Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The ADA ensures people with disabilities equal opportunity for employment and access to transportation, services and public and commercial facilities.

• ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities (ADAAG)
• ADA Hot Links: Links to information on a variety of aspects of the ADA
• Great Lakes ADA and Accessible IT Center:  Resources for all aspects of the ADA. Staff of the center can provide assistance via email, US mail and telephone.
• US Department of Justice ADA Home Page: An extensive list of resources to help comply with ADA.
• ADA Title II Technical Assistance Manual: Covering State and Local Government Programs and Services

Special Needs

• Library Accessibility The Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA) provides a toolkit, “Library Accessibility –What Trustees Need to Know” that covers access issues including but are not limited to patrons who have cognitive, mental, or emotional illnesses; learning and/or developmental disabilities; physical disabilities; service animals; and patrons needing assistive technologies.

• Adults with Special Needs: A Resource and Planning Guide for Wisconsin’s Public Libraries
  Planning document for developing library services for adults with special needs.

• Serving Special Populations: - A guide to good planning that identifies all the library's potential constituencies, including individuals with special needs, and specific strategies for reaching them and providing materials in formats they can utilize.

• Special Needs: Best practices - Covers public library service to individuals who are displaced or live in residential care, foster care, deten­tion, or treatment facilities and their families and caregivers. This includes families affected by personal disaster during a community emergency; seniors transitioning to or living in residential care facilities; foster and kinship care; teens in detention facilities and treatment centers; and youth with a parent in jail or prison.

• Family Village  provides a variety of resources for children and adults on more than 300 disabilities.

• Special Needs Programming
  A series of articles for planning and presenting library programs adapted for children with special needs. The series is posted on the Association for Library Service to Children blog.

• Public Library Services for Youth with Special Needs: A Plan for Wisconsin
  Planning document for developing library services for youth with special needs.

• Libraries and Autism: We're Conencted - Offers resources to help library staff more effectively serve individuals with autism and their families.

Vision Impairment

Assistive Technology

• EASI: Equal Access to Software and Information
• Sharper Vision Store
• WATI: Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative

Services

• Wisconsin Council of the Blind & Visually Impaired
• Wisconsin Talking Book and Braille Library, part of the Talking Book Program of the Library of Congress, provides braille and recorded books and playback equipment for those Wisconsin residents who for any physical reason cannot read normal print. Wisconsin Talking Book and Braille Library is located in the Milwaukee Public Library's Central Library in downtown Milwaukee:

• Wisconsin Services for Blind and Visually Impaired offers information and links on services available to the blind and visually impaired. Maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services.
• Wisconsin Council of the Blind & Visually Impaired offers vision rehabilitation services for Wisconsin residents providing knowledge and skills to enable independent living. Web resources include links to organizations, government services, and educational resources designed to assist the blind and visually impaired.
• American Library Association - Covers materials, assistive technologies, access issues, and collection development resources for serving people with visual disabilities. 
• American Printing House for the Blind is a source of products for the blind and visually impaired.
• American Foundation for the Blind
• National Federation of the Blind Newsline is a free dial-in service offering access to more than 200 newspapers nationwide, including the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
• Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic offers audio editions of more than 100,000 textbooks and educational titles in a wide variety of subjects. Titles cover all education levels, from Kindergarten to post-graduate.
• Blind Readers’ Page
• Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind

Hearing Impairment

• American Library Association - Covers issues related to serving people with hearing disabilities. 
• American Sign Language Browser An online American Sign Language (ASL) browser where you can look up thousands of ASL signs and learn interesting things about them.
• Friends of Libraries for Deaf Action - Products, programs and services that assist libraries in serving people with hearing disabilities. 
• Captioned Media Program - Provides access to more than 4,000 captioned titles through its Free Loan Media Program and maintains a database of additional captioned media available for purchase. Also serves as a clearinghouse of information on captioning.
• Wisconsin Office for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
• Wisconsin Freelance Interpreter List