Cyndi: Today's topic is one that will interest many as a new school year begins. Our webcast is on electronic accessibility in library and information services. We have a wonderful panel for our topic. I’m very excited about this. Two of whom are experts in electronic accessibility and library service. They are Marilyn Irwin and Axel Schmetzke. After Marilyn has a rich history in sciences and disabilities for 21 years she directed the Center for Disability Information and Referral at the Indiana University Institute on Disability and Community. Currently she is a professor at EIiana University's School of Library and Information Science. She has caught courses on library services and technologies for people with disabilities. She has also published works and given presentations in this topical area.
Marilyn is the 2005 recipient of the service award from the ASCLA, and that translates to mean the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies which is a division of the American Library Association. And Marilyn you probably didn't know I found that information, did you? You're too unassuming, here, not to share that. Marilyn is also currently serving a term right now as the vice president and president elect for that division. Axel, Dr. Schmetzke is known by many in the field of libraries and electronic accessibility. He's focused his research on the accessibility of web-based education and resources for people with disabilities. He is an associate professor in reference and bibliographic instruction at Stevens Point library. He has worked as both a college instructor and as a special ed teacher in the public schools and I think gives you a fascinating perspective, Axel. He's a frequent author and speaker on the topic of electronic accessibility in library systems. He has guest edited issues in library high hi tack on this topic and moderates a discussion form on electronic accessibility and libraries.
We thought that it was important that our panel consist of folks that had a wide range of experiences. For this reason, we've invited Jennifer Duncan to join our webcast today. She's been asked to pose questions and make comments that would represent the experiences of many in library and information services. Not an accessibility expert herself, Jennifer has worked for many years in library systems so she'll be bringing that perspective, in addition to the important perspectives that Axel and Marilyn bring. So hi, Jennifer.
Jennifer: Hi.
Cyndi: I can tell you that Jennifer's current position is as the electronic resources librarian at Utah State University's Merrill Cazier library which is where the National Center on Disability to Access and Education is housed. She helps troubleshoot the electronic journals and databases available to both local and remote users. She has worked in the e-resources field since 1999, and apparently those, that was the early days for those types of things. In fact you said that was dinosaur time, right, Jennifer.
Jennifer: I think I’m one of the first of that generation called electronic resources librarians.
Cyndi: There you go. Jennifer has also worked at Columbia University in New York, and Texas Christian University in Texas. So welcome to all of you, and I do want to remind our listeners that they can submit questions that our panel will answer at any time, by going to the webcast page and submitting it through the form that is on that page. The other thing that I would want to let our listeners know is that Axel, well, he submitted, and then Marilyn added to it a little bit, here, a list of resources that we have linked off of our site. I would encourage folks to go to the National Center webcast page and look for those resources, because many of those will be referenced in our discussion today.
You know, libraries face a lot of challenges where individuals with disabilities are concerned. And certainly access to all of the holdings is a huge issue. I think most libraries at this point in time are feeling pretty comfortable addressing and dealing with the issues of physical access. But we are in an entirely new realm, now, and that is the need to push out the electronic access so that all the patrons can get the materials that they need and the reasons that they are coming to the library. With that said I do want to just limit our discussion today to accessibility of electronic information, of course that is the title of our topic, but I would hate for folks to think we're going to be talking about physical access, and physical accommodations during this time. I’m going to be kind of moderating this, but it will be a free-form discussion, and I’m going to start my first question to the group, I think it's important for the listeners to understand what it is that happens to students with a disability who are trying to use typical library services from a distance.
So let me just ask if you could comment or provide some examples on that kind of thing, and I’m going to start with you, Axel. Can you help the listeners understand this phenomenon and describe, provide some examples.
Axel: Before I start with an example let me briefly explain for which people with which type of disability online, access to online resources is often a problem. There's one big group that I’d like to refer to as people with print disabilities, which includes everyone who has difficulties reading printed text because of a number of conditions, blindness, visual impairment, color blindness, certain learning disabilities like dyslexia or certain mobility problems like somebody who cannot turn pages or use a regular keyboard. And then there are people with cognitive and or with certain cognitive and neurological disabilities that people with epilepsy or attention deficit disorder, and finally, since we are talking about the multimedia environment, the people who are deaf or are severely hearing impaired, who, for whom accessible design matters a whole lot.
