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Re: University Resources

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From: Xander Andrews
Date: Apr 17, 2025 1:36PM

Not a lawyer, or providing legal advice here in any way, but I would point out that a federal jury ruled in Payan v. LACCD that LA City College failed to meet its legal obligations to two blind students, and inaccessible library resources were listed as part of that failure. We may not be responsible for fixing the accessibility issues of a product, but we could be held responsible for using/licensing inaccessible products.

Many University Libraries have been pushing vendors to improve the accessibility of their products during contract renewal negotiations. The University of Washington Libraries tested all of our E-resources<https://lib.uw.edu/services/accessibility/e-resource-testing/#p> in 2022, to evaluate if they meet basic keyboard navigation. Higher level testing is being done by the Library Accessibility Alliance<https://www.libraryaccessibility.org/testing>.
[http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uw-s3-cdn/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/06/21094817/Univ-of-Washington_Memorial-Way.jpg]<https://lib.uw.edu/services/accessibility/e-resource-testing/#p>
Library E-Resource Accessibility Testing – UW Libraries<https://lib.uw.edu/services/accessibility/e-resource-testing/#p>
UW Libraries' testing efforts to ensure E-resources procured for use at the Libraries are accessible to individuals with disabilities.
lib.uw.edu



Xander Andrews, MCRP

Disability Resources for Students

Assistant Director, Academic Services



011 Mary Gates Hall

Box 352808

Seattle, WA 98195-2808

206-616-9757



From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of Brandon Keith Biggs via WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2025 10:02 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Cc: Brandon Keith Biggs < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] University Resources

Hello,
U.S. universities will often offer to properly tag or convert papers to
Word that a student requests. There's a 2-week turn-around, and sometimes
math content, for example, is not done correctly, but it's very nice to
have the university who will be willing to make a complex file usable on
request.
For less complex PDFs, I recommend:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://papertohtml.org/__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!k7vvAxRXZ6r4iheOvZeMO8OWLhM3TqYOXj902TK3-zrGuDmwNlXp427W_O9upWb1DvINcs8D21kImr0IG-5Nfp1guw$
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!k7vvAxRXZ6r4iheOvZeMO8OWLhM3TqYOXj902TK3-zrGuDmwNlXp427W_O9upWb1DvINcs8D21kImr0IG-48r6CSlQ$ >


On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 9:24 AM Julian Tenney via WebAIM-Forum <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I would say no, but it probably depends. If it's just general access to a
> third party resource, then the accessibility is not the University's
> responsibility. However that doesn't mean that the University shouldn't
> review the accessibility of that resource and i) highlight any issues to
> users, or ii) raise those issues with the third party.
>
> It might be more complicated if access to the resource is an essential
> part of a users job. The problem here is define 'essential'.
>
> The EAA is relevant here, with the onus falling on the third party. It's
> also more complicated because something like pubmed will contain resources
> in turn provided by multiple third parties, who may have varying standards
> / policies when it comes to accessibility.
>
> So in my opinion it's a good question because of the 'what ifs' but in my
> work at University of Nottingham I do not think we are responsible for
> pubmed's accessibility.
>
> Julian
>
> > From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of
> Brian Lovely via WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: 17 April 2025 16:53
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Cc: Brian Lovely < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: [WebAIM] University Resources
>
> I'm a little out of my zone here, so I hope I can word this question
> correctly. If a university provides access to outside resources, for
> example JSTOR or PubMed, is the university responsible for the
> accessibility of those resources?
>
> Thank you,
> Brian Lovely
>
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