Accessibility Services

ARCH Disability Law Centre Library

ARCH Disability Law Centre is a specialty community legal aid clinic dedicated to defending and advancing the equality rights of people with disabilities in Ontario.

Recently, ARCH opened a library that is accessible to the public.

The ARCH Public Library holds a browsing general collection of current material on disability rights, policy and services together with practical information for independent living. It also carries accounts of personal experiences.

As well, the ARCH library houses a historical/archival collection of materials that would be of interest to researchers on disability rights and policy in Canada. The material covers a broad range of topics addressed by ARCH in over 33 years of law reform. Among them: equality rights, employment discrimination, education rights, legal capacity and income security.

All materials are for use in the ARCH Disability Law Centre Library, but if you find something you would like to take home, they will help you locate a copy and direct you to TPL if we have one. Their online catalogue also includes additional electronic resources.

There are two computers with adaptive technology available for library users.

Their catalogue is also available remotely, and online tip sheets show you how to make the most of your catalogue search.

The ARCH Public Library is open 9:30am-4:30pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesdays it is open 12:30pm to 4:30pm.

It is located at 425 Bloor St. East, Suite 110, Toronto.

(It is important to note that the collection is intended for information only, not a substitute for advice on a specific legal matter.)

This new resource sounds fabulous and is well worth a look.

 

 

 

Finding Descriptive Videos In The Catalogue

The Toronto Public Library carries many descriptive videos, and now it's easier to find these in our catalogue.

What are descriptive videos? They are DVDs or videos "which have been augmented with special narration which describes the action for people who have visual impairments.

As a descriptive video plays, it describes the visual elements of action, characters, locations, costumes and sets to the viewer without interfering with the movie's dialogue or sound effects." (Definition from the Free Library of Philadelphia, Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped)

Up until now, descriptive videos were found by typing in the subject heading "Video Recordings for People with Visual Disabilities".

However, often people were unaware of the subject heading, and in this instance even a search by keywords doesn't help. Without the exact heading, the items are hard to locate.

Thanks to a customer's suggestion, now you can use easy-to-remember web addresses to get right to the page that will give you the list of descriptive videos and DVDs.

Just begin with the Toronto Public Library web address and then add any one of the following:

/describeddvds

/audiodescription

/descriptivevideo

/moviesfortheblind

Here's an example: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/describeddvds.

You can also use a shortened version of the address. Simply type www.tpl.ca/describeddvds. 

Of course, you can still use the subject heading if you like!

There are more improvements coming to descriptive video and DVD searching. We'll keep you posted.

About Canada: Disability Rights

The Library has recently received a book entitled About Canada: Disability Rights, by Deborah Stienstra.

Deborah Stienstra is Professor in Disability Studies at the University of Manitoba. She held the Royal Bank Research Chair in Disability Studies from 2000-2003 at the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies. She has worked with national organizations including the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, The Council of Canadians with Disabilities, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. (This information is from the University of Manitoba website.)

The book's sections include:

• What are disability rights?
• People and policies in search of disabilities
• When people with disabilities fall through the cracks
• Disability rights and key areas of Canadian society
• How can people with disabilities claim their rights?
• Learning from ordinary lives, changing social attitudes                         

If you click on the link in the first paragraph of this blog posting, you will find a list of all the libraries which contain a copy of this book. Have a look!

Adult Fiction books featuring characters with a disability

Everyone likes to read books with complex and compelling characters that they can relate to, including people who are in some way affected by physical or intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and/ or hearing and vision impairments.  The following list is a sample of some of the adult fiction books available at the Toronto Public Library that feature a diverse range of characters.    

Animal’s People by Indra Sinha (Physical Disability)

Animal’s People tells the story of a 19-year old orphan of Khaufpur who was horribly injured in the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster.  The effects of chemical exposure caused his bones to become severely twisted, forcing him to walk on all fours resulting in the nickname of Animal.  Despite his severe disability, Animal takes charge of his life rejecting sympathy and continually looking to improve conditions for himself, his pet dog Jara, and the crazy old French nun he lives with named Ma Franci. 

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb (Mental Illness)

Dominick Birdsey is a 40-year old emotionally unavailable housepainter with an identical twin brother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. After a horrific incident of self-mutilation by his brother Thomas, Dominick is forced to take charge of his life and deal with his complicated past involving domestic violence, abuse, and his brother’s mental illness.   

House Rules by Jodi Picuolt (Autism/ Aspergers)

Jacob Hunt is a teenage boy with Asperger’s syndrome.  He is hopelessly unable to understand social cues or express his feelings and thoughts to others, including his devoted mother and troubled brother.  Jacob’s special interest and in-depth knowledge of Forensic Science puts him in the spotlight following the disappearance of his social skills tutor, and threatens to tear his life apart. 