Now, I like to run you through one example, let's assume we have a student who's blind, who uses a screen reader to access information on the computer. And now screen reader is not a person, a screen reader is a software program that pretty much reads for us what's on the screen. It also allows the student to navigate the screen, it gives the student information, for example, where the cursor is, in the middle or the top of the screen, how many elements are there, how many paragraphs, it'll skip from link to link, et cetera, et cetera. It also allows the student to use alternative key strokes, and so instead of the mouse to manipulate the cursor and to interact with the computer. Let's assume that students would like to find some databases on the library web page.
Let's assume that the student has already, or has found a link to the library home page. Now, as he clicks on that home page, one of the first things that, problems that he may encounter is that the logo of the library has no alternative text along with it. So there would be no confirmation for the student that, indeed, he ended up at the library home page. But let's assume there was such a tag, and he goes, oh, I’m in the library's home page. Then the next problem he may encounter is that there may be image maps that point and lead to the various library resource or services. And if these image tags, image maps of various sections of the image map doesn't have alternative text, in the html, in the code, then we again, the student would be absolutely lost.
But let's assume that this is all okay, alternative text, he would find his way. Still another big problem, and that is that he may not be able to easily navigate that site. I don't know how - my library, the home page in my library, and I think it's pretty typical, has the left column a directory, a sort of, that allows you to navigate the various sections of the library and services. The main information is always kept in the main screen. A student who likes, and it happens that the link to our database is right in the main section of the screen. So the student, in order to get there, would every time have to read through the directory before he finally would get to the link to the database. And that can be very, very tiresome. And you know, no angels, we have no link in there that would allow the student to go right over it.
That would be a big problem currently at our site. But let's assume that it all works and somehow the student manages to get into our database section. Now depending on each database he goes into, he may find all kinds of different problems. And I report some problems that we have found in a study that was collected data in 2003-2004. The first one again is there may be no skip navigation link, as an example in this case, at that time. If it's still a frame design as it was the case at the time of silver platter the student would probably get lost in the frame structure, as those frames were improperly labeled. Now many image-type elements in the page that have no, or non-december crypt alt-tags, project muse would be a case in point. Dialogue boxes may be improperly labeled.
Hobbit was a culprit here. One database required installation of additional software, and it happened that with a screen reader you were unable to install it. Well science caused the screen reader to crash. There was some compatibility problem. Finally, let's assume, despite all these problems, that a hypothetical student would encounter finally finds a document, that document may be in a pdf image only format, which is absolutely inaccessible to screen readers. That's one example of the type of problems that a blind person, in this case, would have to grapple with.
Cyndi: So in that instance, you're describing the experience of a patron who, if they could even surround those, would never really get to any collection that would be of any use to them, because they'd end up at a pdf that was inaccessibly marked up.
Axel: Right.
Cyndi: Interesting. Marilyn can you think of other examples of how it is that, you know, patrons with disabilities get caught and have problems accessing information.
Marilyn: Certainly. I recently completed a study of liberal arts colleges to try and figure out whether their home page was accessible, and when Axel was saying let's assume, let's assume, one of the issues is that all of the top 50 schools, according to the U.S. News and World Report study, only three had accessible home pages. So you might even have difficulty getting from the home page of the college or university, or school situation, K-12 school situation.
Cyndi: To the library.
Marilyn: To the library. So it may be that the front door to the entire institution may cause a problem in getting into the electronic door of the library.
Cyndi: And that's certainly, you know, that was the experience in the WebAIM data sets as well, looking at just home pages. It was impossible to think that folks could actually get, you know, much deeper into the structure. You know, I’m thinking, as well, that we're really talking about more students than I know, Axel you provided us a wonderful description of students that are blind, but you know, we do have a lot of other students that are going to be at a disadvantage. Can you think of another example, and how to talk about the dilemmas that they might have.
Marilyn: I can address that if you want me to.
Cyndi: Sure.
Marilyn: One of the issues is that for people who have problems with mouth control, is that if the program isn't set up so that it can be tabbed through with a keyboard only, then people who have no control of their hands, for example, who use either a mouth stick or a keyboard access- -
Cyndi: Or some alternative input is what you're saying.
Marilyn: Correct. They wouldn't be able to get through the entire program to access the information. Some of the programs are set up so that you, and web pages, are not set up so that you can key through them or tab through them to get to the particular area you're looking for.
