The document summarizes a presentation about collaborating on an audit of ebook accessibility. Key points:
- A team from several universities worked together to audit the accessibility of ebooks on 44 platforms from 65 publishers and 280 ebooks.
- Ebooks can potentially be more accessible than print for those with impairments, but many current ebooks have issues like lack of text reflow or screen reader compatibility.
- The audit examined questions like available formats, text reflow ability, screen reader compatibility, and adherence to accessibility guidelines.
- The results will help libraries ensure resources are accessible as required and improve usability for all readers. Conducting the audit required significant coordination between the distributed team members.
Collaboration is Key: Working as a Team to Audit Ebook Accessibility
1. “Collaboration is the key:
Working as part of a team to
organise an audit of ebooks for
accessibility”
Gopal Dutta
Secondary education subject librarian and Digital library
service
Manchester Metropolitan University
2. Today’s itinerary
• My background: examples, usability and accessibility overlap
• What is the audit and why should we care
• Some context: comparing the reading process for print and
ebooks
• The team and how we got together
• Some problems: WCAG and Section 508 compliance
3. My background
• “The wrong place at the wrong time”? Leeds Beckett
experience (2013 – 2015)
• 2015 – present: Manchester Metropolitan University and
National joint consortia e-books sub-group rep for NoWAL
• Not an accessibility expert!
7. An example answer
“…experiencing
some problems
having access…”
Which browser?
Are you on or off campus?
Are you accessing directly via the platform or
via our catalogue?
Screenshots please
12. So what is the accessibility audit?
• https://sites.google.com/site/ebookaudit2016/
• Please go and have a look and let us know what you think
• ebookaudithelp@gmail.com
• 33 universities and 5 suppliers (suppliers were invited to audit
their own platforms). In total 44 platforms were tested, covering
65 publishers with nearly 280 ebooks tested
13. Some sample questions
• What formats are available?
• Does text reflow?
• Can you use a screen reader?
• Are there any accessibility guidelines?
16. So why does it matter?
• DSA changes – more pressure on HEIs to buy resources that
are accessible
• Alt formats are expensive and time-consuming
• It’s our job! (as librarians)
• There isn’t a single, wide-ranging audit (but there are
precursors)
17. Some context: print vs ebook
• This is how “people” read print books:
OPAC check
18. Some context: print vs ebook
• This is how “people” read print books:
OPAC check Find book on shelves
19. Some context: print vs ebook
• This is how “people” read print books:
OPAC check Find book on shelves Read book
20. Some context: print vs ebook
• This is how “people” read print books:
OPAC check Find book on shelves Read book
Discovery Reservation
system
21. Some context: print vs ebook
• This is how “people” read print books:
OPAC check Find book on shelves Read book
Discovery Reservation
System
Library support at any point in the process
22. Some context: print vs ebook
• This is how “people” read print books:
OPAC check Find book on shelves Read book
Discovery Reservation
System
Library support at any point in the process
23. Some context: print vs ebook
• In terms of accessibility, for readers with a print impairment,
ebooks should be “better”
• But…
26. Ebooks…
• This is how “people” read ebooks:
Device Browser Entry point
27. Ebooks…
• This is how “people” read ebooks:
Device Browser Entry point Read ebook
28. Ebooks…
• This is how “people” read ebooks:
Device Browser Entry point Read ebook
PC / Mac Chrome / IE OPAC Read online
Desktop / Mobile Safari Discovery system Download
29. Ebooks…
• This is how “people” read ebooks:
Device Browser Entry point Read ebook
PC / Mac Chrome / IE OPAC Read online
Desktop / Mobile Safari Discovery system Download
Library support at any point in the process
30. Ebooks…
• This is how “people” read ebooks:
Device Browser Entry point Read ebook
PC / Mac Chrome / IE OPAC Read online
Desktop / Mobile Safari Discovery system Download
Library support at any point in the process
31. Accessibility vs Usability (1)
• All the information: https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/usable
• They overlap but are not quite the same:
• “Accessibility addresses discriminatory aspects related to equivalent
user experience for people with disabilities, including people with
age-related impairments. For the web, accessibility means that
people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and
interact with websites and tools, and that they can contribute equally
without barriers”.
