Visual Impairment Information Centre at the National Taiwan Library

Abstract

In July 1975, the National Taiwan Library (NTL) established a special unit called the Blind Centre. The Centre has since been renamed the Visual Impairment Information Centre (VIIC). The NTL is the first public library in Taiwan to provide services for visually impaired people. In December 2011, the Ministry of Education designated NTL as a library for: allocating special subsidies; being responsible for collecting, integrating and archiving resources on visual impairment; and promoting the right of visually impaired people to gain knowledge fairly through reading or by accessing information. In this article we present the services for visually impaired patrons at the Centre and give details of its Braille collections, facilities, promotion activities and the digital library of Visual Impairment Information System (VIIS). We briefly address the new legislation concerning equal rights to access information in Taiwan, as a reference for promoting visual impairment services in libraries.