Cyndi: Yeah, that's very true.
Jennifer: You know I was just thinking of an issue that pertains to many users, whether or not they have a disability, which is remote access. And I know at our own library the remote access issue would be doubly frustrating for users with disability, because we have descriptions on how to activate that access primarily in jpeg format, and they're not alt-tabbed as well. And additional software needs to be down loaded, browsers need to be con figured, and I know they wouldn't work well with screen readers. Remote access frustrating everyone, probably doubly frustrating.
Cyndi: Certainly in the example you gave they're not going to have access to someone that can really help them with the down loads or what have you.
Jennifer: Right.
Cyndi: I’m kind of curious, from your perspective, how pervasive is this problem? And maybe that's not a question that can be answered by this panel. But you know, Axel, I know you've certainly done research in this area, and well Marilyn, you're talking about some as well. But give us a peek of how broad this problem is in library and information services. We'll start with you, Axel.
Axel: I hate the question, because I look at my own library, we have very few people who will be affected at this point. The problem is there's probably a reason for that. We're trying to create an inviting environment to get everyone in equally represented in our library. And currently that's obviously not the case. So to accomplish that we really need to go out and create an accessible infrastructure and invite people to come in.
Cyndi: Well Axel you're actually reminding me of a story that Cynthia Waddell shares and she says, you know, trying to identify or count the numbers of people with disabilities that are barred from the web is like trying to count the numbers of people with disabilities on buses before buses were accessible. Now I mean it's just, you know, you can't get to that. But with that said, I know that you've done some research looking at just some very basic, base line accessibility of libraries, I believe they were in your state, correct.
Axel: Well I looked at the number of different samples. In my state I collect data every year, and get somewhat of a trend information on how accessibility is improving or not. Here within the University of Wisconsin's system, there has been quite a bit of improvement over from between 1999 and 2003. The pages that were accessibility hurdles a tool called Bobby can evaluate we're 31 percent only. And that number has increased to almost 80 percent by 2003. I must say though, unfortunately, since then the improvement has somewhat leveled out, and the nationwide, I took a sample of 24 libraries, schools, and actually I was declined between I think it was data between 2000 and 2002. What I found interesting, by the way, in that, in both data, was when I separated that sample by those web sites, those library web sites with a home page had undergone a redesign, accessibility had dropped 47 percent, to 24. And for those without a major redesign, accessibility was higher to begin with, 68 percent, had gone up to 81 percent. So people who did a major redesign of a web page, at least at that time, not necessarily all did not pay attention to accessibility. But they made it more fancy, they made it less accessible.
Cyndi: Marilyn, any data you're aware of that would give us a peek at this problem.
Marilyn: I think Axel's done the bulk of the work so I’ll divert to him on that particular question.
Axel: May I mention one more part of the study. I also looked at the web pages of the library schools, the library, the school's library information design, thinking if they're accessible that probably means there's awareness of accessibility among those who run the schools. And unfortunately the web pages, I found that the web sites of library schools, that's the old term, of course, library information centers, were rather inaccessible. In the U.S. in 2002 only 30 percent of the pages were free of the excess barriers that bobby could measures, and otherwise was 36 percent. So leaders here, it seems are not really tuned in to accessibility.
Cyndi: Yeah, and of course then that speaks to what may be happening in generations of folks in your discipline to come. Jennifer, as you listened to what Axel is sharing, does it surprise you at all? I mean when you think of library systems you've been involved in, does this- - but maybe it's just still so new on people's radar.
Jennifer: You know, I’m involved in a library redesign here at Utah State, and our current web page is extremely simple, and we understand it to be accessible. We have a web master who was hesitant to make the changes to it because he was concerned about what it would do for accessibility. And the committee put forward all kinds of suggestions, and it's just like Axel was saying, really fancy, technology, kind of flashy.
And many of the things that we wanted, our web master told us specifically that is not going to be compliant. So I think it's just essential, when you have a web site redesign, that you have a web master that's tuned in to that, and can kind of give the committee that's charged with this task some insight into what will be accessible and what will not be accessible.
Cyndi: It makes me want to ask this question, and this would go back to Marilyn and Axel. What I think I’m almost hearing Jennifer say is that the trend would be, you know, people in the accessibility field for a long time have been saying, you don't have to change the look or feel or functionality. You can have a jazzy site and have it still be accessible. What I’m hearing Jennifer say is that maybe that's not always true within library and information sciences. Any comments on that.
