The Australian Library Journal

Are the deaf a disabled group, or a linguistic minority? Issues for librarians in Victoria's public libraries

Karen McQuigg

Manuscript received August 2003

This is a refereed article

There are two ways to look at a culture. One is from the outside looking in, imagining what it must be like to be part of that culture. The second is from within. Harlan Lane, one of the most influential writers on deaf culture, states that a rift exists between deaf and hearing culture and that it is the result of what he terms:

...an extrapolative leap, an egocentric error. To imagine what deafness is like, I imagine my world without sound - a terrifying prospect and one that conforms quite well with the stereotype we project onto members of the deaf community. I would be isolated, disorientated, uncommunicative and unreceptive to communication. My ties to other people would be ruptured. ... Some of my hearing friends say they are uncomfortable with deaf people for another reason, because they don't know how to communicate with them; but then I ask them if they give blind people a wide berth and look away from physically handicapped people and they acknowledge that they do. Each meeting with a person we perceive as handicapped is an invitation to make that extrapolation - and to experience dread... (Lane 1994 pp10-11)

Lane points out that the Signing Deaf community doesn't share this experience of deafness. Their happiness levels are the same as those of people in the hearing world. He also states however that it is acceptable that people look at a culture from both perspectives - the key is that neither party assume that the way they see a particular culture is the only way it can be seen.

This article examines deaf culture and some of the ideas that constitute what we mean when we talk about 'the disabled'. It will discuss how these ideas, and consequent legislation, have influenced library services in Australia. Deaf culture is an interesting example to look at because the deaf1 do not see themselves as disabled, but rather as a distinct linguistic minority group. As Lane observes, the label has many of them puzzled:

The Massachusetts Deaf Community News... reporting on the Americans With Disabilities Act, had to explain to its readers: 'Deaf people are defined as "disabled" for the purposes of the ADA' ( Lane 1994 p22)

Even ten years ago, when I was involved in a project looking at what public libraries could offer the deaf, it seemed as if the gap between the requirements of this group and what public libraries could offer was too great for public libraries to be able to serve them effectively. (McQuigg and Khan 1990) However the advent of a raft of assistive technologies, the rise of the internet, and changes in political thought spurred on by the Disability Discrimination Act (1992), mean that now may be a good time for a re-evaluation of the situation.

Before beginning, it is relevant to note that Lane quotes a past president of the World Federation of the Deaf as having said that the deaf community is increasingly unimpressed by those outside it looking in and commenting on the deaf without identifying themselves. In accordance with this I am happy to identify myself and my own background. I am just recently deaf following surgery, but have been increasingly hard of hearing for a decade. I am learning Sign and hope to become fluent, but I am from a hearing culture. I have a long history of working in public libraries and subscribe to the belief that public libraries should be for everyone. Particularly, as my own hearing decreased, I have become interested in the whole notion of 'disability' and in understanding the evident lack of relationship between public libraries and the deaf. Not only are the deaf not on the agendas of public librarians but anecdotal evidence suggests that the situation is mutual. This article is an attempt to look at the forces that contributed to these situations and, perhaps to make them a little more visible both for myself and others.

The cultural construction of the 'disabled'

In 1992 Australia passed its Disability Discrimination Act. The aim of the Act was to eliminate discrimination and thereby open up access to the Australian community for the estimated eighteen per cent of the population who have disabilities. Six years on this is what Australia's then Federal Disability Commissioner had to say about inclusion and access:

This is the, as it were, deep knowledge of people with disabilities: 'every human being' does not include me unless I am specifically pointed out as also included. It is this that leaves me in some discomfort with the word inclusion, a word that suggests I do not belong until you say I do. It is the experience of people with disabilities that we have been actively excluded from participation in ordinary living: excluded by flights of stairs, unsuitable information formats, unyielding rules, inaccessible facilities and hurtful attitudes. It would be more correct for policy makers to plan to stop excluding rather than to start including, to acknowledge our right to belong rather than treat us as optional extras in our community.' (Elizabeth Hastings, Federal Disability Commissioner, 1997)2

Hastings is making two main points in this extract. Firstly that people with disabilities are excluded by the community; secondly that power differentials exist in that the agenda of people with disabilities is being controlled by those without disability (Branson 2002) argues that this is the result of a cultural construction of disability that has adversely affected the deaf throughout history. She charts forces that have swept down through the centuries to influence cultural understandings of disability to this day.

