Ensuring IU scholarship is accessible to everyone

Photo of Rachel Molina

Rachel Molina

Digital Publishing and Repository Librarian, University Library

Digital Accessibility Liaison

IU Indianapolis

IU librarians have been collaborating on ways to help authors on our campuses meet the new ADA accessibility standards for digital content. Digital content encompasses anything that is available on the internet: any articles or reports you may publish, videos you upload, course materials on Canvas, and more. At University Library, we have focused our initial efforts on IU's institutional repository, ScholarWorks, and on developing accessible templates.

Whether you are a student, staff member, or faculty member, the University Library is here to help when it comes to uploading documents to ScholarWorks. In the "Web Accessibility of Content" section of our ScholarWorks libguide, we have compiled helpful information and links regarding making your content accessible before uploading it — including tips and tricks for creating accessible Word documents, Google Docs, EPUBs, and more.

To help students with creating accessible electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), our Center for Digital Scholarship has partnered with the Graduate School to create accessible templates. We are designing these templates for graduate and doctoral students to use for their theses and dissertations (which will be uploaded to ScholarWorks upon completion), and they will be available this spring in formats like Word documents and Google Docs.

In this issue


Sourcing Accessible Course Content

In this session, we'll explore how IU's library tools—like EBSCO and ProQuest—can help you efficiently source content that supports learning and aligns with accessibility best practices. Even if you can't join at the scheduled time, register for the webinar so you'll get access to the recording.

 

Get expert advice on choosing accessible textbooks and content. ATAC provides insights here.

When in doubt, make sure you meet these basic requirements for accessible content: include proper headings for text; add alternate text (or descriptive text) for images; create properly formatted lists and tables; and make sure you have proper color contrast. Here are some additional tips to remember for creating accessible digital content:

  1. It is easier to start by building accessibility into your document than it is to create a document fully and go back to remediate it (make it accessible) after the fact.
  2. We strongly recommend that you create your content in Word, Google Docs, or other word processing software instead of in Adobe; Adobe PDFs are notoriously difficult to make accessible, especially after creation.
  3. Most software now has the ability to check the accessibility of your document for you and show you how to improve it. Use any of these options to check how your document stands up to the current ADA guidelines:
— In Word, the Check Accessibility button is available in the Review tab.
— In Google Docs, the Accessibility button is in the Tools tab.
— In Adobe Acrobat, the Prepare for Accessibility button is under All Tools.

 

In addition to the actions we have already taken, I am happy to represent the University Library on the Institutional Repository Task Force created in collaboration with the libraries at IU Bloomington. I have been consulting with the Bloomington librarians on further workflows that will help all authors on our campuses meet accessibility guidelines. We will continue to meet and brainstorm ways to make digital content accessible, with the goal of providing campus authors with robust guides.

IU Indianapolis' ScholarWorks celebrates the deposit of its 50,000th item

"Research can't help anyone if no one sees it. ScholarWorks gives us the means to easily, publicly share our work in a user-friendly way. It also helps assure that, one year from now, five years from now, the URLs are all still active, that the work is still available, something which is easy to take for granted until you try to dig through old citations."
— Jon Bergdoll, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Read more about this milestone and depositing research into ScholarWorks.