Jennifer: Let me interject. Our web master did tell us, well, we can do x, y, or z, but we can't do it exactly like you're proposing. It wasn't telling us we had to have a stripped-down site. I wanted to make sure that was clear.
Cyndi: Right. Any thought on that? I would imagine that would be something a lot of folks think about, and maybe even worry about.
Marilyn: Two comments on that, first, when Jennifer was saying that you had to have someone who was at tuned to that, in 2000 Eric an Lillian and Connie VanFleet did studies related to public libraries and academic libraries and the accessibility of their web sites. One of the things they found to be true in, pretty much across the board, was that those libraries that had accessible web sites were those libraries where there was someone who had a disability connection working in the library. So that person knew about people with disabilities, to be able to know that this was something that was important that needed to be done.
I'm hoping, and I’m beginning to see a tipping point in this particular area, where people, the awareness is coming to the forefront, and unfortunately it's coming at a time when there are limited funds available in libraries to make changes. That's a whole other issue and I won't get into that one right now. The second part, though, is that you can make a web site that is accessible and still attractive. There are several out there that, and I don't, unfortunately, have any at my finger tips right now. But there are several that are out there that have done a very good job of looking very nice, and still being accessible. I think it's a myth, and I’d like to take this opportunity in this webcast, to break down that myth, saying that you can design a web page that does look nice, and still have it be accessible.
Cyndi: Well, and, you know, I think we see that in a lot of other areas at the same time, there may just be enough uniqueness in the ways in which libraries are serving out information that, you know, it's important I think to cover this and to be explicit about it. You know, Marilyn I’m kind of intrigued with what you just said, and I don't want us to take too much of a segue, but you'd mentioned to me just the other day that you do see that critical mass within your own discipline right now, and you called it a tipping point. Can you just mention what you mean by that, without us going off on to a whole discussion about library funding and resources?
Marilyn: I’ve been giving presentations at professional conferences for the last 15, 20 years in the area of library services for people with disabilities. And any chance I get to give a presentation on any topic related to serving people with disabilities, I take that opportunity. And I would get on a program and get to the conference, and five people would show up in the room. Because it was not considered a hot topic. This past June, Axel and I were on a panel talking about this very issue at the American Library Association conference. In a huge room where just about every seat was filled, and there were people standing.
Cyndi: So a lot of interest.
Marilyn: Yes. So I’m beginning to see that the pendulum is swinging and people are beginning to have an awareness that there is an issue, and for you to provide this webcast, and for the people who are listening in to come to the webcast is an indication that there is a growing interest in this particular area, and a growing awareness. And I’m very pleased to hear that.
Cyndi: That's great.
Axel: I’d like to also mention the situation with indexing databases which also gives rise to, I won't say a lot of degree of optimism. When I talk to vendors around, say around 2000 or so, most of them had no clue when I raised the question of accessibility with regard to the products that they were selling, and displaying. Three years later, every vendor knew what accessibility was, and had some grasp of the concept. For detailed delta center if you put it in the hands they at least had some idea of what this was all about. But Mary Beth Chambers published in 2003, and also it speaks to that issue. And shows that vendors have an increased awareness of that issue.
Cyndi: Well that's important, too, because of course, you know, you can only control your own web site. As soon as you start getting into those back end issues, the databases, the real, you know, guts of library and information science, your hands are going to be tied by what it is that you have purchased, I would imagine.
Axel: Yes, uh-huh.
Jennifer: My thought is one way that they can advocate that is in the licensing of the databases so people can work with library acquisitions when they're negotiating those licenses they should probably, it might be a chance to start demanding com fly answer in the license agreement. Because librarians have a lot of economic cloud they've been able to mobilize through the library association. I think that may be the real way to move forward.
Cyndi: Jennifer what you're talking about is right in line with the movement that we see in governments and other areas of education right now, and even some of the private industries, where folks are looking at requiring accessibility, to a certain level. I mean you can't just, obviously, say, it must be accessible. You must state the level of conformance. But to put it into contrast, to get it in the RFPs, to put it in all the procurement language that you have, and make sure that the vendors are hearing that need. I can speak from the National Center perspective, that we hear from vendors that there isn't a market demand. And so they are disinclined to spend their precious development dollars on accessibility when, from their perception, people don't want this. But as soon as people start indicating that they want it, or that they require it, I do think we're going to see some changes.
