Assistive Technology in the Library: Accessibility? Accessibility!

What makes something “accessible”? In 1990, the U.S. government passed the American with Disabilities Act. The ADA requires compliance to a set of standards for buildings and businesses. When an able-bodied person thinks of the ADA, usually the first things that come to mind are “wheelchair ramps” and “handicapped parking.” These are important standards, and it’s hard to imagine a world where we don’t have them, but how can we apply these standards beyond access to spaces?

This definition of accessibility comes from a blog post by Alistair Duggin, the Head of Accessibility of the UK’s Government Digital Services, “For something to be accessible someone needs to be able to complete the task they are trying to achieve without encountering an barrier or issue… [it must be] perceivable… operable… understandable… [and] robust.”

Computer, telephone and letter with an arrow pointing towards a person with the word perceive. By the person there's a question mark with the word understand. From the person there's an arrow going back to the computer, telephone and letter with the word operate. In the middle is the word robust.

Independence and convenience are the benchmarks of accessibility. If you need help from another person and you have to struggle for something, it’s not truly accessible.

I was thinking specifically this week about how difficult it would be for deaf or blind patrons to access the internet via the computer center at my library. A search for a USB Braille computer keyboard turned up disappointingly empty handed. You can buy stickers to add braille to a keyboard, but the reviews are mixed at best, and they product doesn’t seem durable enough to stand up to the kind of high-traffic use a library computer gets. This idea seemed like a no-brainer to me – after all, keyboards tend to already have raised bumps on at least the “F” and “J” keys, to help users with traditionally-learned home-row typing position. Would it be that much more difficult to make a keyboard with the braille bumps built in?

As library staff, more than just the building, our goal is to make information accessible to the public. When providing access to information, we need to consider how we work to make information accessible to disabled people as well. This means going out of our way to go above and beyond to make being in the library as accessible as possible, for all patrons. I don’t think making everything 100% accessible at all times is necessarily a realistic goal, but I do think it’s important to make a genuine effort, and most importantly, be willing to admit shortcomings and accept corrections.

Here’s some other resources that I though could be useful as we approach information accessibility: