“How Libraries and Scholarly Publishers Can Work Together Toward Born-accessible Publishing”

From a Scholarly Kitchen Guest Post by:

• Katherine Klosek, Association of Research Libraries
• Simon Holt, Elsevier
• Katherine McColgan, Canadian Association of Research Libraries
• Judith C. Russell, University of Florida

According to the Accessible Books Consortium, less than 10% of published works globally include features that allow them to be used by people with perceptual disabilities. That means that most publications are effectively unavailable to users with disabilities. Less than 10% of publications have accessibility metadata, such as image descriptions (i.e., alt-text), and therefore preventing screen-reader users from accessing critical information. In other words, 90% of publications are not provided in accessible formats, which allow users with disabilities to customize colors, spacing, and font size. Most audio/video content is missing captions and transcripts, rendering that information unavailable to users with vision impairments.

The authors of this post spoke together at the 2024 Charleston Library Conference in a panel session about how libraries and publishers can work together to improve the availability of accessible published content for people with disabilities. Much has changed since then, but the principles of collaborating together toward more inclusive publishing practices remain the same. The most pervasive lesson in these collaborations is the importance of sharing information and working together toward improving accessibility in scholarly communications. Here are seven recommendations to support the cross-sector collaboration necessary to improve the accessibility of content in our communities.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post (about 2400 words)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Elsevier, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Publishing, Scholarly Communications