Subject area: Disability awareness for library staff

Format: Webinar recording available via YouTube 

Length: 1 hour

Audience: library professionals

Organisers: ALIA Disability

Presenters: Jillian Black (NDIS), Darlene McLennan, Dr Jo Kaeding, Anne and Marie from the Plumtree team

 

Reflection:

The objective of this webinar is to increase library staff awareness of disability needs for individuals and families. The webinar offers insights from a range of speakers with various points of focus on particular communities living with disability that face barriers in libraries. Having a background in Occupational Therapy and previously working at Macquarie University Accessibility Services, the barriers that people with disability face when out in the community and at universities is something I am greatly familiar with. It is an area of skills and knowledge that I place immense importance on and aim to continuously improve to build true inclusion and belonging in public libraries.

I learned about a range of organisations that library staff can access disability training through. The “Lets Talk Disability” program is available online or can come on site to workplaces and is led and run by people with lived experience of a range of disabilities. The emphasis of these workshops is learning through real stories and human connection as oppose to textbook or abstracted theoretical learning. Disability Awareness offers free elearning training with a focus on tertiary institutions to make sure their website content is accessible such as using screen readers and other accessible formats to support students with hearing and vision impairment. Dr Jo Kaeding’s research on disability in libraries is extremely useful for public organisations and highlights the importance of staff awareness of disability. I learned that staff attitudes, ignorance and misconceptions are the greatest barrier for addressing access and inclusion. Kaeding found a great number of people with disability maintained ongoing visits to their public libraries despite physical barriers in the environment if staff gave them a sense of inclusion.

This webinar was highly informative, compelling and practical as it gave me several avenues for training, exposed me to a whole range of invisible disabilities and understanding of the fear of negative judgements that affect not just library patrons but library professionals who do not disclose their disabilities, and key strategies for libraries such as universal design, keywords signing, and becoming ‘dementia-friendly’ as necessary groundwork for access and inclusion. Kaeding also proposed getting a cohort together in your workplace to undertake disability awareness training and collectively shape a culture of disability awareness, empath and accountability, while supporting each other to continue this work and build confidence in helping people with disability who experience the library.