By far the biggest influences on the cultural construction of disability through history have arisen from the rise of science as a force and the corresponding decline of religious influence. Until the breakdown of the community-based feudal system people who had disabilities had generally been accommodated within their own communities. Disability was considered to be governed by God. However with science gaining prominence, people developed an increased sense that they could take control of their environment. Not that, as Branson points out, the argument was as clear cut as that. The breakdown of the power of the monasteries and the emergence of radical clerics were manifestations of the rise of individualism and intellectualism within religion itself. These religious changes led to people embracing the idea of being able to think for themselves using rationality. And although science was to emerge triumphant in its influence, it was not 'science' per se that triumphed - it was a particular mechanistic type of science that reflected these same ways of thinking; one in which order was to be made from chaos, the rational from the irrational, the normal from the subnormal.

Another force that had an impact at this time was that of an emergent capitalism. Capitalism was driven by the new individualism and the Age of Imperialism that fed it. As stronger countries such as Britain subjugated other smaller nations, it became necessary to legitimate these deeds for a domestic audience and it was now that the idea of ' the other' began to emerge. This view of other people being different - 'not like us' and inferior in terms of evolution and development was the tool by which one society legitimated its subjugation of others. It is an idea that is still much in evidence today. Lane (1992) refers to it in his study of the deaf when he examines the patronising terms such as 'childlike' used to describe deaf people and compares them with remarkably similar terms used by the colonial British to describe Africans in countries they had colonised.

As the body politic embraced the possibility of a rational society it simultaneously started to fear chaos. It is about this time that the 'madhouses' appeared - asylums such as Bethlehem Hospital, or Bedlam as it is better known, to house the mad and keep them away from society. The idea of being 'normal' first appeared in the late 1700s but quickly established itself under the influence of scientists such as Auguste Comte (1798-1857). People in madhouses were not seen as fully human and the definition 'disabled' started to appear. This term lumped together individuals who were different regardless of whether the reason for those differences was sensory, physical or behavioural. It still does and even this method of lumping together is, in its own way, a dehumanisation. It means that when one uses the word 'disabled' one doesn't have to think of individuals. Instead one can think of madness and strangeness and deformity - all ways of being 'other' - with that person therefore not deserving of being treated as 'normal' and therefore human. The deaf fell within this category. At that time language was being studied and was seen as integral to being human. Because they didn't hear or speak the deaf were considered part of the 'disabled' grouping.

Darwin's influential Origin of Species (1859) capitalised on the vogue that some people (that is, the English) were superior to other races because they were more evolved. It was published at a time when people were fascinated with this concept and had a major effect on contemporary thought. It presented a view of evolution that saw the colonised, including women and the 'disabled', as inferior. This idea of 'the other' was emphasised by the parading of dwarves, people with abnormalities, and people from other countries including Australian Aborigines, at fairs and sideshows.

Worse was to come. Societal interest in evolutionism led in time to an increasing idea of disability as pathology - a sickness needing to be fixed. In 1883 Darwin's cousin, Francis Gatton, introduced the idea of 'eugenics' into Britain. Eugenics aimed to improve human stock by selective breeding. At its worst it led to the atrocities connected with Nazism. Less well documented is the effect of eugenics on people with disabilities. In Germany for example, 375 000 Germans, many of them with disabilities, were sterilized. To this day eugenics, though officially disapproved of, exists in attitudes towards those with disabilities when pressure is brought to bear on reproductive choices and when genetic engineering is discussed. In the deaf community, attempts by the medical world to eradicate deafness by technology such as cochlear implants have divided the community as people now grapple with the ethics and likely impacts of these choices on culture and lifestyle. Even though ideas such as eugenics and the view of the cultural superiority of an able-bodied, rational white culture are no longer accepted mainstream thinking, it would be naive to suppose that the influence of these ideas is ever far below the surface in many of the attitudes and decisions that are made in relation to people with disabilities and the deaf today.

