The following post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by a team of OCLC contributors.
It is Disability Pride Month in the United States, celebrated in July to mark the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on 26 July 1990 – in other locations, Disability Pride is celebrated at other times. Check out an IDEAs post from last year to learn more about the Disability Pride Flag.
Perspectives from disabled library workers
Two first-person narratives put the spotlight on library workers with disabilities. Michelle Khuu (“Make the Library Loud: Removing Communication Barriers for Library Workers with Hearing Loss,” 2021) writes about her experiences working at the Skokie Public Library (OCLC symbol: IHG) with hearing loss, while Paul Robbins (“Finding my chance to be me: My journey with high-functioning autism,” 2023) shares experiences as an academic librarian working at Brigham Young University (OCLC symbol: UBY) with autism.
So many libraries (rightly) place effort and emphasis on supporting patrons with disabilities, but what about support for the library workforce? Both Khuu and Robbins share their experiences in the interest of creating a more supportive library workplace. Khuuto writes to “provide tools and affirmations to use in our collective quest to build an intersectional, equitable workplace,” which include her insights on how to be genuinely supportive toward both workers and patrons with hearing loss. Robbins shares, for libraries seeking to meet inclusivity objectives, “Be aware of what is hiding in plain sight. We need to be inclusive and welcoming to everyone, not just the group that is currently in the spotlight. Be aware that people surround you with special needs, which probably includes you on certain days.” Contributed by Merrilee Proffitt; hat tip to Jennifer Ferretti for sharing the piece in up//root.
The W3C made ePub 3.3 specification was a formal Recommendation in May 2023. One the major improvements to ePub 3.3 is meeting emerging European guidelines for accessibility through the ePub Accessibility 1.1 guidelines.
One of the major contributors to this effort, Bill Kasdorf, writes in Publishers Weekly that the updated specification is a “brilliant balancing act” that retains backward compatibility while moving the standard forward, especially for accessible publications.
Kasdorf is also involved in a new NISO working group to develop standards for Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) that extends a framework developed for the Federating Repositories of Accessible Material for Education (FRAME) project. This project seeks to reduce the redundancy of remediation work usually conducted by campus Disability Service Offices (DSO) by making accessible materials discoverable.
As someone who’s been interested in usability and accessibility for much of my career, I’ve closely followed developments around technical standards like the ones being proposed here. But it was at a recent Disability Pride event that I began thinking more about the intersection of this interest with my own shifting identity. I’ve worn glasses since kindergarten but didn’t necessarily think of myself as a member of the low-vision community. But as I age, my reliance on remediating technologies has only increased. Many others also discovered this during the pandemic when work-from-home necessitated a higher reliance on the Internet and digital technologies. While improvements such as the ePub Accessibility Guidelines will help improve the readability of materials, ARM is thinking about how to even discover accessible materials at the scale of your catalog (or WorldCat). Contributed by Richard Urban.
Accessible data visualization guide
There is no agreed-upon guidance for data visualizations, even though we are inundated with new charts and graphs in the knowledge economy. Some have resizing capabilities and motion; some are extremely colorful, and others are static and have only a few labels. It’s hard to imagine that the causal viewer can interpret all of the meanings from one data visualization. Analysts, software designers, data engineers, and users are all responsible for improving data visualization design. In their Do No Harm series, the Urban Institute has released a comprehensive set of guidelines for how to create accessible data visualizations that deal with all of the ins and outs of building a meaningful but clear chart that also considers each instance when a person with a disability might encounter a problem.
The desire to always improve the visual nature of data has always been at odds with legibility and accessibility. Tools and the people who use them have a responsibility to consider the user in all things, and not make data or information inaccessible. Data presented on the web is one of the harder challenges and requires us to think more deeply about what we want to say and how. Government is not the only organization responsible for accessible web content and data visualization. Any organization not attending to these issues is excluding all persons from access, not just “edge” users. I have long wanted a guide like this to lay out detailed information for reference. Contributed by Lesley Langa.
