In advance of the 2018 Annual Meeting, we invited SNAP members to contribute summaries of panels, section meetings, forums, and pop-up sessions. Summaries represent the opinions of their individual authors; they are not necessarily endorsed by SNAP, members of the SNAP Steering Committee, or SAA.
Guest Author: Michael Barera, Archivist, Texas A&M University-Commerce
504: Equal Opportunities: Physical and Digital Accessibility of Archival Collections
This session featured three speakers:
- Dr. Lydia Tang, Michigan State University
- Courtney Tkacz, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
- Noah Huffman, Duke University
The speakers began with a collective introduction, focusing on the key issue of discoverability vs. accessibility, highlighting both awareness and commitment. They emphasized universal design, which serves not only the needs of a single group, but creates an environment that is accessible and convenient for all. They especially drew attention to two (of seven) aspects of universal design: equity and simplicity. They then noted the legal framework for accessibility: the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA (physical accessibility), Section 508 (electronic accessibility, applying to federal and federal-funded organizations), state legislation, and international standards. Finally, they emphasized four core themes: holistic practices, stakeholder buy-in, strategic planning, and iterative process.
Lydia Tang began with her presentation, Building in Accessibility at MSU Libraries. In her introduction, she noted the Libraries Accessibility Working Group (which addresses accessibility and is primarily geared towards the public), the Library Ergonomics Committee, the robust course materials accessibility remediation program, and how MSU is leading with the BTAA E-Resource Accessibility Group. She also mentioned the Assistive Technology Center (on site at MSU Libraries) and implored the audience to survey your space: get a focus group to walk through the space, remember that just because it “complies” doesn’t mean that it is accessible in actuality, a reminder to assess everything (including entrances/exits, signage, doors, and more), and keep in mind that navigation and visual aspects are only the beginning. It is important to ask yourself if you have…
- Accessible parking with a ramp, close to an entrance?
- Entrances and exits with automatic door openers?
- Signs with braille or that are tactile?
- A building floor plan accessible to someone who can’t see?
- Accessibility information readily available online?
- A contact person/committee for addressing accessibility issues?
Lydia then described Michigan State’s former reading room, and all of its accessibility problems: it was hidden between book stacks, had an imposing door, was impossible for someone using a wheelchair to enter on their own, had a desk too high for someone using a wheelchair, and had crowded aisles, non-adjustable desks, and chairs that are not height-adjustable, among other shortcomings. After noting ADA guidelines (which “are extremely explicit about measurements”) and MSU’s digital scholarship lab (which features an accessible, two-height front desk), she then noted all the accessibility-related improvements made in the new reading room: its aisles are wider, there are vinyl patterns to make glass doors more visible, “push/pull” signs on non-intuitive door handles, Haworth adjustable desks (30 x 70 inches, roughly $1,300 each, “these desks have been very appreciated by users”), and magnifying glasses, tablets, and table stands are also available to researchers (“this is a pretty base-level setup for accessibility that we hope to expand in the future”).
Lydia concluded by discussing the new seminar room, exhibit space (designed by Markus Dohner, featuring a sound dome that was built by Brown Innovations, costing about $2,000; “for us, this investment was worth it” because of the oral histories housed there), other improvements such as doors and bathrooms, and finally future projects (chiefly interfacing better with the Assistive Technology Center and collaborating with the makerspace).
Courtney Tkacz then presented her portion of the session: Beyond Alt Text: Accessibility in Digital Collections. She began by noting that mass digitization began about 3 years ago with an NEH grant (accessibility was thought about at this point). They used the WAVE: Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool to report on the website (it was “quick, free, and highly-eye opening…as you can see, we did pretty terribly”: the major error was no alt text).
Courtney observed that metadata must consider order (put the most descriptive and user-friendly fields at the top). Next, look at how your institution, and other institutions, are implementing accessibility (“I recommend…not reinventing the wheel”: VMFA is largely using Yale’s accessibility policies as a starting point). Furthermore, alt text must consider context (examples of alt text: Current: alt=“Napoleon: Power and Splendor” / Better: alt=“Detail of a glass mosaic of Napoleon in his study…”). There are a variety of tools for improving accessibility: manual transcription (in-house), manual transcription (outsourced), full-text indexing (OCR), summaries/verbal description, and crowdsourcing. She gave an example of a fully transcribed letter. Another example of image alt text: Current: alt=“Children looking at Faberge imperial eggs” / Better: alt=“In the 1950s and 1960s, the museum regularly set up publicity shots with children that allowed them to take a closer look at (and often touch!) the Faberge imperial eggs.” “All these efforts will lead not only to greater accessibility for some users, but greater discoverability for all users.”
