Out of Sight but Not out of Mind

Out of sight but not out of mind

Visually impaired people’s perspectives of library & information services

J Eric Davies, Stella Wisdom and Claire Creaser

LISU Occasional Paper no. 29

Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU)

Department of Information Science

Loughborough University

November 2001

DAVIES, J Eric, Stella WISDOM and Claire CREASER

Out of sight but not out of mind: Visually impaired people’s perspectives of library & information services

Loughborough: Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU), 2001

LISU Occasional Paper no. 29

Library and Information Commission Report 123

ISSN 1466-2949

© Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, 2001

Published and distributed by

Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU)
Loughborough University • Loughborough • Leicestershire • LE11 3TU
Tel: +44 (0)1509 223071 • Fax: +44 (0)1509 223072
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Contents

Introduction......

Literature Review......

Methodology......

Results - Overview......

Demographic Analysis......

Preferred Formats......

Use of Information Technology......

Use of Public Libraries......

RNIB Talking Books Service......

Calibre Cassette Library......

The National Library for the Blind......

The Talking Newspaper Association of the UK......

Conclusions and Recommendations......

List of Sources Consulted......

APPENDIX 1 - Report on Visits......

APPENDIX 2 - Summary of Seminar 14 May 2001......

APPENDIX 3 – Interview Schedule......

APPENDIX 4 – A Note on the Research Process......

Acknowledgements

The LISU approach to undertaking successful projects is always based on team working that applies appropriate knowledge and skills to our projects. The people who, in some way or another, contributed to the success of this important study are many and we thank them most sincerely. In no particular order, they are:

Marina Pickles who provided considerable assistance with data gathering in fieldwork and telephone interviewing, often under difficult conditions.

Sarah Gamble, Tracey Hebdon, Wayne Rowe, Hannah Snelson, and Charlotte Webster, students in the University, who augmented our team of telephone interviewers, acquiring new skills and experience in the process.

Bec Smith and Mandy Stace (also students), who, as well as helping with the telephone interviews, diligently, patiently and (most importantly) accurately transcribed information in interview sheets into usable data in our database.

Sonya White, our Assistant Statistician, who skilfully performed much of the preliminary synthesis and manipulation of data to reveal meaningful information.

Sally Maynard who rendered her customary service of scrutinising what the rest of us have drafted and giving it the final polish that only she can.

Mary Ashworth and Sharon Fletcher who, in addition to managing a great deal of the administration of the Project, applied their considerable desktop publishing skills to converting a plain manuscript into something worthy of the name – publication.

We are also grateful to members of the Project Advisory Group (mentioned later in the report) and representatives of the several institutions concerned with visually impaired people that gave us advice and information, as well as, in some cases, hospitality.

Out of sight but not out of mind1

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

This report documents the outcomes of a project undertaken by LISU and funded by Resource under the auspices of the Share the Vision Programme, which is concerned with information access for visually impaired people. The project featured an extensive survey of people with visual impairment with the aim of determining their perceptions, opinions and activities regarding relevant information sources and library services that are available to them. The research sought to derive reliable data on the needs of visually impaired people with a view to informing and assisting the development of appropriate and relevant policies and practices by the various service providers. It was hoped that the statistics and findings from the survey would provide useful input to evidencebased decision making and would be acted upon positively.

The Context

Share the Vision Programme research initiatives have as their foundation the need to contribute timely and relevant findings to the wider framework of social inclusion. The social inclusion agenda has powerful backing from government and it embraces many aspects of policy and practice including the Disability Discrimination Act as well as a range of special initiatives and projects. Managers and others are becoming aware of the need to assess services and respond positively to the challenge of providing for social inclusion. Optimal planning of service delivery requires adequate information regarding individual client groups. There needs to be a full awareness that a ‘onesizefitsall’ service approach serves no one particularly well and that the many options for targeting services offer positive benefits. It is important that access issues are examined by research projects such as this one in order that more knowledge can be gained which will enable institutions and agencies to sharpen the focus of, and thereby enhance, services and practices.

A fundamental tenet is the need for information and library agencies to be accessible and relevant to the entire user (and potential user) community regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or disability. In terms of inclusiveness, the needs of visually impaired people feature strongly in any activity which seeks to translate aspiration into reality.

