During testimony Feb. 22 before an appropriations subcommittee on the Library's fiscal 1996 budget request, blind individuals occupied most of the extra chairs in the small hearing room on the House side of the Capitol.
The reason: They were there to show support for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS).
NLS Director Frank Kurt Cylke explained to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch that NLS distributes braille and audio books and magazines free of charge through local libraries.
Funding for the NLS is split three- ways, he said: one-third is covered by a congressional appropriation, one-third by the states and one-third by the U.S. Postal Service, which distributes the audio and braille books as well as sound recordings at no cost to eligible recipients.
During a second day of testimony, James Gashel, director of government affairs for the National Federation of the Blind, laid a stack of binders 2 1/2 feet tall on the long oval table. The binders contained the braille versions of the latest issue of Fortune magazine, C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Edwin Newman's A Civil Tongue.
"Library services are very, very, very critical to us. If you're blind, you can't buy a [braille] book. They're $65 to $70 and they're too big to store," said Mr. Gashel, laying a hand atop the stack of binders.
Like almost everyone who testified, Mr. Gashel praised the Librarian's collaborative private-public effort to start a National Digital Library.
"Electronic access and digitization are a potential revolution for the blind in obtaining access to literature," said Mr. Gashel.
Already the technology is there for scanners to transfer the printed page to computer text, which can be read in a synthesized voice over the telephone, he said.
"In generations to come, our children and children's children who are blind are going to be reading in digitized text."