Jennifer: I think that's does he have lily true. It used to be you'd get an electronic product and they wouldn't provide these statistics and that has totally change. It's a move forward.
Cyndi: I’d like to just move our discussion for a minute on to what it is that you - you guys are thinking, are really the big problems facing libraries today. You know, as everyone is thinking about moving towards accessibility, or if people are in the middle of it, there probably are just big issues that we should discuss. So would anyone like to start sharing what they see is the big issue? And Marilyn you already said one of them is resources.
Axel: Well let me, then, jump in and say, one of the big issues I focus on and I think is important is having the suitable policies and guidelines in place. Marilyn, you mentioned earlier that it all depends on the presence of a given individual with an accessibility moved forward on a given campus or library or not. Take that individual away, and that move is, that push is not happening. So I think it's important that an institution puts policies in place that are there, and are being followed, no matter whether there happens to be an individual who happens to be awareness about accessibility needs or not. It has to be written down and people just have to know that this is how things have to be done. In- - very recently, and I do this very regularly, I ask around, is there anybody out there, any library that has a collection development policy that includes a requirement to consider accessibility in one form or another? And I have not come across a single library in the united states that responded. So to get that into our library policies, collection development policies, in that area, reserve would be another important area, virtual reference kind of stuff.
Marilyn: Multimedia would be another area.
Axel: It needs to trickle down to the lower level kind of policy, even if your library has to go and take those components and collect them into your smaller, into your own divisional policies in order for them to be effective. That would be a point that I would be making.
Jennifer: Axel can I ask you a practical question? When people are in the process of procuring items that would fit the acceptable, how are librarians without expertise in this area, or maybe without appropriate technology, how could they probably test to make sure that the items were, in fact, accessible.
Axel: Okay, there are several things happening currently. There are studies out who evaluate and index a database. These are the main things we procure or get through vendors for accessibility and usability. By the time they're published the numbers aren't fairly up to date any more but at least it gives a starting point to get a conversation going with the vendors. On the resources that you public on the web site is a study, the resource under 1, 2, and 3. One study is coming out shortly about the accessibility of e-journals. That would be one angle. The other one is to simply ask the vendors, I think it's possible to expect that the vendors can ask a whole bunch of questions, and again, some of these I have listed there. I think a vendor would, should be able to explain what efforts the company has made to make the product accessible, or whether it has been tested by people with disabilities for whether they can use it or not. Or you may ask for a demonstration if they'll come to your campus to peddle their products. So that would be another approach.
Cyndi: You know I would want to add in, too, you know, the venders these days are getting very familiar with submitting documentation, and there's kind of two main sources right now. There are some voluntary product acquisition templates that vendors can use to help explain the accessibility of their product. There are also outside certifications or evaluations that vendors can, you know, can use. So that kind of, you know, a third party like a UL lab sort of thing, has looked at the product, they've tested it, and they're going to, you know, certify that it meets the level of conformance that you want. But Jennifer, you bring out a really important point. Because we can't assume that someone that, you know, acquiring, you know, some - well, getting a hold of some new materials is really going to have all of the technical expertise that they would need.
I do think there are other sources and other ways to get around that, that still strengthen the notion that procurement language is going to help with accessibility overall.
Marilyn: One of the ways that that can be done within either the contract or the specifications for a product would be to say that it has a minimum accessibility of Section 508 compliance. And Section 508 is a piece of the rehabilitation act that includes accessibility features for information technology that includes software applications, operating systems, internet, and intranet systems, telecommunications, video and multimedia, self-contained products that would include kiosks and photocopy machines and desk top and portable computers.
So if you say in your specifications for those kinds of products that you want to have the product be Section 508 compliant, and then also add that you would hold the company accountable for that compliance, then that would be the stick approach to getting this done, because that would mean financial repercussions to the company if anything should come back to you as a library in terms of someone saying they can't access your materials.
Cyndi: But let me ask a tough question, here. And I think this is something a lot of folks might be thinking of. And not being in library and information sciences, I don't know what the big, you know, the big databases or the things that everybody really must have. But let's, and maybe one of can you provide an example of this for me. But let's say that you have a vendor who says, no, this isn't 508 compliant. Would you really, then, not buy it.