Education and the deaf

Before discussing the history of deaf education it is necessary to understand about the language known in Australia as Sign or AUSLAN. One of the most common and persistent misconceptions about sign languages is that there is only one sign language, and that it is primitive, iconic and taken from English. In fact, just as the world is full of different spoken and written languages, it has many sign languages. Research over the past half century has also established that sign languages are real languages. They possess their own grammar and express everything an oral language can. Susan Fischer (2000), a linguist specialising in sign languages, says that sign languages are more iconic than spoken language but this is because they are visual languages (p206). In reference to the belief that sign language is just signed English she states that ASL (American Sign Language) has borrowed from English but that all languages are influenced by each other. However English is not the main influence on ASL - ASL shares aspects of Japanese grammar in its use of topicalisation, some aspects of Navaho, in its use of verbal classifiers, and aspects of some Creole languages. In other words, it is a distinctive and sophisticated language. The same is true of all sign languages, including AUSLAN. This was not understood in the eighteenth century when education of the deaf began in earnest, and this lack of understanding has had major and persistent ramifications for educational achievement by the deaf.

The history of deaf education

By the early 1780s, efforts to educate the deaf in Britain had begun. Most notably Thomas Braidwood set up, not an asylum for the deaf, but an institution to teach the deaf, most of them children of the wealthy. This was an important distinction at the time as the term 'institution' signaled a more positive attitude towards the educability of the deaf than the term 'asylum'. In France even more interesting developments took place with the Abbe de L'Epee successfully teaching his pupils by using sign language. Unfortunately, in a foretaste of what was to come with Signed English, de L'Epee regarded Sign as inferior and invented his own version believing it to be an improvement. Despite this, many deaf people did successfully learn from him. De L'Epee's fame spread across to Britain where, in time, he became revered for his Christian attitudes towards education of the deaf. As Branson notes: 'The appeals to Christian charity not to 'mock defect' signalled the presence of a new age of benevolence.'(Branson 2002 p109)

In 1817 Thomas Gallaudet, wanting to set up a school for the deaf in America, set sail for Britain and receiving a cool welcome, went on to Paris. There he met and persuaded a young deaf teacher named Laurent Clerc to set sail with him for America and establish a deaf school there. Clerc agreed and on the voyage taught Gallaudet Sign, while Gallaudet taught him English. Once in America the schools flourished and brought with them a golden period in the history of the deaf. The French Sign imported by Clerc rapidly amalgamated with local dialects and became ASL. Sachs (1990 p24) cites Lane as estimating that 'by 1869 there were 550 teachers of the deaf worldwide and that forty-one per cent of the teachers of the deaf in the United States were themselves deaf'. By that time the institution that was to become Gallaudet University, the only deaf liberal arts college in the world, had opened. But then, as Sachs reports:

...the tide turned, turned against the use of Sign by and for the deaf, so that within twenty years the work of a century was undone... Specifically, there had been for two centuries a counterculture of feeling, from teachers and parents of deaf children, that the goal of deaf education should be to teach the deaf how to speak. Now in the 1870s, a current that had been growing for decades, fed paradoxically by the immense success of the deaf-mute asylums and their spectacular demonstrations of the educability of the deaf, erupted and attempted to eliminate the very instrument of success. (Sachs 1990 p25)

The rise of oralism is a debate that is still alive to this day. It centres on the reasoning that if deaf people could speak they could more readily be part of mainstream society. As such it is considered by many as an attempt to 'normalise' the deaf. To hearing people bringing the deaf into the 'normal' hearing culture is a good thing but to the deaf, to whom using Sign is 'normal', this term is a negation of their culture. Instead what the deaf would like to see is an acceptance of their language and to have their right to be different accommodated.

Quite aside from the moral arguments associated with oralism, it takes much time to have intensive one-on-one sessions to learn how to speak, and many believe that this time could have been better spent on the curriculum. In the Australian book Life as a pupil in the Victorian School for the Deaf Children in the 1940s and 1950s the authors both felt they had been cheated of a real education by having to spend up to a third of each day learning oral skills that had no relevance to them, while missing out on what they felt were the higher learning skills they might have benefited from. (Bernal & Toms 1999 p56). Indeed, as Sachs (1990 p28) states, 'Oralism and the suppression of Sign have resulted in a dramatic deterioration in the educational achievement of deaf children and in the literacy of the deaf generally'. Many deaf have left the education system with low literacy skills and reduced educational attainment.

But within the past two decades there have been two major events that have had a transforming effect on deaf culture. Many people felt the coming of age of the deaf was Sunday 6 March 1988 when Gaullardet University, America's only Liberal Arts college for the deaf, went against the will of its deaf students to have a deaf president and instead elected a hearing one. As Sachs (1990 p126) notes 'the tone, as well as the content of the Board's announcement caused outrage; it was here that the chairman of the board ...made her comment that 'the deaf are not yet ready to function in the hearing world'... The following day ... the students closed the University and barricaded the campus'.

