Participation is Non-Negotiable: Libraries for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

Abstract

This article is written as the conclusion of the project “Open Science for Everybody! Accessibility to Information for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons at Libraries” for the postgraduate course “Library and Information Studies” at the University of Vienna. This article, as the project itself, describes the status quo of accessibility of people with hearing disorders at libraries, mostly in Europe. Afterwards solutions and measures of other institutions have been collected and analyzed, in order to show that accessibility is not necessarily expensive, but depends primarily on the mindset and sensitization, in this case concerning hearing disorders, of the institutions and of the society.