Professional paper
Education and communication in library services for the blind and visually impaired persons in the Public Library “Fran Galović” in Koprivnica
Kristian Ujlaki
Josipa Strmečki
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the digitalization can make education, employment and career improvement, as well as everyday activities of the blind and visually impaired easier and equal to the people with good eyesight. The trend of the increased use of Information Technology is more and more present with the blind and visually impaired. By using IT they can overcome one segment of their handicap– they can write a text, but also edit, correct and print it.
The paper shows how the written material is being digitalized, and the ways in which the blind and visually impaired use it.
Furthermore, the paper presents the recommendations for the preparation and publishing of the materials on the internet given in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. With the help of these guidelines it becomes clear how to prepare materials, how to enable their display and interaction in accordance with the user’s needs and requirements, and also how to enable compatibility and interoperability.
Finally, some examples of how libraries can offer the best possible services to this group of users are shown.
Keywords
the blind and visually impaired; free access to information; information and communication technology; speech synthesis; digitalization; W3C
Hrčak ID:
80989
URI
Publication date:
8.10.2010.
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