Hi VIS 2022 will take place between 6th – 19th June

it would be great if you can help us join in this celebration of ‘all things’ related to accessible libraries and reading.

The availability of alternative formats and cultural engagement through libraries is critical to ensuring that people who are blind, or who have sight loss or anything that stops them from using standard print, can access, enjoy and share a diverse range of reading and experiences.

Hi VIS (formerly Make A Noise in Libraries) fortnight seeks each year to focus on the importance of accessible libraries and reading; and encourages local and national services to raise the profile of provision, collections and engagement in this area.

This year, rather than concentrate on a particular theme, Share the Vision (who organise Hi VIS fortnight) are leaving things open to Libraries’ active imagination … With the Platinum jubilee Bank Holiday weekend just preceding Hi VIS fortnight, we felt it would be best to keep things flexible. Perhaps you might want to extend the Jubilee celebrations and focus on what’s changed in the last 70 years, in terms of services for those with sight loss… Perhaps you might like to focus on ‘re’-connecting, following what has been a particularly isolating period for people with a vision or print impairment… Perhaps the accessible digital dimension might be something you want to shout about, given how much emphasis has gone into developing this offer over the last 2 years…

What can libraries do?

We would like, during Hi VIS fortnight, for libraries across the UK to highlight and celebrate all that you do to help people with vision and/or print impairments to access and connect to the reading services and formats that best suit them, and to engage with reading and related activities.

Share the Vision are specifically hoping that Libraries will:

• Promote accessible reading formats, services (their own and other organisations’), and related local activities;
• Organise linked events, to encourage participation and increase awareness; and,
• Actively post on social media about these services and activities

Available resources

As in previous years, to help libraries and library workers join in with HiVIS 2022, Share the Vision will be producing a range of high quality digital promotional assets that will be freely available for people to download from our website: www.readingsight.org.uk .

These images will work on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and the content will be provided in formats that will allow local libraries to add in their own content.

• We will be using our Twitter account: @ReadingSight and the hashtag #HiVIS2022 to help spread the word and feature activities that are going on
• Alerts will also be sent out via the Reading Sight mailing list (formerly ‘Six Steps’ Jisc list); – and you might like to share information there about what you are doing too. Heads of Service will be made aware through Libraries Connected; and key supporting stakeholders such as CILIP, The Reading Agency, National Literacy Trust will also be encouraged to participate and promote this annual event.

Please remember, if you are featuring images/photos of your activities on social media, please make sure that these images are accessible by providing an accompanying image/’Alt text’ description. There is a handy Twitter account that you can follow (@AltTxtReminder), which can send you DM reminders when you post images without #AltText; and there is advice online to help you (https://www.rnib.org.uk/accessibility-guidelines-alt-text-what-you-need-know ).

Ideas for activities

• We appreciate that physical events are, for many libraries, still a challenge to deliver in the present circumstances, but if an indoor activity is not possible by early summer, then perhaps you might be able to come up with an online or outdoor option!
• Encourage staff and/or volunteers to (re)familiarise themselves with your service’s accessible provision and the wider, national specialist services that are freely available (https://readingsight.org.uk/accessible-libraries/ ) to you and your users.
• Highlight the accessible stock that you have in your physical and digital collections: large print, Audio/talking books, Braille, tactile, e-book/audio/magazines etc.
• Raise awareness of your accessible digital provision (software/hardware, services, online support sessions etc.)
• Feature your accessible/online book groups; and/or if you have an ongoing Reading Friends project or similar initiative that is open to blind or partially sighted people, then shout about that too!
• Make a link, if you haven’t already, to your local ‘sight loss’ or disability groups and partner organisations and highlight something they have going on during Hi VIS fortnight (especially if it involves reading!)

Visit:www.readingsight.org.uk to access the Hi VIS 2022 resources, when they are available; and join in and engage with HiVIS 2022 via Twitter: @readingsight and using the tag #HiVIS2022. Downloadable, high quality e-assets will be freely available from April on this site.

Thank you!