Vision Australia became Australia’s first national blindness society in 2004, following the merger of a number of similar organisations.
In July 2004, Royal Blind Society(RBS), the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind (RVIB), Vision Australia Foundation (VAF), and the National Information Library Services (NILS) came together to form Vision Australia.
That was followed by the Royal Blind Foundation Queensland coming into the fold in 2006 and Hear a Book, a Tasmanian producer of audio books, did the same in 2007. In July 2008, Seeing Eye Dogs Australia merged with Vision Australia.
On this week’s Talking Vision, Vision Australia Heritage Collection Librarian Deborah Mould joined to discuss VA’s heritage collection.
“Apart from a memory of what’s gone before, it also serves as an interest point of what’s going ahead. We’ve always been an organisation of change, in fact we were started because of change,” Deborah said.
“It’s really good to see how far we’ve come sometimes… You don’t always realise where this all began or how it’s changed overtime.”
Also on this week’s episode is Bruce Maguire from the Advocacy team discussing accessibility issues around the My Health Record opt-out system and a reader recommend from the VA Library.
Listen to this week’s Talking Vision here or on the player below.