Provision of Library Services for the Visually Impaired in Public Universities in Ghana

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.