The effect of the strike was dramatic. The students organised and received support from the deaf throughout the country and within the week they had won the strike. A deaf president was elected and the chairman of the Board resigned. However the significance of the strike was far greater than what anyone had foreseen. It had led the deaf to really organise for the first time - there had been as Sachs describes it:

...a reversal - and indeed a relegitimation and resurrection of Sign as never before and with this, and much else, a discovery or rediscovery of the cultural aspects of deafness - a strong sense of community and communication and culture, of a self definition of a unique way of being'. (p139).

The other significant change came through legislation; in America the Americans with Disabilities Act (1991), and in Australia the Disability Discrimination Act (1992). Elizabeth Hastings points out that it is sometimes thought that the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) is based on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) but the acts actually differ in important ways. She states that the DDA represents groundbreaking legislation for people with disabilities because it has as its object the 'elimination of discrimination' whereas the Disability Services Act and ADA that preceded it are more limited in scope. The ADA, as Hastings saw it, misdirects energy into protecting people's rights when it should have been trying to dismantle the barriers in the existing social structure that led to the discrimination in the first place. Talking about the Australian legislation she states:

The DDA is predicated on this fundamental assumption that disability is a part of ordinary human community: that [people with disabilities] are an integral belonging part of the whole... Many people with disabilities do not wish to be altered, cured or transformed. They do wish their equipment would work reliably; and that [services including] information were accessible without discrimination... (Hastings 1996 p6).

Despite this legislation and the Gaulladet Revolution, Sign is still not used in educating deaf children today. Instead deaf children are taught using a method called Signed English that mixes signs with English grammar to form an artificial language. Along with oralism, it is seen by many in the deaf community as a means of hearing people continuing to control the agenda in deaf education. As such it comes back to Hastings' earlier points about exclusion and non disabled people controlling the disabled agenda. It also means that, although the deaf community is a linguistic minority group, its language is repressed. Outcomes for the deaf continue to be controlled by people who see them from outside Deaf culture, and through the lens of their own mainstream conceptions of disability.

Libraries, disability and the deaf

In February this year Public Libraries had an issue highlighting a range of innovations that libraries in the United States have made to respond to people with disabilities. The wide-ranging articles, in some cases written by people with disabilities, about projects they managed, covered planning, user education, and promotion. The outcomes are impressive: one library cleared its floors and hosted a basketball game by athletes in wheelchairs. Not only did this promote the library's sporting resources, but it brought together young fans and athletes with mobility impairments in an informal setting in which everyone could participate equally. (Mates, p28) There were similar reports from the deaf community: ASL video collections, (MacMillan p17) and a reading program for the deaf (Rodriguez and Reed p38).

The impetus for a surge of activity in this neglected area has presumably been the influence of the ADA: in 1991 Michael Gunde, had this damning assessment of American libraries' delivery of services to people with disabilities:

Access for all. Intellectual freedom. Balanced collections. Literacy. The freedom to read. As a profession, we embrace these ideas and presume to lecture others on their importance, while systematically denying full and equal library services to tens of millions of Americans with disabilities who need - and pay taxes and fees to support - our elitist institutions. Hypocrisy has, perhaps, never been taken to such lofty heights as by the library profession, which officially preaches outreach services but more often practices exclusion.

In contrast to the ADA, the Disability Discrimination Act seems to have yielded less in terms of activity on the Victorian, possibly the Australian, library scene. This is surprising in that ALIA has produced some impressive policy statements very much in keeping with the aims of the DDA; the State Library of Victoria (SLV) through its Open Road website particularly has produced relevant and timely online information alerting librarians to the possibilities available though the new adaptive technologies, and some academic libraries have documented initiatives for people with disabilities, and the deaf. For reasons that are not clear, however, when it has come to taking actions in support of the policies and guides, it seems that Victoria's public libraries have faltered.

