Advancing Accessibility through Libraries

Abstract

This session was presented at the CNI Spring 2017 Membership Meeting

Chances are that your institution has a significant and growing number of accessible, digital course materials and they are not in a searchable collection in the library. Nearly every college or university is busy meeting accommodation requests from students with disabilities. Libraries can bring needed expertise and coordination to this work and contribute to student success for students with disabilities, a growing population that exceeds 10% of the student body. This panel will provide an update and discussion on three accessibility initiatives: an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) planning grant for repository services, the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) captioning initiative, and a pilot at the University of Illinois to contribute DAISY files to the HathiTrust Digital Library. The IMLS grant has studied the needs of Disability Resources & Services (DRS) staff and documented the needs and opportunities for libraries and DRS offices to work together, manage content nationally, and share accessible content to reduce duplication of effort. We will review lessons learned and outline steps forward. The ARL captioning initiative focuses on issues regarding mixed media and accessibility. It is currently researching issues regarding the tools, integration, interoperability, scope and infrastructure for different possibilities for developing shared or individual repositories of captioned files.