The work of DEI leadership and advancement
On 14 July, Pamela Espinosa de los Monteros, Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a Studies Librarian at The Ohio State University (OCLC Symbol: OSU), posted “What does ‘the work’ of DEI leadership and advancement look like?” on the blog The Librarian Parlor. “The challenge DEI poses,” Espinosa de los Monteros writes, “is that many of its core elements like trust are more relational – closer to emotional intelligence and cultural humility which require us to refine our human-to-human engagement skills. Add on to that the complexity of interacting across differences which can add to new tensions and challenges.” Rather than framing DEI initiatives as tasks with “arbitrarily DEI interventions,” Espinosa de los Monteros recommends a DEI process based on “radical empathy, connection, compassion, curiosity, creativity, innovation, hope, and love that will guide us to something better.”
Pamela was my colleague at Ohio State before I came to OCLC. She is a passionate advocate for collecting Indigenous literature from Latin America as well as promoting transformative DEI initiatives within libraries. She describes her post as an “attempt to start a conversation” and I look forward to participating (and occasionally being challenged by) this necessary conversation. Contributed by Morris Levy.
ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table, Afternoon of Social Justice
Since 2020, the American Library Association Social Responsibilities Round Table has been presenting an annual SRRT Afternoon of Social Justice. This year’s free virtual event is on 9 August 2023, 1:00-5:30 p.m. Eastern, and will feature three sessions, each of which must be registered for individually. From 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. Eastern there will be a panel discussion on “What Can U.S. Librarians Learn from Feminist Struggles Against Imperialist Invasion in Ukraine, Military Wars in Sudan, and Religious Fundamentalism in Iran?” Fostering a more inclusive culture within libraries will be the topic of “Disability is Not a Bad Word,” from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. Eastern. A screening of the documentary film “Boycott,” about the implications of anti-boycott legislation being implemented across the U.S. with support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), will be followed by a discussion from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern; only the discussion will be recorded for viewing afterwards.
Taken together, these three sessions cover a wide expanse of issues central not only to what libraries are facing today, but also to what individual citizens of the world have been dealing with: misogyny, bigotry, authoritarianism. Contributed by Jay Weitz.
Libraries serving neurodivergent patrons
Using the library may be a stressful experience for neurodivergent individuals for many reasons.
Auditory overload from electronics and people, unfamiliar floorplans, and people gathered in clusters are a few of difficulties libraries present for neurodiverse users. The University of Washington Information School (OCLC Symbol: WAU) has created an Autism-Ready Libraries Toolkit to provide free online training for library staff to better serve families with autistic children. Elizabeth Mills (OCLC) describes this toolkit in her 5 July WebJunction article “Helping Libraries to be Autism-Ready.” University libraries are also considering how to serve neurodiverse students. Southern Connecticut State University (OCLC Symbol: CTN) has created a library guide Neurodiversity and the Library that provides tips and resources for neurodivergent patrons to navigate their library. Amanda Boyer and Amir El-Chidiac of Susquehanna University (OCLC Symbol: SUS) describe creating a welcoming space for neurodiverse students in their article “Come chill out at the library: Creating soothing spaces for neurodiverse students” (DOI: https://doi.org/10.33011/newlibs/13/5).
Creating a welcoming space for people who are neurodivergent means providing them with information that enables them to experience the library in a way that is comfortable for them. Southern Connecticut State University’s library guide demonstrates providing multiple methods of engagement for neurodiverse students by listing ten ways of asking for help including online chat, in person at the reference desk, and meeting with a librarian by video. Boyer and El-Chidiac note that making their library more accessible is a balancing act. For example, for safety reasons it was decided not to provide the exact number of people in the library, but an occupancy estimate is now given on the library’s homepage as well as average occupancy information. Contributed by Kate James.
Merrilee Proffitt is Senior Manager for the OCLC RLP. She provides community development skills and expert support to institutions within the OCLC Research Library Partnership.