The project has generated much interest and indeed anticipation as the results have been eagerly (if not impatiently) awaited. This is encouraging and it points to the fact that the provider community is very open to information that will enable services to visually impaired people to be better focused.

Project Scope

The scope of this report has, to a large extent, been determined by the community of visually impaired people that was interviewed. This, in a study with a ‘user focus’, is as it should be. The project began with a clear focus on public library provision with the recognition that other agencies also had important roles in information access. The core group that feature in the discussion derive from the range of services and agencies that people identified in their responses. Thus, the scope of this study is not confined to visually impaired users of public libraries, but includes The RNIB Talking Books Service, The Calibre Cassette Library, The National Library for the Blind, Talking Newspapers of the UK and any other information related service the respondents used. Moreover, the study did not confine itself to users of these services. Former users and nonusers were also interviewed to seek reasons why people discontinue using services, and why they have never used them.

It is worth noting that the project breaks new ground insofar as there has never before been a national study on this scale which has examined library services and related information providers for visually impaired people from the users’ perspective.

LISU’s independence from service provision to visually impaired persons was regarded as a particular virtue and was one of the features contributing to the success of the research. As a research organisation without a direct role in service provision to visually impaired persons it was hoped that LISU would find participants more candid and forthcoming in their responses than they might be if approached by service providers. It is sometimes thought that people hesitate to be openly critical of noncommercial services of the kind studied in this project for fear of offending service providers. There may even be a perception or fear – unfounded – that services may be cut if people are too negative in their responses. It should be noted, however, that the survey data presented here generally reflect favourably on the organisations that are mentioned. That notwithstanding, there are some critical comments reported. Insofar as they reflect people’s experiences and perceptions – whether accurate or misconceived – they should be heeded. All the material contributes to an understanding of the way in which users regard the things that impinge on their access to, and enjoyment of, information sources.

The Project Advisory Group

The project benefited greatly from the considerable commitment, support and assistance of its Advisory Group. The Group brought a diverse range of specialist experience and knowledge to the endeavour. It comprised:

• Margaret Bennett (Executive Director - National Library for the Blind)
• Jeanette Binns (Equal Opportunities Officer - Lancashire County Council)
• Simon Matty (Research Project Coordinator - Resource)
• David Owen (Executive Director - Share the Vision)
• David Taylor (Products and Publications Officer - RNIB)
• Cathy Wright (Librarian - RNIB College, Worcester).

J Eric Davies (LISU Director) acted as Chair of the Group and StellaWisdom (Project Officer) as Secretary.

The Advisory Group met on several occasions and members were also individually consulted as appropriate throughout the various stages of the project. The LISU research team is immensely grateful to them for their very valuable contribution to the success of this study.

Out of sight but not out of mind1

LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature Review

As a preliminary to the collection of data for this study a review of relevant literature was conducted. There is a scarcity of material which draws on first hand information from users and in that respect this study covers fresh ground. Research that examines information provision for visually impaired people has been undertaken before. However, such studies have tended to focus on the information providers’ perspective and many have not fully examined the opinions and needs of the user in depth. Moreover, they are not too plentiful. The needs of visually impaired people are met by a range of agencies in the UK. Studies may be focused on a particular provider and some of the smaller agencies may not have the resources to undertake major investigations. This may partly explain the relative scarcity of UK based literature regarding the information needs of visually impaired people.

A general search of the literature published in this area revealed a body of material published in the 1980s in the United States of America. Although some general comparisons may be made against these analyses, because of their date of publication and their location specific content, they afford little of practical relevance to current UK provision. The UK has a wide spectrum of information providers serving visually impaired people and developments in disability discrimination legislation as well as technological advancement has meant there have been many changes to services in recent years. This literature review concentrates on UK material published in the last ten years.

An important and informative piece of research into the demographic breakdown of visually impaired people living in the UK was undertaken by the RNIB (Bruce et al, 1991). This survey used as its basis the same sample that was used by the UK Government Department responsible for the National Census. Although the survey did not directly investigate information retrieval and manipulation activity, it did provide useful profiles of the visually impaired community in the United Kingdom. It offered such insights as the fact that there is a very low proportion of Braille users (3% of the estimated one million visually impaired people in this country).

