Accessibility of Public Libraries for Disabled Users based on IFLA Standard

Abstract

A public library is a library dedicated to the general public without regard to tribe, race, religion, age, gender, social, or economic status in providing services to its inhabitants. One of the areas that librarians should focus on is the disabled users. For that, public libraries need accessibility to access information to support their daily lives. The research focuses on accessibility for persons with disabilities in public libraries, as the understanding of accessibility for persons with disabilities is still not fully understood and implemented. The method used in this study is library research. Based on the results of the literature review for the physical access standard, the four public libraries have already followed the established standards. For the media format standard, it can be concluded that the overall public library has already provided collections such as braille and computers, but not enough for the diffable libraries. Standards of service and communication, based on the evaluation of the four libraries, the library officers have not received special training for the service of disabled librarians. With this literature research, it is expected to be a benchmark for library stakeholders to be able to guide the International Standards issued by IFLA in public libraries that are accessible to disabled users.