Information Access for Disabled Students

Disabled students who makes relatively small part of the academic society are in risk to disappear among all other students, due to their communication and mobility difficulties have less possibilities to satisfy their needs, ensuring their rights to qualitative studies, equal opportunities in the labor market and social integration. A topic about information accessibility for disabled students is extremely important because of their information exclusion in their study process at the universities. The purpose of this presentation is to reveal the information access possibilities and perspectives for disabled university students in Lithuania. The main task of this work is on the basis of legal documents which regulate equal rights of disabled people to information access, and running programs of European Union and European Blind Union for disabled people to find out how services are provided to disabled students at the Vilnius University. For this reason a study was undertaken at the Vilnius University Library information centre for disabled people "Odisjas" to find out needs, possibilities and perspectives of the disabled students to information access. Questionnaire type study analyzing the needs of disabled people in higher education was undertaken. It was concluded that a propitious law basis for disabled people is developed in Lithuania. The laws seek to guarantee equal right to information, rights to protection from discrimination, and to decrease social isolation. The Vilnius University Library is the first academic library in Lithuania which provides the modern technologies and software for disabled students at the centre "Odisjas" in Lithuania.16th BOBCATSSS Symposium 2008 - Providing Access to Information for Everyone, BOBCATSSS 2008, 28.01.2008 - 30.01.2008, Zadar, Croatia, pp 159-16