WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Accessibility advice for school librarians?

for

From: Owens, Parker
Date: Jan 8, 2009 2:05PM

I've actually had some experience here. No comments yet on the actual search mechanisms, but once you get to an article with full etext, there should be at least two options, PDF or text/html. Often, I only see PDF, and most of the time it is a scanned image of a magazine article or book chapter.

Adobe Acrobat has a whole boatload of tools now, and it really isn't that difficult to run OCR on a PDF and spit it out as an accessible text document afterward. I find the text needs cleanup, it isn't a miracle script. But anyway, a scanned PDF image is completely useless to some students.

As far as search, there needs to be a basic search and an advanced search. At http://www.library.eku.edu/new/index.php you can see what we have done with search, there are options for articles, books, databases, ejournals, etc. The reason we split it up this way is because each selection is a different database and application. Not something we decided to do, that is just how things end up in the real world.

Once you choose an option and search - you bounce to a third party site with the generated list of search options, or our homegrown applications. We really don't have any control on third party sites, and sometimes the inhouse web apps were developed years ago by several different groups. So I would say choosing a vendor for the actual lists could be important based on the interfaces for their products, but pre-existing application you may be stuck with.

I am not complaining about our libraries site at all, they are very conscious of web accessibility issues and done a great job pulling all the applications and databases into a simple web page that makes sense. I'm also not claiming the site is completely accessible, but they have made an effort, and continue to work on some of the knottier issues. If you want to contact the web developer, contact <EMAIL REMOVED> .

Parker Owens
Web Accessibility Office
Eastern Kentucky University
254 Case Annex
Richmond, KY 40475
 
Phone: (859) 622-2743
http://www.accessibility.eku.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Adri Edwards-Johnson [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 11:53 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Accessibility advice for school librarians?

Hello,
This is my first time posting here but I've been reading discussions for a
while.

I'm working on a brief article for school librarians and was wanting to
quote advice from this expert group in the piece. Specifically I'm looking
for simple advice you would be willing to offer to library media
specialists on how to make their online or computer based resources more
accessible to students and teaching colleagues with disabilities. I'm
wanting to highlight how easy and inexpensive it can be to initiate change
for easier access to library resources. I'm focusing on tips for library
websites, discussions with vendors for paid products and just talking with
users to see where they have access issues. If there's anything additional
you wish your school librarian had known - or perhaps your loved one's
librarian knew now - I would be happy to take those suggestions off list.

Thank you for your time!
Adri

----