy around libraries.

This access is at the heart of what libraries themselves do of course, helping users to find the information that they need to take better decisions, and participate in the life of the community.

Our institutions have been doing this for thousands of years, helping leaders, researchers, creators and other citizens to achieve their missions.

In advocating, we focus on why this matters so much, underlining how, in different policy areas – healthcare, innovation, democracy itself – access to information helps deliver goals, and in turn, how libraries deliver this access in an equitable way.

However, in doing this, it’s worth keeping in mind the different issues that access encompasses, and the different struggles this can imply, if only to be clear for ourselves.

This blogs therefore looks at just ten different aspects of access, and how this can play out in work on library advocacy.

1) Access as the possibility to find a work in the library: libraries have a key role in ensuring that ability to pay does not become a determinant of whether people can enjoy their right to information. This applies as much to those who would not be able to buy textbooks or children’s books, as to those who may only need certain parts of a book, and are not ready to pay for the whole book just to access extracts.

This is why it is so important that libraries can acquire all types of material, without barriers. Unfortunately, refusals to sell to libraries (or only to do so under very restrictive terms) make this difficult, and arguably require further investigation.

2) Access as preservation: access is an ongoing priority, and one that is threatened by the loss of materials due to decay, destruction or other reasons. It is particularly important – for researchers, for citizens – to know that todays information will be available into the future, in order to make it possible to support re-evaluation and accountability.

For example, government records need to be saved to allow for future study into decisions taken, while science itself is based heavily on the idea that research results should be reproducible – i.e. future researchers can access the same materials and reproduce the results of experiments.

3) Access as (reliable) connectivity: with so much information available online, including many materials that may previously have been produced in physical formats, internet access has become almost unavoidable as a form of wider access to information.

IFLA focuses strongly on this, underlining the need for libraries and users to benefit from high quality connections that are reliable – it is unlikely that people and businesses will be ready to invest in internet-enabled activities and approaches if they cannot be sure that it will stay on.

4) Access as a lack of barriers: access is not just about whether the library itself can add – and maintain – works in their collections, or whether they can connect meaningfully to the internet. Access is about whether library users can take advantage of this possibility. To do this, we need to work towards the absence of practical barriers to use, such as those felt by people who live far from a library, or who face challenges linked to physical mobility or other disabilities.

A number of tools can help in this regard – the internet is an important one of course – as can the sort of reforms promoted by the Marrakesh Treaty, that helps ensure that copyright does not pose an unreasonable barrier to creating and sharing accessible format works. With over 100 countries now signed up to the Treaty, we can aim for universal coverage in the coming years.

5) Access as literacies: access is also, crucially, about the skills of the person receiving information to understand and make sense of it. The skills involved can go from basic literacy to much more advanced forms, including critical thinking. Especially for those trying to work through the wealth of information online, being able to find the right knowledge is vital.

Basic literacy has long been an area of library expertise and experience, with increasing efforts to take information literacy training out of academic libraries and into public ones, to the benefit of the whole population. A priority here is to ensure that such support continues to be available to all, throughout life .

6) Access as use: access can imply a relatively narrow way of using information – for example being able to take, open and read a book. However, while for some library users this may be enough – simply taking pleasure or interest from the words on the page – for others it is not. They need to be able to quote, analyse or otherwise use works. For them, access without the possibility to use is pointless.

This is a core point around much work on copyright, with libraries arguing that once they have legally acquired a work, a core set of uses should be possible without restrictions or additional payment needed. These uses should be seen as part of the original price paid. Clearly this would not count uses that could cause unreasonable harm to rightholders, but trying to licence every single type of use is a recipe for market failure.

7) Access as the counterpart of expression: as set out in the previous point, a key ingredient of access is the possibility to use the information found in future work. As well as copyright issues, this can also implicate wider ones about freedom of speech. This is because the possibility to access and use information is less powerful if there are then limits on what can be done with it due to censorship or other controls.

It goes without saying, as well, that the fact that there is a variety of information to access in the first place depends heavily on the possibility for creators to express themselves and produce works in the first place. This is why libraries are encouraged to do what they can to champion intellectual freedom.

8) Access as relevant content: closely linked to the first point is the importance that people can find information that is relevant to them. This can be a question of finding books and other materials in the right language, and that tackle the issues that matter for the reader.

Clearly, the internet has created exciting possibilities for people without access to publishing houses, distribution networks or radio stations to share their ideas. However, it can also encourage a narrowing of horizons onto a single global set of materials. A key challenge then for libraries is to understand what materials users need, and to identify and provide access to this, including by promoting further creativity,

9) Access as feeling welcome: closely linked to the previous point, as well as those on skills and disability, the possibility to engage meaningfully with information can depend in large part on the possibility to relax and focus. This raises the question of how to ensure that people feel welcome and comfortable in libraries – and other places where information is accessed.

This can make a big difference for people who may feel otherwise excluded, For example, those with low literacy may feel intimidated by libraries, or those looking for information about very personal issues may feel awkward otherwise. It is therefore important, as part of all policies focused on access, to help people feel at ease, and avoid steps that could discourage information seekers.

10) Access as privacy: while linked to the previous point about feeling comfortable, the value of privacy in information access cannot be underestimated. Feeling that you have someone looking over your shoulder (literally or virtually, thanks to cookies or other digital tools) can have a chilling effect, limiting what a user is ready to look for.

This is why protecting privacy in the library environment, and doing what is possible to help users of third-party services to keep themselves safe, is such an important part of ensuring that access is meaningful for all.

 

We hope that these ideas are useful for you in thinking about the ways in which we talk about access, and welcome further ideas in the comments below!