Hi Alistair,
Nothing to add – but just to say that I think your email really clearly describes the problem and the barriers faced by students.
Thanks so much for doing this.
Jessica
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Jessica Wykes Subject Librarian (Assistive Technology), Library Services City, University of London Northampton Square London EC1V 0HB T: +44 (0)20 7040 3104
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From: Planning and coordinating ebook accessibility audits <[log in to unmask]>
On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: 11 October 2019 11:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Potential email for BBC In Touch programme
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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
From: Planning and coordinating ebook accessibility audits <[log in to unmask]>
On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: 08 October 2019 10:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Potential email for BBC In Touch programme
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.
<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:
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.
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
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