One study on the topic of library compliance with the ADA from an American academic library perspective suggests that non-compliance with the spirit of disability legislation may be happening because many librarians think compliance primarily means physical access to the building, rather than what happens inside. The study also notes that most actions in the area of disability services have benefited the visually impaired and that this is an understandable bias because of libraries' previous emphasis on books and reading. It concludes however that, as the emphasis on libraries changes to virtual resources, this way of looking at services may need to be reassessed, particularly when, in theory at least, the new technologies have the potential to benefit many people with disabilities. (Wiler, 2000)

Another reason for a lack of action from public libraries may be that while the DDA makes it obligatory for organisations to produce Action Plans outlining how they intend to go about removing barriers to access, this requirement is absent from the Australian legislation. In America where organisations were given deadlines and authority for implementing them was delegated to other authorities, there have been greater levels of compliance.

Despite ALIA guidelines advocating the establishment of Action Plans (AP) for services to people with disabilities, anecdotal evidence, and the apparent lack of action would suggest that public libraries have not generally formulated them. The reason Hastings wanted Action Plans established is her belief that if managers and staff are required to think about the issue in formulating an AP, this will of itself raise awareness of the ways in which organisations unwittingly exclude people.

Hastings cites the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's own guidance material to outline some basic points that should be covered when formulating Action Plans:

Can a person with a disability get to the places where Commonwealth laws and programs are administered?

If they cannot now, what is being done to achieve equal access over time?

What is being done to ensure access to the program where access to the particular building is not yet provided?

Can people with a disability communicate with the agency and receive information from it?

Will they be treated with equal respect and effectiveness by staff as the users of an agency's services?

These basic questions address minimal requirements for access. However, if they were to be asked of Victorian public libraries in relation to the deaf, what would the answers be? There are an estimated 5000 people whose first language is Sign in Metropolitan Melbourne - can any of them ever use their first language at any public library? If not, and with the literacy difficulties associated with the educational history of the deaf, how could they receive information? If one adds in the large proportion of the Australian public with hearing loss this number instantly increases. How many public libraries have TTYs and other adaptive technologies and, of the ones that do, how many have staff answering queries who are familiar with how to use them?

Staff training is crucial to the delivery of library services to people with disabilities and the deaf. It is therefore disappointing to read the Disability Resource Kit, presumably produced by the SLV, that has been designed for the purpose for training public librarians on how best to interact with the hearing impaired (they have included the deaf under this label). The information in the 'Hearing Impairment' section is muddled and veers from telling librarians not to be patronising and to treat the 'hearing impaired' as individuals while offering advice such as:

'Don't regard the use of a hearing aid as a tragedy, as there is no sign of the degree of hearing a person may have.'

'Don't be offended by the lack of response or unconventional behaviour'

'If people who are hearing impaired extend their hands to shake, do so.'

'Be aware that the person who is hearing impaired will be disadvantaged by not knowing what is going on. Therefore explain what is happening'

It can only be hoped that not many public librarians have not been 'trained' by this patronising resource.

For libraries interested in connecting with the deaf, a good background resource is available in the final summary for the Deaf Australia Online 2 Project. This collaborative project was funded by the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. It was produced by a consortium of deaf providers working with Circit at RMIT, the Centre of Excellence for Students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing at NMIT, and ACE - the Australian Communication Exchange which runs telecommunication services for the deaf. The excellence of the information contained in the report is no doubt associated with the heavy involvement with members of the deaf community and hard of hearing people.

The project concentrated on testing and reviewing the suitability of various technologies, some of which would not necessarily be useful to the deaf in a public library setting. However the report outlines two important areas in which public libraries could become useful to the deaf. One of these areas is that of video clips, and the second is in training and supporting the deaf to use e-mail and other online technologies.

Video clips are a technology which uses pictures and simple text to explain web pages so that the language can be understood by those with low literacy. If video clips using Auslan are used this tool becomes even easier for the deaf to use. Many deaf people also need help in using e-mail and other PC applications and they have particular training needs because of the practicalities of having to switch modes of communication while learning. They also need a defined physical signing space in the training room.

The beauty of both these needs is that they have already been expressed by deaf people. However the fact that public libraries weren't even seriously discussed as possible venues for the deaf during the Project, when they already provide access to e-mail and training for the rest of the community, is a judgment on the current relationship. I can recall telling John Lovett, then chief executive officer of the Victorian Deaf Society about the availability of captioned videos held by public libraries. At that time the videos chosen for captioning were worthy topics such as gardening and crafts. 'But the deaf, we want Lethal Weapon!' he quipped, meaning that the deaf didn't necessarily want to be improved by libraries: they merely wanted what everyone else had access to.

