Web accessibility is technically challenging, but very satisfying because making our online content universally accessible to our entire academic community is integral to our professional ethics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During our extensive accessibility remediation, I\u2019ve corrected many errors that repeat on nearly every page because they were embedded into the website\u2019s templates. However, I also found there were still a substantial number of errors in the content feeding into these templates. This made me curious if other university libraries were having similar content accessibility issues?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Methodology<\/strong>: I focused on LibGuides, a common content creation platform for academic libraries. I used our university\u2019s automated accessibility testing platform to evaluate 1000 pages from each of the Big 10 Conference university libraries. From the results, I focused on two common, but easy to correct types of accessibility issues\u2014 having alternative text available for all images and creating links with meaningful text (as opposed to \u201cclick here\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Findings<\/strong>: I found that half the university libraries had significant content issues (more than 15 percent of all pages with errors) in one or both of these categories. Interestingly, Minnesota\u2019s 36% error rate was actually worse than Indiana at 97% because Indiana\u2019s errors resulted from a single university logo without alt text that would be easy to correct. Minnesota\u2019s errors were in the content of multiple librarian-created research guides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using this study as a starting point, I presented about content accessibilty for librarians at the national ACRL and state ALAO library conferences. In addition, I created an open educational resource on accessibility. The first version was for librarians. Liba11y.org was created as a resource people could take home from my presentation to their staff as ways to improve their LibGuide content. A second version, which I\u2019m currently editing, is for students taking web development courses. I\u2019ve been piloting its use in my IMS222 class starting in Fall 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2021 LibA11y Update<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to site analytics, use of this site nearly doubled in 2021. More than 825 users from 45 states and 52 nations have read more than 1,900 pages on the site since its creation in spring 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Web accessibility is technically challenging, but very satisfying because making our online content universally accessible to our entire academic community is integral to our professional ethics. During our extensive accessibility remediation, I\u2019ve corrected many errors that repeat on nearly every page because they were embedded into the website\u2019s templates. However, I also found there were … Continue reading Web Accessibility Research and Guides<\/span> Related Scholarly Output<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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