Also, for visually impaired people there is no equivalent of posters advertising the latest Catherine Cookson, or table-top displays in Waterstones. There are scarcely any sources of book reviews, compared with print. And there are very few places where visually impaired people can go to choose books, so the choice has to be made remotely with very little information. But the readers' opinion survey carried out by the National Library for the Blind in early 1998 revealed that, like everyone else, visually impaired readers want to browse and choose books for themselves. Computers and the Internet offer huge advantages to visually impaired people, by making it much easier to manage information and, potentially, offering access to a vast source of information.
Young people are highly IT literate.
At RNIB New College, for example, all students have e-mail accounts and use them daily. There are visually impaired people all over the UK, and if they live in a centre of population they may be able to meet each other if they wish. But many visually impaired young people are now educated in mainstream schools, where they may feel isolated from others in a similar situation. More widely, many visually impaired people are elderly or housebound. The Internet offers the opportunity to be part of a virtual community, wherever they live in the world.