Lätt för den som har det svårt underlättar för alla : En kvalitativ studie om relationen mellan folkbibliotekarier och funktionsnedsatta användare angående makt, tillgänglighet och begreppsanvändning

Sammanfattning: According to the Swedish library law from 2013 it is the duty of the library to prioritize diverse groups. These minorities include people who speak other first languages than Swedish, the Swedish national minorities, children and adolescents and people with disabilities. People with disabilities is the focus of this study. A big difficulty with the formulation in the library law is that there are many kinds of disabilities that all have varying forms. Regarding the language, there exist different terms for this priority group. This study uses semi structured interviews with four public–librarians from different libraries in the Stockholm region. Based on critical theory with Foucaults theory of power (which focuses on structural relations in society) as a core and conceptual history for analysis, we aim to analyze and discuss the collected material. We want to get an idea of how public librarians are working to make the library accessible for everyone and how their everyday language and the words they are using affects how they view the group of people with disabilities. The pattern that accurses based on both the answers from the interviews and scientific studies shows that larger forms of accessibility have to be in the building plan from the start, since it is difficult to do later. Smaller forms of accessibility such as noise dampening fabrics or earmuffs can serve well for many library visitors and that outreaching work and activities for people with disability often is performed by one person in particular in the workforce. Colleagues are perceived as perverse and nervous and seems to think that the group of disabled people are more difficult to handle than other visitors and are scared to do something wrong.     The conclusion is that availability happens in both the physical room and in the personal treatment and that outreaching to people with disabilities is key to make more people come to the library. The term usage is decided more by the single librarian than the work-team, which can result in misunderstandings. Education to get more personnel to be more comfortable in meeting people with different grades of functionality could be important to bring into future librarian education since several of the librarians we have spoken to can look back on their education and see that it was missing this particular question. We believe that more studies about accessibility and disability would bring more perspectives and a more scientific base to develop work towards the group in question would be important to the research-field Library- and Information Science.