One of the most important documents in nurturing a general understanding of information access and visually impaired people is the manual developed under the auspices of the Share the Vision programme and entitled: Library Services for Visually Impaired People: AManual of Best Practice (National Library for the Blind, 2001). It is already becoming an influential guide to policy and practice, some aspects of which will be discussed later. Indeed, in the last year or two there have been several research projects operating within the Share The Vision Programme which have examined many different aspects of visually impaired people’s access to information.

The Library Association published its own advice and guidance in 1996. Library and Information Services for Visually Impaired People: National Guidelines (Machell, 1996) is a clear and concise manual for use by public librarians. It discusses how the Disability Discrimination Act affects public library provision to visually impaired people. The advice is detailed in ten different areas, namely:

• Equality of access
• Physical access to buildings and services
• Staffing
• Service provision
• Service delivery
• Client groups
• Reading resources
• Reading aids and equipment
• Information
• Promotion and publicity

The guidelines emphasise the importance of a wide spectrum of provision in order that individuals can choose services that best suit their needs.

A key theme in the subject is the nature and extent of access to information resources and the delivery configuration for those resources. A significant early study was conducted by Peter Craddock in the mid 1980s (Craddock, 1985). This entailed an indepth investigation into library provision for visually impaired people and was the first large scale study of this type in the UK, and it has set precedents for subsequent studies. The data provide a detailed picture of information provision to visually impaired people in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The growth in national and local voluntary agencies is described and their significance in what is a multifaceted field of information supply to visually impaired people is discussed. Craddock claims that the introduction of free postal services for blind people loosened the links between public libraries and the specialist agencies which serve visually impaired people. He describes how free postage created centralised stockholding centres instead of smaller scale localised provision. This discussion is particularly germane to the LISU study; one of the issues being examined is the scope and opportunity for local holding and distribution of alternative format titles. This issue has been topical from the mid 1990s and is being investigated through several projects.

An informative study was undertaken in Gloucestershire (Chartres, 1996). In January 1995 Gloucestershire Library, Arts and Museums Service launched a project designed to assess the feasibility of providing a mainstream public library service which was coordinated and delivered locally, but which borrowed resources from national organisations to supplement locally held collections. Two important findings came from the analysis of this project. Firstly, having a local access point to national services greatly increased usage levels and membership numbers; secondly, the operation of multiple storage and distribution sites is not efficient or feasible in terms of costs. The Report states:

“One of the main reasons for running the Gloucestershire Pilot Project and central to this evaluation was to look at the wider possibilities of joint partnerships with local authority library services as part of the RNIB’s overall strategy for service delivery. The conclusions which can be drawn from the pilot project are clear. Given the financial costs involved and the additional work and operational logistics of distributing Talking Book Service from two sites, we believe that the model as applied to the Gloucestershire Project is not sustainable for RNIB if applied on a national scale. However we recognise that the increase in membership and the overall complementary services that are available to visually impaired people is directly attributable to the VIP service and the local provision of service it provides.” (Chartres, 1996 p 5)

More recently, Deborah Ryan has investigated the possibilities of interlibrary and interorganisation lending of alternative formats in chapter eleven of Library Services for Visually Impaired People: AManual of Best Practice (National Library for the Blind, 2001). Shenotes how the Disability Discrimination Act will impel public libraries to examine their provision to visually impaired people:

“Although an interlibrary lending (ILL) system has been established for many decades for standard print material, alternative format material has been excluded from this cooperative network. This has resulted in visually impaired people being offered a much reduced service in accessing a range of reading and information material in a format, which meets their needs. Under the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act, it will be unlawful for libraries to refuse a request for alternative format materials, and the interlending system must therefore be able to process this requirement.”
(National Library for the Blind, 2001 Chapter 11)

Ryan’s work offers a perspective on how public libraries can work with national organisations such as Calibre, NLB, RNIB and TNAUK to open up access to resources with the “Bee Aware” campaign facilitating promotion and publicity (National Library for the Blind, 2001). She points to the need for adequate bibliographic and locational tools to avoid the expense and frustration of speculative requests for material. The REVIEL project is addressing the issue through coordinating a national database of resources in accessible formats. The thinking behind this approach to inter organisation/library lending has relevance to the LISU survey which has sought to discover whether visually impaired people would prefer to borrow material from the various specialised organisations through their public library, or whether they would prefer the ‘traditional’ method of obtaining material directly. Information regarding this issue is crucial in determining whether and how public libraries develop themselves as ‘onestop’ information shops for visually impaired people.