BLIND and partially sighted youngsters are being held back by a lack of books, say experts at a Worcester college.

The Royal National Institute of the Blind New College says the acute shortage of books in large print, audio or Braille is seriously restricting the lives and learning of visually impaired young people.

The situation is so bad that the college has set up a reprographics department licensed to make copies of books for its 84 students aged 11 to 19.

The college, on Whittington Road, is supporting a major national campaign by the RNIB calling for the Government to invest time and money and work with publishers to make more books available for blind and partially sighted children.

An RNIB report - Where's My Book? - published today states that nine out of 10 fiction books never make it into a format accessible to a blind or partially sighted child and only 12 per cent of maths and eight per cent of science GCSE textbooks in England are available in Braille or large print.

Not one of the dictionaries or atlases most widely used by 14 to 16-year-olds in England can be read by visually impaired children.

Cathy Wright, librarian at the college, said: "Their whole reading experience is impoverished. They do not have the opportunity to go to a book shelf and browse. I think it really restricts their experience.

"Through reading fiction we can go into fantasy land and have exciting adventures. It helps to broaden our experience as a human being. I think being able to do this is critical.

"Children also perform better academically if they are good readers. The effects of not having reading material available can be devastating. We very much support the right to read campaign."

She said it was particularly hard for visually impaired children in mainstream schools because books in Braille or large print are so expensive.

Now the college wants publishers to make life easier for its reprographics department.

Mrs Wright said: "Publishers should be encouraged to share electronic files. Changing a book's format is a very big job. We mostly do A-level text books. If publishers could supply the contents as a text file it would make life a lot easier."