Summary

The path of deaf history is intertwined with the complex and competing forces that have shaped disability. The deaf are a linguistic minority group: they are an oppressed one, and none of us should be passive about accepting this in a multicultural country such as Australia. If libraries want the deaf as customers they are going to need to accept, respect and use AUSLAN for communication with the deaf.

The appropriateness of the term 'disability' to describe the deaf is very much a matter of definition. The broad DDA definition of disability meaning 'not different or separate but an integral, belonging part of the whole' encompasses the deaf and their culture. However it is negative conceptions of the term 'disabled' that are dominant. Countering these connotations is far more than an intellectual or semantics exercise; it involves an individual effort in the hearts of each of us to look at our own perceptions, and then an effort of the imagination to move towards creating change.2

Why would public libraries want to tackle this issue? Because we can. This is what the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto 1994 had to say about public libraries:

Freedom, prosperity and the development of society and of individuals are fundamental human values. They will only be attained through the ability of well informed citizens to exercise their democratic rights and to play an active role in society. Constructive participation and the development of democracy depend on satisfactory education as well as on free and unlimited access to knowledge, thought, culture and information.3

Whether or not Victorian public libraries are up to the challenge of applying these principles in relation to people with disabilities, and the deaf, remains to be seen.

Bibliography

Australia (2003) Department of Victorian Communities. Local Government and Regional Services. Directory of public library services in Victoria.

Australian Library and Information Association (2002) Library and information services for people with a disability. http://www.alia.org.au/policies/disabilities.html. Accessed 03 June 2003

Bernal B and Toms J (1999) 'Life as a pupil in the Victorian School for Deaf Children in the 1940s and 1950s' Collage: Works on International Deaf History, R Fischer and T Vollhaber (eds) Hamburg, Signum

Branson, Jan and Don Miller (2002) Damned for their difference: the cultural construction of deaf people as disabled, a sociological history. Washington: Gaullardet University Press,

Bundy, Alan (2003) 'Changing lives, making the difference: the 21st century public library'. Aplis 16 (1) March 2003 pp38-49.

Disability awareness kit: a training awareness kit for public library customer service staff. http://openroad.net.au/access/dakit/. Accessed 27 June 2003

Gunde, Michael G (1991) 'What every librarian should know about the Americans with Disabilities Act' Reprinted from American Libraries. http://www.rit.edu/~easi/lib/oppo8.htm. Accessed 16 June 2003.

Hastings, Elizabeth (1996) Access on the agenda: no longer an afterthought. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/speeches/1996/access_on_agenda.html. Accessed on 6 December 2003.

Hastings, Elizabeth (1997) FounDDAtions: reflections on the first five years of the Disability Discrimination Act in Australia. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/hr_disab/found.html Accessed on 12 June 2003.

Hastings, Elizabeth (1997) The right to belong: disability discrimination law in education. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/speeches/1997/edspeech.html Accessed on 12 June 2003.

Knuckey, J, Slegers, C et al. (2001) Deaf Australia online 11: Final Report. Australian Communication Exchange,

Lane, Harlan (1994) The mask of benevolence. New York: Knopf.

Sachs, Oliver Seeing voices: a journey into the world of the deaf. London: Picador Press, 1990.

Fischer, Susan D (2000). 'More than just handwaving: the mutual contributions of sign language and linguistics'. The signs of language revisited: an anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima. Edited by Emmorey and Harlan Lane. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp195-213.

Wiler, Linda Lou and Eleanor Lomax (2000) 'The Americans with Disabilities Act: compliance and academic libraries in the Southeastern United States'. Journal of Southern Academic and Special Librarianship http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v02n01/wiler_l01.html. Accessed 16 June 2003.

Endnotes

1. The term deaf refers to those people whose first language is Sign and who see themselves as part of a distinct cultural group with its own language and community.

2. Quote from Elizabeth Hastings (1996) 'There is no doubt that getting us from where we are now to a community genuinely and thoroughly accessible to people with a disability does require effort. Above all it appears to require an effort of imagination, as well as other sorts of effort'. (p1)

3. The Unesco Public library manifesto 1994, cited in Bundy, Alan (2003) Changing lives, making the difference: the 21st Century Public Library.

Biographical information

Karen McQuigg has worked extensively in public libraries both in Victoria and overseas for the past twenty years. She has particular interests in community literacies and issues related to access. She has recently become deaf following surgery and is presently looking for work whilst completing a Masters degree in Sign Language at La Trobe University, Victoria.