Alistair,

 

I don’t have any edits to your email. If you have success (hurrah!) then I think pointing them in Rick’s direction for a further interview would be a great idea.

 

Best,

Vanessa

 

Hi all

 

Just a friendly nudge – I realise it’s a busy time of year. If any of you have any comments to add (or subtract!) let me know. Otherwise I’ll send it on Monday afternoon.

It could be a great opportunity for a supplier with good accessibility practices to be discussing the art of the possible and making the point that they need libraries to recognise and respond to the market ‘value added’ of accessible content: and for libraries to describe how their support for disabled students has improved with more information from certain suppliers.  

 

Alistair

 

 

Hi all

I’ve drafted an email for the BBC In Touch programme on Radio 4. As always I’m relying on the collective wisdom of this group to steer and improve! I’ll also be emailing You and Yours if I don’t get a response from In Touch.

 

1. Can you check over the text below and suggest any improvements – or correct any inaccuracies. It is intended to be a fair and factual statement of where we are but if it can be fairer and more factual then I’m open to suggestions. If they are interested I’d like to point them to possible interviewees from this list so let me know if you’d have a particular interest in taking part (obviously it’s a long shot – I might never get a reply!).
2. If you would be happy for your name to be added to the signature – so that it’s a joint letter - then please let me know and also clarify how you would like your name and job title to appear so I don’t misspell or give the wrong job title!
   
   Thanks all!

 

 

 

<START>

 

Hi

 

I’d like to draw attention to a serious issue in academia that has a significant impact on visually impaired students (and indeed others).

 

More and more university libraries are investing in digital textbooks rather than hard copy print. In theory this should be a big boon for visually impaired students since digital text should allow magnification, reflow, colour changes, easy navigation and access to both text to speech tools and screenreaders.

 

In an ideal world the student experience would be:

 

1. Browse the reading list (b) open any book or journal on a laptop/tablet/phone (c) personalise it to the view you need (or fire up a linked screenreader or Braille display) and then (d) read it.

 

Of course the world is not ideal but even if the digital files from publishers are not 100% accessible - or the platform interface through which they get delivered is not accessible - one should expect the following experience to be possible for the student or their support teams.

 

1. Browse the reading list (b) check the accessibility information available from the publishers (c) check the accessibility information about the delivery platform (d) identify whether the features available will meet your specific needs (e) if they do, go ahead and confidently tackle the content (f) if they don’t, get an immediate request in place for alternative formats for relevant course content.

 

However, we are FAR from even that second option. A crowd-sourced project I led in 2018 with 49 university libraries and a handful of major suppliers scored the accessibility information available from 87 academic publishers and 54 platform providers (through which the content is delivered). The average score for the quality of information provided was less than 10% for publishers and 16% for platform providers. In personalised follow up emails to all 87 audited publishers there has been only one reply to date and that was only on a technical question about their score.

 

In short, the current system for providing critical course content for the study success of disabled students is predicated on “suck it and see” where most suppliers are working on the basis of “we don’t really know how accessible it is but try using it and if you struggle then contact us (or RNIB Bookshare) and we’ll see if we can provide something different”.

This is the equivalent of supermarkets not labelling food ingredients but instead working on the basis of “try it and if you have an allergic reaction then get in touch with our customer care line”.

 

Clearly library procurement teams have a major role to play in forcing the market to be more transparent about accessibility but the fact that so many suppliers are doing good business despite providing so little information suggests that there is still a significant degree of either complacency or ignorance at the level of senior staff making purchasing decisions.

 

I would be keen to get this out to a wider arena, not least since the new Public Sector Web Accessibility regulations put a duty on HE and FE institutions to provide accessible content AND meaningful accessibility statements itemising potential problems and mitigation.

Any help the BBC can lend in giving these critical issues more prominence would be very welcome.

 

Many thanks

 

Alistair

 

<END>

 

 

 

 

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