Availability of accessible publications: designing a methodology to provide reliable estimates for the Right to Read Alliance.

Objectives: To establish reliable estimates of the proportion of books available in formats accessible to visually impaired people; to recommend a practical method of updating the estimates.

Methods: The project had two stages. Stage one estimated the overall availability of all categories of books. The British National Bibliography (BNB) for 1999-2003 was chosen as the sampling frame. A sample of 2069 titles over the 5 years was selected using a systematic sample design. These titles were then checked for availability against the catalogues of four major producer/suppliers of materials in accessible formats. The second stage involved checking the availability of books in six genres; about 400 titles for each genre were examined.

Results: Of the titles selected for the overall estimate, 92 (4.4%) were found to be available in one or more accessible formats. Availability of titles in accessible formats varied greatly between categories. Adult fiction had the highest number of available publications (26.3%), least represented were cookery (1.9%) and gardening (1.8%).

Conclusions: This study provided baseline figures and a methodology for the Right to Read Alliance to monitor their progress in campaigning for more books to be accessible to visually impaired people.