Abstract:
This study sets to find out the kinds of services the public university libraries provide
for the visually impaired students in the universities in Ghana. The libraries of three
public universities known to practice inclusive education for the visually impaired
were purposively selected for the study. The libraries are the Sam Jonah Library,
University of Cape Coast, the Osagyefo Library at University of Education, Winneba
and the Balme Library at University of Ghana Legon. Questionnaire and interview
guide were used as data collection tools. In all a total of 119 respondents were
purposively selected comprising target population of all the 116 visually impaired
students from the three universities and the three librarians of the public university
libraries under study because of their small population size. Descriptive statistics
using SPSS was used in analyzing the data. . The study revealed that there was low
awareness among the visually impaired students over the kinds of services the
libraries provide; equipment and materials for providing service to the visually
impaired were found to be inadequate; the libraries were found to be grappling with
four main challenges, financial, resource persons, lack of equipment and
infrastructure of which financial constraints was the strongest impairment. It was
recommended that the central administration of the universities organise special
orientation for visually impaired students to improve students’ awareness of existing
services; review their recruitment of resource persons and set up special fund to
acquire assistive technology equipments.
