LIBRARY SERVICES FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED CITIZENS

Abstract

Blind and visually impaired citizens are a special category of people with disabilities. According to the World Health Organization data, there are about 39 million blind people around the world and 246 million people have very low vision.  The formation of a barrier-free environment in the field of social services, culture, education, employment is the most important task for representatives of federal and regional authorities, ministries and departments. Institutions of various profiles are doing great work on socio cultural rehabilitation of persons with restricted health abilities and on ensuring them equal opportunities with other citizens to participate in social life. Library services for people with complete or partial loss of vision are part of the social rehabilitation system. People of this category are provided with information by special libraries for the blind and visually impaired as well as by the network of state and municipal libraries. In the context of globalization, there  rises the question of integrating special libraries for the blind and publicly accessible libraries into the  united system for to provide disabled people with  information services.  The article gives a brief characteristic of publications devoted to library services for blind and visually impaired citizens. Library specialists actively discuss ways of uniting resources and promoting services for people with total or partial loss of vision for to raise effectiveness in solving tasks of adaptation for this group of inhabitants.  Such system could support people, having restrictions on vision, in full realization of their rights and liberties, create conditions for raising culture of consumption of products and social sphere services.