Axel: Well I’d like to respond to that. If you let me.
Cyndi: Please.
Axel: My position may be controversial, so I’d like to point that out. What I personally advocate in that situation, or with regard to accessibility and library resources, not the web pages, but the resources we procure from vendors, is not that accessibility is a requirement, or should be mandatory, but that accessibility must be considered, among other criteria, when a resource is being considered for procurement. So currently people discuss, for example, should we get it from this vendor or that vendor? This interface or that interface? They come up with reference for the faculty and that. But the scenarios I’m familiar with the question of accessibility is usually not asked. At that point accessibility should be thrown into the debate just as all the other criteria that are important to consider for those decisions.
Jennifer: I think that would be very fair because often we do procure items that there might be something about the item itself that is not within our normal policy, but we go ahead and do it for one reason or another. So that seems like a very reasonable approach.
Cyndi: And I think if folks use that approach, and it does seem reasoned, you're still ending up at the end of the day, then, with a resource that is not accessible. So this is problematic. But what I can just add into this is that I would hope that- - well as accessibility is considered in procurement, and as potentially a non-accessible item is procured, that that vendor gets direct feedback that accessibility is part of your decision making. So I think it's important that they're getting that constant feedback, that they are understanding that people who want to purchase their product are using that as a criteria, and that will help feed the whole cycle there. Axel, you were saying.
Axel: Absolutely that is a very important point, I think. I think in the decision-making process the kind of questions you ask the vendors, documentation you may ask them, and then ask that the decisions be made give that feedback why the product was not chosen, or in a positive case why it was chosen. That it is important that the product was chosen because it is accessible, the vendor should hear well this time we went with your product because it has certain qualities. And if there's a competitor offering a product that is like yours but is accessible, hey, we're going to switch.
Cyndi: Yeah, good.
Marilyn: I understand the reality of siloed budgets within universities and K-12 schools, that libraries have a set budget. But I’m hoping that the decisions related to the databases and other different types of materials aren't decided purely based on cost factors. If it comes down to a difference between cost and accessibility. Because when you mesh use that across, the university is going to have to pay for it from another silo.
Cyndi: No kidding.
Marilyn: They're going to have to hire readers or someone else to read the material, so you could take that argument to your administration and say, well, buy this product for less –
Cyndi: But the university as a whole will pay more for the outcome.
Marilyn: Absolutely.
Cyndi: Yes, that's a very important point.
Marilyn: Very important.
Cyndi: You know, we have a question that has come in that I’d like to ask, and I’m sorry to break into this, I’m very mindful of our time, and I want an opportunity for folks that have questions to send those in. This comes from Chris, and Chris is at SUNY-Aswego, and the question is to any of the panelists, what format do you recommend for electronic reserves? We often scan articles or book chapters for faculty and make these items available to students via the web. We currently use pdf which is not very accessible. What would you do?
Axel: I must say in my own library they scan in the documents and create through the office of your reserve materials an inaccessible image only pdf file, and I’m arguing and arguing.
But what I would recommend is that as a matter of routine, everything that's being scanned in should also be ocred, so you have a dirty ascii file, and for make that dirty ascii file also accessible, for those of you who don't know what a dirty ascii file, is if you ocr, say, a document that you scan in, you end up with a document that is maybe 98 or so percent accurate with some mistakes. It would take a lot of labor to get rid of the mistakes and would be somewhat to pay to clean it all up. I advocate a middle of the line approach. Provide this dirty ascii file, for the most part it will provide the information in accessible format, in addition to the visual image, and so if the people use screen readers or some other assistive technology they have access to it.
I can see someone arguing saying this is a second rate product. Dividing our services in first class and second class. But I think it's better than not providing them.
Jennifer: What happens in a dirty ascii file in terms of images or graphs or tables? Are they represented at all?
Cyndi: They would not. You know, I think it is also an important piece to have almost some triage system, or system in place so if you know you have students with disabilities enrolled in certain classes, you really do have, or you could have, with good communication with the disability services office, a system in place where the library has some warning that, you know, it's very likely in the coming semester we're going to have someone with a screen reader or we're going to have someone who is using, you know, voice recognition software, need to access a collection in this area.
