Accessibility

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Revision as of 16:59, 19 June 2018 by WillSkora (Talk | contribs) (added agreements with public libraries and OCR)

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This page is intended to collect resources related to accessibility as a result from the code4lib 2018 breakout discussions.

Accessibility Resources

From C4L18

Critical Mass Accessibility - Lightning talk given by Kate Deibel at C4L 2018; A call to create a library accessibility community.

Other resources

Awesome-A11Y - pretty comprehensive list of specifications, guides, articles, and talks.


Assessing Third Party Vendors for Accessibility

Before purchasing electronic resources, you should verify if they are accessible and not take the vendor's word (or VPAT).

What questions should you ask to assess the accessibility of a vendor's product?

The University of Washington and Kent State University (KSU) require prospective vendors to complete a questionnaire. The questions on KSU's form can also be viewed as a PDF

You'll also want to conduct manual testing based on those responses.

Web Accessibility Policies

Some public libraries (Sacramento, Chicago) are officially organized and structured as a government entity underneath and adopt policies of their general city.

Others (NYPL) that are self managed and adopt their own web accessibility policies.

NYPL Web Accessibility Policy

Chicago Public Library's Bibliocommons policy and their general website accessibility policies.



Accessibility Complaints filed against libraries

(This list is not exhaustive)

National Federation of the Blind vs. Sacramento Public Library, 2012.

Complaints were to made to the OCR, the Federal Office of Civil Rights (USA), were made in the 2010s, alleging that the referenced library's website and/or electronic resources were not 'accessible' and did not provide did not provide equal/equivalent access to all patrons. The OCR had found the complaints to have merit and began an investigation with the libraries.

In all cases listed below, the libraries wished to resolved the complaint and entered into agreements with OCR to close the investigation.

Boston Public Library, 2017 1 and 2 (pdf) Chicago Public Library, 2016 1 and 2 (pdf) Detroit Public Library, 2016 1 and 2 (pdf) Los Angeles Public Library, 2017 1 and 2 (pdf)