Reading just got even harder for blind and vision-impaired South Australians, the Royal Society for the Blind says, because the Adelaide-based organisation has lost its federal Print Disability Services Program funding from July 1.

Blind and vision-impaired people can now choose to use the society's unfunded skeleton service or send books and other documents interstate to get converted into braille, large print, digital text or audio through Vision Australia or VisAbility.

Under the new system, people will have to send materials interstate via an online portal or by mail, including text books, letters and personal documents, to be to translated by the new provider.

RSB executive marketing manager Darrin Johnson said this would be more difficult for many of the organisation's clients to use than the current face-to-face service.

"It's actually not an easy task and there's also the turnaround issue," Mr Johnson said.

A braille document and a regular one next to each other. ( ABC News )

"If a student needs materials for lectures next week, it's going to extremely difficult for them to get the material, send it over and get it back in time to complete their studies with the postage and time delay."

"It sounds very easy if you're in Canberra to say the clients can send the stuff interstate, that will be fine, but there's actually not a recognition that that's actually quite difficult.

"Our clients have a lot of difficulties they have to face in life, and they overcome them very well, but this is now just one more problem that they're going to have to navigate when it was actually quite simple for them."

The RSB is starting a "Not Happy Dan" campaign and an online petition calling for its funding to be reinstated.

Three-quarters of the RSB's clients are elderly and many live alone.

"We believe that directing an 82-year-old woman who has gone blind late in life after developing glaucoma to use a website to arrange a service shows just how out of touch the department is," Mr Johnson said.

Other formats not as useful as braille

Michael Zannis uses the Print Disability Services Program to get study materials converted into braille.

"Being blind or vision-impaired can be really difficult and I want to make things easier for myself and other people who are legally blind and vision-impaired, not harder, and that's what losing this funding and taking this service away from South Australia will certainly do," Mr Zannis said.

"It's really difficult compared to having someone here in South Australia that you can talk to and work through any issues with."

Having a computer read out text online was not the same as reading braille, he said, because he could not work out how words were spelt.

"I won't be able to advance in life, I won't be able to understand sentence structures and be able to read things like everyone else can so I can then write well," he said.

Michael Zannis gets textbooks converted into braille as well as novels and Christmas cards. ( ABC News: Isabel Dayman )

Services revised to 'reach wider audience'

Federal Social Services Minister Dan Tehan announced on May 15 that Vision Australia and VisAbility would take over the Print Disability Services Program (PDSP).

Federal Social Services Minister Dan Tehan. ( ABC News: Jed Cooper )

Mr Tehan did not respond directly to questions about changes to services in South Australia, but said the Federal Government had increased funding for the service to $5.7 million over three years.

"A review of the PDSP in 2017 recommended improvements to the program to reach a wider audience," he said.

"Following a competitive tender process in 2017, VisAbility and Vision Australia were selected to provide services under the Print Disability Services Program 2018-2021."

The RSB will continue to offer its scaled-down service for six months.

It previously received $156,500 in funding per year.