32. Accessibility vs Usability (2)
• “Usability and user experience design is about designing products to
be effective, efficient, and satisfying. Specifically, ISO defines usability
as the “extent to which a product can be used by specified users to
achieve specified goals effectively, efficiently and with satisfaction in a
specified context of use" (in ISO 9241-11)”.
• Key point:
• “While accessibility focuses on people with disabilities, many accessibility
requirements also improve usability for everyone”.
33. • Sue Smith:
“Of course if the project results in improvements in accessibility of
eBooks that that should benefit everyone – just like a ramp initially
intended for wheelchair users also benefits those with book trolleys.”
(personal correspondence, 8th December 2016)
Accessibility vs Usability (3)
34.
35. Joint Consortia (Monographs) eBook Sub - Group
LUPC SUPCNEYALMUAL NoWAL
Group membership
MARC record
quality/supply
Usage data:
standards and
automation
Consistency and
reliability of
purchased
content/models
available
Basic User
information
/assistance
provided on
the
interface
itself
Variety of
purchasing
models,
model
descriptions
and
DRM/PDA
restrictions
Accessibility
features
Joint consortia diagram
Diagram by
Jane Cooke
36. The e-book audit team
(Clockwise from top left)
Alistair McNaught (JISC)
Sue Smith (Leeds Beckett)
Ben Watson (Kent)
Jamie Phillips (Leeds Beckett)
Jane Cooke (Liverpool)
Huw Alexander (SAGE)
Ruth MacMullen (York St John)
Vicky Dobson (Leeds Beckett)
37. August 2015:
Joint consortia
meeting
October 2015:
Lis-accessibility
JISC list is set up
Jan 2016:
Pilot testing at
University of
Liverpool
Jan 2016:
Discussion on list
about database
accessibility
March 2016:
Contact with
Alistair McNaught
May 2016:
Agree to join
forces
Timeline (1)
38. June 2016:
NoWAL training
day at Liverpool
July 2016:
Audit launch on
lis-accessibility list
November 2016:
Beta results site
launched
December 2016:
Askews release
accessibility
statement
Timeline (2)
February 2017:
Elsevier
engagement /
critique
39. Some issues
• WCAG 2.0 / Section 508: audit questions and results don’t map to these
standards but are pragmatic tool
• A lot of library staff unfamiliar with using library e-books?
• Assistive technologies: TTS / screenreaders
• Time: took a long time to collate feedback, concern that platforms would
update, process will need to be refined / repeated
• Communication: largely email, some skype, some of the group have not met
one another face to face! appear.in very good for conference calls
Sorry for the boring title.
Also sorry for my long job title – basically I’m a drone librarian, mainly helping students in a variety of contexts: buying resources, teaching them how to use them, via organised IL sessions.
But also day to day management of eresources, including ebooks.
I just want to stress that nowhere in my job title do you see the words accessibility or disability or inclusion.
So I want to make clear that I’m not an accessibility expert! I’m not sure whether I’m an expert at anything to be honest…
Does get a lot more complicated…
Simple request for alt formats
It could be another student, his disability advisor, someone else
It could be another student, his disability advisor, someone else
It then turns into a usability query similar to the first example
So we get a range of queries and quite often the answers we give can overlap with one another.
Ask if anyone has already heard about it?
Did anyone participate?
Flesh this out a bit…
The DSA – explain Alistair’s quote?
Ebooks deliver books
Through technologies
That are designed to protect the intellectual property and business model
But have the unintended side affect of making access difficult
As librarians, our job is to facilitate access to knowledge.
So we need to understand what the barriers are and how to guide users through them, on the one hand.
On the other, we need to gently coach our suppliers as to the negative effects of the barriers.
Without dismissing the need for them.
Explain sterling work of others: Geri, Sarah
Now this is a very simple flow diagram and what I’m trying to do is explain the way I see ebooks as different to print books, in terms of how they are read.