The First Man by Albert Camus (Deaf-Mute)

The First Man is a partly autobiographical novel of Camus’ own life growing up in Algeria.  The novel was discovered amidst the wreckage of the car accident that took Camus’ life, and was later transcribed and published by his daughter Catherine.  The novel describes the childhood and experiences of Jacques Cormery, a young boy who develops a strong attachment to his deaf-mute mother, following the death of his father. 

Blindness by Jose Saramago (Blind)

A man is sitting in his car waiting for the traffic light to change when he is suddenly struck blind.  What at first seems to be an isolated case turns into an epidemic when a day later everyone who had contact with the man also suddenly becomes blind.  As the epidemic continues to spread, government officials panic by locking those who have become blind in a mental institution.  

Handle with Care by Jodi Picuolt (Physical Disability)

Charlotte and her husband are struggling to come up with the money needed to pay for their daughter’s mounting medical expenses.  After much deliberation, Charlotte thinks she has found a solution to their problems.  She will file a wrongful birth lawsuit against her ob/gyn for not disclosing the fact that her child would be born with a severe disability.  The payout will cover all of Willow’s medical expenses, but it means that Charlotte will have to stand up in a court and say in front of everyone, including the daughter she loves more than anything, that she would have terminated her pregnancy had she known about the disability beforehand.      

 

If you have any questions about these books or other materials available at the Toronto Public Library, contact your local branch or call Answerline at 416-393-7131 (TTY 416-393-7030).

Children's Braille Books

Having come to work at Lillian H Smith Branch from various other branches, I wasn't aware of the nearly 100 children's braille books that Lillian has in its collection.  Prior to working here, there were two things I had heard about the branch; it was named after Lillian H Smith who was the first librarian dedicated to children's services in the British Commonwealth and that it had an excellent children's collection.  I wasn't aware that it also had braille books for children.   The braille books fill up two shelves on the first floor and can be found in the South-East corner.  "Braille has been an effective means of communication for people who are blind since 1829 when it was invented in Paris, France by Louis Braille".  For more information, the CNIB does a great job of explaining braille and its history on their website.  Our collection has two kinds of braille books; ones that are strictly braille and others that have clear plastic with braille language overlapping the pictures and text.  This is so that both readers with or without vision loss can enjoy them together.  Going through the collection it is easy to see that it is filled with classics.  Don't live close by or prefer to order some to other locations?  You can search Toronto Public Library's website by using the keyword "braille book" and narrow your results on the left hand side.  If you need further assistance you can also call us at 416-393-7746 or the Answerline at 416-393-7131

Talking Books

For people who have difficulties reading or handling traditional print books, talking books represent an alternative that allows you to continue to enjoy reading.  Most of us are familiar with audiobooks, a popular format which has seen steady growth as people realize how convenient they are when you are on the go.  Today, most commercially available audiobooks come out at the same time or shortly after the hardcover releases of bestsellers, including popular biographies, fiction and nonfiction, mysteries, and other genres.  Unfortunately Canadian literature and academic writings are not prevalent in the commercial audiobook market.

 

Often people use the terms “talking books" and "audiobooks" interchangeably to refer to audio recordings of books.  Although audiobooks are widely available to everyone and are readily obtainable in the marketplace in digital as well as physical format, talking books are restricted to people with perceptual disabilities. Talking books are special audio recordings of books in a proprietary format that have search and navigation features, enabling readers to move from section to section, page to page, paragraph to paragraph, phrase to phrase and/or word to word.

 

Like other book formats, talking books have evolved over time, starting off on vinyl, migrating to cassettes, then to CD, and now available digitally via the web.  Toronto Public Library has over 25,000 talking books available for borrowing by customers as well as over 77,000 commercial audiobooks.  Eligible customers can request talking books through the library’s home library service by completing and submitting a Talking Book application form. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us, we’re here to help.

Kindle expands to include eBooks from public libraries

Earlier this morning, Amazon made a news release regarding the expansion of the Kindle's capabilities to include eBooks downloaded from public libraries. This has been a source of frustration to current users of the Kindle, and was one of the points discussed in my recent review of the product. As such, this is great news! So far the news release only addresses the Kindle's compatability with content downloaded from American public libraries, but I think that it is only a matter of time before the spectrum expands to include libraries north of the Border as well. Since TPL already has such a great collection of downloadable content for its patrons, this would mean a whole new set of options for Kindle users in Toronto.

 

Read the news release here!