Equal Accessibility For Patrons (Part I)

How would the assistive technology be benefit to patrons with disabilities in libraries? In order to meet the mission of the library and serve diverse populations equally, includes patrons with disabilities, each library has its own assessment standard to equip necessary assistive technologies to meet the requirements of the act and patrons’ needs.

Here are the technology solutions for following disabilities:

Visual Impairment and Blindness
People has a myriad of vision problems, including nearsighted or farsighted or macular degeneration or color blindness etc. They cannot read standard print, therefore, enlarging or manipulating the text display is helpful for their needs. While color blindness may require the different background changed on the displays to help them reading. People with blindness can access information by touch and sound only. Braille system of raised dots is commonly used for this group of people reading and writing with the fingers. Also, there are many books and internet provided audio version to support them.

Hearing Impairment and Deafness
People with hearing loss are reduced ability to hear sounds, they are usually assisted with hearing aids and visual cues. Nowadays, with well-developed technologies, this group of people is not facing huge troubles with access of the computer and internet as there are many solutions can support them. Captioning text are common used in TV, YouTube, and films etc. However, for people who are deaf, they can only rely on visual cues, lipreading or through sign language. Currently, most libraries use virtual reference through instant web-messaging replacing of traditional teletypewriter (TTY). The device was set to connect from the patron’s home phone to the library’s specific phone for answering inquiries.

References:

Mates, B. T., & Reed, W. R. (2011). The Library’s Mission: To Serve All Patrons. Assistive Technologies in the library. Chicago: American Library Association.