I’ve put “people” in inverted commas cos it refers to a wide variety of different learners: librarians and assistants, academic staff, students, who are not really an homogenous group. So it’s like a disclaimer.
So the first thing is that the person would need to find the book. And of course we are already making an assumption that they know what they are looking for, which is a big assumption!
Also, I just want to point out here that with this next section, I’m not talking about accessibility anyomore, what I’m trying to do is just illustrate the differences between print and ebook, for any reader, regardless of whether they have an accessibility need.
After that, they’ll have to go and find the book on the shelves, which might not be very simple at all!!
And then they can read the book.
Now, there might be a few variations of this. So, for example, you might find the book using the library discovery system rather than the catalogue. Or you might google it.
And you might place a reservation, in which case, library staff will go and get the book for you.
But, generally speaking, there’s not a lot of complexity.
And of course, library support is available at all stages – people can ask for help at the helpdesk, they can phone / email / chat with us etc.
The purple box represents the library “zone of control” – by and large, for print books, we as librarians and liberary staff, have a good degree of control over the whole process.
So, for example, if students are looking for books, they can use the OPACs, and if they are not working, we can fix them
I just want t
Electronic resources are fundamentally more accessible than their print equivalents as they can be easily manipulated to support different learning styles.
So what if we thought about how people access and read ebooks?
This is connected to my earlier slides with examples of some of our queries
So what if we thought about how people access and read ebooks?
Library control is far less
So what if we thought about how people access and read ebooks?
Library control is far less
So what if we thought about how people access and read ebooks?
Library control is far less
So what if we thought about how people access and read ebooks?
Library control is far less
So what if we thought about how people access and read ebooks?
Library control is far less
Library control is far less complete with ebooks. And it’s this gap which makes something like the accessibility audit really important. We can provide help, advice and training for our staff and users, but unfortunately it only goes so far.
I’m now going to talk a little about how accessibility and usability are different
ISO = international standards association
This is a quote from Sue who is a member of the audit team
And here’s a photo to illustrate what we mean – in this case, the ramp is being used by someone for convenience, without him “needing” to use it. The benefit is there for everyone.
Alistair McNaught (JISC) is an accessibility and inclusion specialist with a long engagement in the Publishers Association Accessibility Action Group.
Sue Smith, Vicky Dobson and Jamie Phillips (Leeds Beckett University) bring library expertise, direct experience with disabled students, project management skills and expertise in Excel spreadsheets.
Ben Watson is from a library background but now manages an institution-wide accessibility project for the university.
University of Liverpool - Jane Cooke is Head of Content, Collections and Discovery at the University of Liverpool.
York St John University - Ruth MacMullen is a Copyright and Licences Officer with a special interest in disability issues. Ruth set up the LIS-Accessibility JiscMail list.
Gopal Dutta (Manchester Metropolitan University) is a library specialist with links to procurement projects.
Notion of top-down and bottom-up approaches happening at the same time
August 2015: Meet Jane Cooke; we choose accessibility as NoWAL area
Look at work done by Sarah George at Bradford
October 2015: Ruth actual admin of list?
List details:
Currently over 180 members including publishers
Discussion of accessibility and accessible resource provision in libraries
Members are involved in the procurement and creation of accessible formats
Jan 2016: Become aware of complexity (questions / hardware / browser / accessibility software )
Awareness of training
Jan 2016: Discussion on list about setting up a crowd-source audit
March 2016: Jane tells me about his accessibility and ebooks article on JISC site
Alistair tells me about lis-accessibility group and JISC list. Alistair as neutral cos JISC not uni
May 2016 Less confusion for librarians. More weight if it is regional consortium as well as JISC list
June 2016: Sarah George, James Scholes, Alistair McNaught, Sue Smith as speakers
Participants worked through audit, feedback collected
July 2016: Questions to ebookaudithelp@gmail.com
Further calls to plug gaps
November 2016: Ben Watson speaking at ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences)
UKSG webinar
This teachmeet
December: they acknowledge our audit. Mission accomplished?