Accessibility

Library Services welcomes students, staff and visitors with disabilities and Specific Learning Difficulties, such as dyslexia and dyspraxia. Please see our full policy statement for users with disabilities

We encourage you to contact us if you need help in accessing our services, or if you have any questions or feedback.

Accessing our libraries and print collections

Library Services, IT Services and the Disability and Learning Support Service work together to provide the following services and facilities to assist users with disabilities.

If you have a support worker who needs access to our libraries or if you would benefit from a tour of a particular library building, please contact us and we will arrange this for you.

To find out what services are available at which library, please visit their individual library information pages. In particular the Main Library offers a range of specific services and facilities for users with disabilities. 

Digitisation service

Our digitisation service can obtain alternative format versions of library content on behalf of students or staff members with a Reasonable Adjustment Plan (RAP), or similar, in place. If you don't already have a RAP in place, speak to student services about this. 

Loans and renewals 

Most items you borrow will be issued for one week to start with, but will renew overnight every day as long as no-one else needs them. If someone reserves an item you have on loan, it will stop renewing. You will receive a message to your University email account daily up until the due date. 

If other borrowers are waiting for an item you've requested, the item is considered high-demand. When you borrow it, it will be issued to you for two days. It will not renew automatically. You must check your receipt or date-stamp on collecting your request.

We may, in exceptional cases, be able to extend a two-day loan if your disability prevents you from making use of the item in two days. This is decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on availability of the item, so please speak to staff.  

For full details including how many books you can borrow, the rate of fines and other useful information, see our Borrowing books and journals page.

Accessing our website and electronic collections

We purchase many resources which are available online, such as e-books, e-journals and databases. These can be found by searching FindIt@Bham. If a publisher produces information about how accessible their resource is, we will provide a link to it, alongside the licence conditions. Click on 'Show Licence' in the FindIt@Bham record to see this information.

Our website is part of the University of Birmingham intranet, and we also host some of our subject, skills and database guides on the LibGuides platform. There are statements for the intranet, LibGuides and FindIt@Bham which tell you about the accessibility of these websites and where you can get more help. We also provide accessibility statements for eTheses and eData, which are the university's repositories for electronic theses and research datasets.

Colleges

Professional Services