On 19 Dec 2006, at 17:11, Brian Kelly wrote:

>    I'm a bit surprised, though, that someone who has been active in  
> Web
> research and development activities since we first met at the WWW 1
> conference back in 1994 approaches the repository accessibility  
> issue so
> negatively - there is "NOTHING" (your emphasis) that can be done;  
> "the only
> way to leverage change is to engage support from the publishers".

Why would you be surprised? What role does the repository take in the  
production of research material? It doesn't impose house standards or  
styles on the material. It may seek to apply some preservation policy  
on the author; it could also attempt to impose an accessibility  
policy on the depositor (you must provide a version of this material  
which conforms to WCAG or similar), but I suggest you won't have much  
luck

Of course, if it is a repository acting as a University Press, or a  
repository used as a Primary Publisher then you can impose whatever  
requirements you like.

Perhaps we would have more success turning initial attentions to the  
formats and styles for theses, dissertations, departmental reports  
and other (technically unpublished) items.

>    I do know that you take matter seriously, but the best way to  
> engage in
> change is to believe that change is possible and that a diversity of
> approaches can help.
Yes, but don't forget to identify "who makes the decisions that  
control how people act". Those people are the publishers - and now we  
are messing with the formatting, which is part of the journal  
publisher's added value!

Don't also forget to identify "how we can deliver a solution", which  
is all down to the technology of the authoring environments. We are  
getting closer and closer, but I think that the tools for producing  
highly technical (mathematical and scientific) articles do not really  
address accessibility issues yet. unless anyone has some good news  
about Office 2007?

>    I feel that the open access movement is sending our very positive
> messages to the wider community, and is well placed to build on  
> this by
> actively engaging in the accessibility debate.

If accessibility is currently out of reach for journal articles, then  
it is another potential hindrance for OA. I think that if you go for  
OA first (get the literature online, change researchers' working  
practices and expectations so that maximum dissemination is the  
normal state of affairs) THEN people will find they have a good  
reason to start to adapt their information dissemination behaviours  
towards better accessibility.

> And remember that IRs aren't the
> only Web service which has had to address this issue - clearly VLE  
> providers
> (both commercial and Open Source). And arguably there are greater
> accessibility challenges for VLEs (interaction, quizzes,  
> authentication,
> PowerPoints, Flash, etc. than in repositories of PDF, MS Word or LaTex
> documents (excluding data repositories, for now).
Surely users of VLE's are often designing material for their own  
purposes, without the imposition of a publisher's style and  
production rules.

> (let's develop the use case scenarios - and maybe we discount  
> access to a
> scholarly paper on a mobile phone)
That was exactly my argument for WWW2006 (we had a big thing about  
Mobile); and we made 90% of the papers available in XHTML as well as  
PDF (from Word/LaTeX). BUT, as conference chair I was the publisher,  
and I could impose any rules that I liked. Well, short of causing an  
angry uprising. The feedback from previous web conferences was that  
it took a complete day to translate a Word or TeX paper into XHTML,  
even using the tools and guidance that was available. We managed to  
get this down to "a few hours" last year, but it is still too much  
work to ask repository users to undertake in the current climate.

> And if your research extends further than the first page of hits from
> Google, you might find even more useful stuff :-)
Useful schmuseful. It has to be effective and efficient in a business- 
critical application!

> Take the ACM template; make it more accessible and encourage staff  
> at your
> institution to use it.
They won't use it if it's not the proper ACM template.

> Take the ACM template; make it more accessible and return it to ACM  
> and
> encourage them to adopt it.
Better approach; need to identify the Pubs Board and mailstorm them  
with indignant UK researchers.

--
Les