And in those ways, you know, Axel, you're doing that kind of middle of the road approach, where you're not punishing the library system by asking that every pdf is done in, you know, adobe 7 and properly marked and tagged, you know, and completely accessible, and yet students with disabilities have materials ready for them when they go to get them. Also, the collateral benefit for that is that over time more and more of the collection will be available in an accessible format. But that does assume good communication and coordination with the folks that are interacting with students, and know where they're registering, and which faculty members are putting up which kinds of reserves.
Axel: Yes, I’m not disagreeing with you at all.
Cyndi: Any other thoughts on Chris's question about electronic reserves? Okay. Well, we've got another question, then. Actually a couple more have come in. And this comes from Michael, who is, I’m not sure where this is, SJSU program. The comment, our web design classes now require access, xhtml code as standard for all web design project assignments. Likewise student projects and term papers are focusing on accessibility as a major topic. Oh this was a comment and not a question. So I think that what this individual is saying is that wherever it is that they are from, they are starting to get this information.
Marilyn: Congratulations, San Jose State University, the LIS program.
Cyndi: All right, yay. So we'll give them kudos for that. Now, this is a question, this comes from Rachael from the University of Missouri. As a humanities reference librarian, I’m concerned about the J-store database in particular. We are moving our paper journal back files out of the library, but can a blind person read the full text within J-store? And I hope I’m saying that right.
Jennifer: It's just J-store.
Cyndi: Can we take it as a general rule that if can you search the full text of a database such as J-store, that full text has been OCR scanned and is therefore readable by a text reader or is that a faulty assumption.
Axel: I can respond to that. I have been about two years ago in pretty good, pretty much communicated quite a bit with the J-store folks, and I must say they bent backwards to ask for as far as they could possibly go with regard to accessibility. You have to realize that - well, for those of you who don't know J-store, J-store basically creates a digitizes the back files of journals, and of course they get their stuff from the publishers and they're somewhat tied to a certain requirement and stipulations that the publishers or people who make the stuff available to them and allow them to digitize it and offer it through this service, they're tied to that.
J-store wants to maintain as much originality of the original document, that's why they provide basically, I think it's just -.
Jennifer: It ought to be a test.
Axel: A jpeg file. But when the question of accessibility was raised they agreed to make a tif file available. The advantage of tif file, it's still an image file but the advantage of that it can be OCRed easily so that somebody wants to have access they would have to use OCR software, and then get an ascii file and they would be able to read that. For many that is a far cry away from accessibility. However, the fact that they went out and made the files available I think is a good thing. They do OCR their own stuff also, that's why you can search the documents. But they are specifically refused to make the dirty ascii files of that OCRed product accessible, available, and the reason for that, I already pointed to some maybe stipulations that the publishers of the journal publishers have imposed, but they are also worried about that, the OCR text is not quite accurate that they may end up with a lawsuit, that's at least my understanding of the situation.
Cyndi: Interesting.
Axel: For example to provide medical information in a journal, and through the OCR process something is being misstated, and somebody acts on that, that they may find themselves to be liable. And so between this thing of maintaining originality and being, with possible publisher stipulations and requirements, and the fear of being liable, they decided not to offer the dirty ascii file. I still hope, I wish they would do it but at least they made it and provided the tif files which by the way are also very memory hungry. So they must have, invest quite a bit of resources in that. Also the web site, the interface to it put a lot of work into this and made it accessible.
Cyndi: That's very interesting. I best they're she's happy with the answer you gave her. That's very good. You know, our time is getting short and I hate to clip this off, but I’m interested that we get right down to some solutions and resources that people can be using. And let me ask all of you first, are you aware of some other libraries that folks can go visit on the web to see, you know, some good things that people are doing? Not that you're necessarily saying this library has figured it all out, but that, you know, these folks are working in some good directions, and it might help the listeners that are starting out get some additional resources so they're not feeling like they're reinventing the while, and they're starting all over.
Marilyn: This is a really tough question to answer, because we have not been able to find any library that can handle the universe of issues related to people serving people with disability. There are some libraries out there that have attempted to do parts of it. But there is a battle going on within the disability field of the issue related to separate but equal, or integrated, or universal issues. So some of the libraries who are doing very good things are doing it as separate services. Not integrated within the everyday services of the library.
Cyndi: And would you say the same in terms of the electronic access.
