Even We Can Read: Evaluating the Impact of a Project to Expand Library Services to Visually Impaired Users in Rural South Africa

Abstract

The project “We are all on the same page” was launched by the South African Library for the Blind (SALB) in April 2010 to create access to libraries and reading material for the visually impaired in impoverished rural areas of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. A decentralised approach was adopted, by locating new services in established public libraries in rural communities and by specifically promoting new services to visually impaired potential users. This approach was based on the knowledge that the many disadvantaged people dwelling in rural areas, who were not taking up library services, did not recognise that libraries and library services could be intended for them as well as for sighted readers. The new approach to delivery required inter-governmental collaboration among three spheres of government: national, provincial and local authority. Library staff had to be trained in serving blind and visually impaired people by providing assistive technologies and reading material, and to provide information literacy tuition to these new library users. The services were to be located in seven public libraries in the rural Eastern Cape. This paper will attempt to provide both objective and qualitative evidence of the impact of the project and to show how it has been expanding to other sites and also to other provinces.

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