On Thursday evening over 100 Lambeth residents piled into the Borough’s Carnegie library to block the councils attempts to close it down.
Lambeth plans to close half the borough’s libraries and turn three of them into Gymnasiums.
Lambeth has some of the most accessible libraries in the country and has won national awards for digital inclusion for Visually Impaired people.
Two mass demonstrations to stop the closures have been supported by Deaf and Disabled residents.
Roger Lewis from DPAC’s steering group has been involved in the campaign throughout.
The council trade union, Unison, has organised and paid for BSL Interpreting at the demonstrations therefore ensuring Deaf people who use the libraries can participate in the campaign.
All Lambeth libraries computers are fully accessible to Visually Impaired people and groups supporting Visually Impaired people and Deaf people to learn and use computers run at several libraries.
With the introduction of Universal Credit’s using a “digital by default” method of claimant access, inclusion is a major issue as all claims and preprocessing will be online only.
The councils own digital support programme is inaccessible yet the council has simply ignored Disabled residents concerns about this.
Library workers have taken over five days of strike action so far and Lambeth UNISON is about to ballot council staff for branch wide strike action to defend the Libraries.
DPAC applauds this occupation, and we invite our supporters to send their own messages of support to the protesters at https://defendthe10-lambeth.