Some of the tools used for increasing accessibility include: Google Photos, Google Tags API, multiple data sources, and building their own tool: Descriptive MadLibs (image to describe, data type to arrange, tags, description/photograph template). Courtney concluded with a handful of helpful resource links: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Web Accessibility in Mind – Alt Text, Web Accessibility in Mind – WAVE Tool, and Museum Education Institute – Verbal Description Training.
Noah Huffman concluded the panel with his presentation: Accessible A/V in Duke Digital Collections. He began by introducing the two-person project team: Molly Bragg (Head, Digital Collections and Curation Services) and Sean Aery (Digital Projects Developer). He then gave a brief overview of his presentation: context, accessibility policy, implementation/technology, and examples.
Beginning with context, Noah mentioned a 2015 New York Times article (“Harvard and M.I.T. are sued over lack of closed captions”) and a 2017 Inside Higher Ed article (“U of California, Berkeley, to delete publicly available educational content”). “Just as buildings without ramps bar people who use wheelchairs, online content without captions excludes individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.” – National Association of the Deaf compliant against Harvard (2015).
The Duke Digital Repository Policy for Accessibility was created in 2016, in response to the National Association of the Deaf lawsuit; “we wanted to start taking steps for the accessibility of our content…we did not want to take down content”. “When we focus on those who are most vulnerable we get it right for everybody.” – Angela Glover Blackwell, Policy Link (2015). In other words, captioning and transcription makes content more discoverable, more engaging, and more understandable for everyone.
The strategy for Duke Digital Collections since 2016 has consisted of the following: proactive captioning for new A/V content, on-demand captioning for existing content, Rev.com (vendor used), WebVTT (format used), budget request (about 100 hours/year: having a budget line for this is key), and repository development (Fedora/Samvera). For video, the features they use are closed captions in video player, synced transcripts with navigation, transcripts downloadable as WebVTT, PDF, or TXT, and a share button for permalink or embed code. They use WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks), which is a W3C standard that is used for creating captions in a video, can be easily read by a human, and almost all vendors can work with it, is commonly used, and will likely be a stable format going forward. They also use JWPlayer, the “world’s most popular embeddable media player”, as well as Javascript to point to media file location, point to caption file location, and set other options. For audio, the features used include synced captions, captions used for navigation, and downloadable transcripts. They are also involving finding aids. (How does it work? “It’s a whole process…”)
In conclusion, Noah recommended to plan and budget for captioning/transcription costs up-front, have a policy and make a plan for legacy AV content (perhaps “think about slowly chipping away at a backlog”), consider the cost of doing business (ideally, create a separate budget line for accessibility work: it shouldn’t be seen as “something extra” but rather “the right thing to do”), and that, in the end, everyone benefits.
Questions and answers:
- Aside from captioning, have you explored doing audio description (describing auditorially what is going on visually) for AV materials?
- Noah: “Yes and no.” They’re done some natural language description for silent films (known as “shotlists”), but it was done primarily for discoverability, not accessibility.
- Has MSU done a comparable survey for its stacks or work spaces?
- Lydia: “No, not to that extent.” The Ergonomics Committee addresses the staff working space. Frank Serene has written about measurements in the stacks: “there has to be enough space so that someone in a wheelchair” can maneuver around or turn around while being within the stacks. The question of ADA compliance in the stacks for workers “is worth exploring further”.
- Kathy Marquis noted an SAA task force on accessibility (both Web and physical) to create guidelines for both a user and a staff perspective. The task force will be looking for member feedback in the next couple of months, and will be sending out a call for comments via e-mail.
- Do you have any good examples of accessibility policies?
- Courtney: They use Yale.
- Noah: Duke has a really good policy.
- Lydia: Michigan State has a good Web Accessibility office site.