Marilyn: It would be, for example, if you walked into the library, they would have the materials available only in a particular area of the library. So it's the - you could only access the information using the materials in that part of the library. So it's a difficult question to answer in terms of pointing to good examples, because some are working very hard and doing a very good job.
Cyndi: Well let me just offer this out to listeners. If anyone is aware of some good things that are happening in terms of electronic access, throw it into the comment box, and we'll make sure that we get that stuff posted on our web site. You know, you may be sitting at a library right now that has recently passed an accessibility policy on, you know, electronic information. I bet others would love to hear that. You may be aware that, you know, your library has done something that would, you know, benefit others. So - but let me also ask Jennifer, Axel, do you have any thoughts of places people could look.
Jennifer: I know, personally, I would be thrilled if some of the listeners out there would submit some information, because our library's just taking baby steps, and I’m sitting on this panel.
So you know, I think as much information that can be shared would be wonderful.
Axel: The - I’m rather policy oriented, and I’d like to toot my own horn and point out to my institution, the University of Wisconsin's newest or new online accessibility policy that just went into effect in July. When you look around, most campuses really have, when they talk about web policy, they mean just that, the web pages. Our policy at our institution is somewhat exceptional in that it expands that policy to all online resources, and at least if not requires, at least promotes accessibility of those, of all online resources. So you find a link to that policy on the webcast web site, and you might want to take a peek at that.
Speaking of policies, I would encourage you all, by the way, to also tune into the current revisions of the guidelines for distance learning library services at the ACRL, which is the association for college resource libraries, this learning section is currently grappling with the guidelines that currently exist, but they have been functioning as models for many libraries who do not have accessibility on their radar screen. We need to get it, we need to get it into those policies, and the ways to make your voice heard, call the chair, they're actually very receptive if you call or e-mail, or at some point they may be asking to participate in those. I’ll keep you posted on the excellent discussion forum when those opportunities arise. So I urge you to keep tuned, to tune into that and get involved.
Cyndi: Very good. I know we just have a couple of minutes left but we have another question that's come into the center, I think we can get through it. Julie from, I think it's Ebsco, commented that J-store has good information on accessibility at, of course the url is jtore.org/about/accessibility .html. For folks interested in that, and make sure you want to check that out. Richard of Oregon Sciences University has a question. We've recently run into the problem of electronic versions of the journal articles being a low-quality image as a form of copy protection, which makes it totally inaccessible to screen readers. Does the panel have any other insights into our copy protections are directly conflicting with the accessibility of information requirement? Sounds like this is a tough question.
Axel: It is a tough question, and I shy away from these legal things.
Jennifer: My thought is that it's a problem in general. And while many librarians have been pushing database to get things available is pdf because that's how some of our patrons would like. It would be good if they would continue to put the html that can be read by screen readers up there. It's a problem for users of all kinds.
Cyndi: So just flat out a problem.
Marilyn: The other issue related to this is that you can only put so much on electronic reserve of a particular book or journal. So, because of copyright rules. So the whole concept of trying to get as much on reserve in electronic format as may be needed for a class may not be able to be accomplished because of the issues. So students with disabilities may need to go back to the print format in order to get access, because there is too much requested in terms of copy right.
Cyndi: Well, believe it or not, our time is just at an end, here, and Axel and Marilyn I’m going to ask a unique request, one of the last questions I was going to ask the two of you is if you would recommend that someone starting out did three things in this coming year, what would that recommendation be? I’m wondering if you can just e-mail me your thoughts and I’ll make sure that that gets posted to the site. There may be listeners out there that would like to know, okay, this is a target, this is something our library can commit to doing this year - this one thing or these few things. So folks that are out there, that will get posted to our National Center site very shortly. I want to thank all of our panelists, and I know we barely got to a lot of these questions that we wanted to get to, but this is certainly an enlightening discussion for me, and I wanted to invite folks to our next webcast which will be Wednesday, November 30th at the same time, so whatever time zone you're in, starting 1:00 o'clock mountain. The topic is going to be student information systems and students with disabilities. Are they useable? We have Alice Anderson from the University of Madison who is in the Division of Information Technology, Ron Stewart from Oregon State, who's the Director of Technology Access Program, and Skip Knox from Boise State who is a web master and they'll have a lot of interesting things to stay about student information systems, and what is happening to students and might I even say faculty members or staff members that have disabilities. So join us then on November 30th, and thank you so much for your time. Have a great week. Bye-bye.