balam - 1:45 pm on Feb 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

(It's nice to see this thread is more civil than the recent "Blind Student Sues" thread...)

FWIW, visually impaired does not mean hearing impaired. I fairly recently found myself at an audio bookstore: Large selection, fairly-wide subject base, current titles, multiple formats... No VI folk when I was there, and the shop was geared more to "people on the move," but audio books have been available for about as long as sound has been recorded.

On libraries having to stock Braille books... No, no library should be expected to stock a complete selection of Braille (or audio) books, just as no one would expect a library to stock a complete selection of "regular" books. Just to start with, there are physical space issues. But through the interconnecting of libraries and the sharing of their combined resources - as exists with my city's library "system;" books can be ordered from any library, and picked up shortly at your local branch - it's nice to think that most all people that wanted to be served could be served.