Yvonne Kester: Okay, we're now recording.
Yvonne Kester: So thanks everybody for joining us. Today. We have Jen Jensen and LED Beck from Onianta here today to talk to us about
Yvonne Kester: their work with incorporating accessibility into the institutional repository.
Yvonne Kester: So I, without further ado I will pass it over to you, Jen and LED.
Jennifer Jensen: Okay. Oh, let's make sure I can share my screen correctly. Do I have to put this in like a
Jennifer Jensen: sledge? Your first right There you go.
Jennifer Jensen: Okay? Oh, good.
Jennifer Jensen: Let's to you.
Jennifer Jensen: Screen.
Jennifer Jensen: Okay, Are you guys seeing my slides?
Yvonne Kester: I'm seeing a bunch of windows.
Jennifer Jensen: a bunch of windows. So I went to the wrong screen for some reason stop to share. Sorry about that.
Jennifer Jensen: I'm: not used to zoom. I'm: a teams user screen one. Okay, let's try it again
Jennifer Jensen: and going in yay. Okay, is that working?
Rebecca Oling: That looks great, and I just want to thank you again so much for joining us on such an important discussion.
Jennifer Jensen: Yeah, no problem. So I really appreciate this invitation, and to get to know all of you. My name is Jennifer Jensen. I'm. A scholarly communication librarian at and I invited my colleague, LED Beck, who is an open and online learning specialist in the teaching learning and technology center at, and he's kind of like my go to person for accessibility questions. I was like you have to come with me this conversation.
Jennifer Jensen: so I
Jennifer Jensen: I guess you've been invited me to talk about sort of a project that we had going on starting last summer on this campus.
Jennifer Jensen: and it's kind of i'm just gonna share some slides that I actually had used in a different presentation to our campus it group when I was
Jennifer Jensen: sort of trying to figure out what I was gonna do, but it's mostly like just kind of a story of me learning about accessibility. I am not an accessibility expert, and I am. I'm hoping actually feedback from you guys today is going to help me improve what we've started here.
Jennifer Jensen: So let's just
Jennifer Jensen: go forward with with that. So I wasn't sure how much all of you knew about our repository. Probably you know all about it, because I know some of you run it. But just in case, I I guess Jamie's new to the
Jennifer Jensen: to the Sunni area. So what I'm talking about is our instance on Sunni and Yanta's campus of the semi open access repository or so it's a D space based platform
Jennifer Jensen: kind of customized by at Meyer for the Sunni system. It was launched in 2,020, and it was designed to support green open access or self archiving policies on our campuses, that that though
Jennifer Jensen: image of the the Sine Oniana version. or pages, or community, or whatever you want to call it.
Jennifer Jensen: And here, at Sunni, on the the repository is managed or administered by me, and
Jennifer Jensen: it obviously supports our campus open access policy. As I just mentioned. It's a mediated repository, which means that everything that comes in as a as a submission I touch.
Jennifer Jensen: which is not true for all repositories, but which does make it so. I have a little more control or a lot more control over the accessibility of things coming in. It also means that our repository is pretty small because we're starting from scratch.
We didn't sort of bring a bunch of of materials in from a previous repository. As some campus is dead, we are starting a fresh.
Jennifer Jensen: so I know that makes us a really different situation. It also makes the process a lot slower, being a mediated repository.
Jennifer Jensen: But again, it gives me a chance to kind of see what things look like in terms of accessibility as they arrive. We collect published
Jennifer Jensen: journals, different versions of those versions of records and accepted manuscripts and book reviews. We are now collecting our graduate student species and masters projects which has been really interesting because we have not only
Jennifer Jensen: sort of typical theses, but we have some kind of fun projects that we are finding different ways, like audio tours and things that we can also collect.
Jennifer Jensen: We have some artifacts that we collect from scholarly and creative events around campus, our student poster research conferences, things like that. We we were trying to collect those things.
Jennifer Jensen: and a college hosted student run journal.
Jennifer Jensen: So if you wanted to check out our specific repository collections, you could go to sort out. So you need that you and just choose the onlyana
Jennifer Jensen: section.
Jennifer Jensen: And then I had seen previously just in the exploration of sores, you know, as we're all getting used to setting up our systems and starting the process since October 2020, that there is a sore soarwide sooni-wide accessibility statement in the so our content Guidelines page of the Repository.
Jennifer Jensen: and I saw that it says, there, submitters, we asked if I follow guidelines developed by campuses, and I was like, I don't have guidelines for people. So what should I do about that?
Jennifer Jensen: So this is sorry a big fly here, but this is my sort of storytelling moment. I guess
Jennifer Jensen: so. Last summer I was attending a virtual, the Southern Mississippi Institutional Repository Conference. It was all online which was super helpful.
Jennifer Jensen: and they had tons of sessions about accessibility and repositories, and I kept seeing Yvonne, and all the same sessions that I was in online. And maybe some of you were there, too. I just didn't know you yet.
Jennifer Jensen: and I learned a lot there about what other campuses were doing, and I also learned that this is something that nobody has figured out yet like it. This is not there's not like a right way of doing this from my understanding. Like people are still
Jennifer Jensen: trying to figure this out because it's really hard to work with a bunch of materials that are coming from a lot of different places and people, and we really want them to be accessible, but we can't do it all just by ourselves, as the people
Jennifer Jensen: collecting these things. So how do we start talking about on our campus. How do we start working with the folks who are doing this submitting? And what can we do to communicate to our users what we're trying to do
Jennifer Jensen: so. After that conference I reached out to LED because he's my go to Guy for accessibility, and I said, I want to figure something out here. I I don't even know where to start, and he said, let's start with an accessibility statement.
Jennifer Jensen: and so he kind of showed me some resources about what that means, and what kind of information you might want to include in that. And he talked about accessibility statements for your entire website, and then also for individual items, and what that might look like.
Jennifer Jensen: We also started kind of reaching out. We worked with our sunny, wide Eit group. I talked to the director of our Accessibility office. I talked to the Yvonne. What are people doing
Jennifer Jensen: and basically just kinda like tried it just wrote some accessibility statements based on materials that LED had shared with me in conversations that we had
Jennifer Jensen: realized that making an accessibility statement meant that we also had to have a plan. If someone comes and asks for more remediation, and I can provide in my initial path through. We didn't have a plan on our campus for like, what how do people make the request? And then, once they make the request, what do we do? So I had to figure that out in the library.
Jennifer Jensen: That's still a little bit of an ongoing conversation, but at least I know, like who I send things to. We Haven't ever had a request at this point. But again, like this is all since last summer, so
Jennifer Jensen: we'll see if we get some. So another part of that process, I guess, was deciding like what
Jennifer Jensen: level of remediation I was willing and able, mostly able to do.
Jennifer Jensen: and this was a conversation I I I I heard a lot in that I our conference, you know, like we can't do all of this ourselves like we're not gonna be able to to fix everyone else's work.
Jennifer Jensen: and so I but I wanted to figure out what I could do, and I think that that's an ongoing sort of conversation with myself, too, and hopefully with you guys, maybe i'll learn some more things that I could be doing better as as I go along here.
Jennifer Jensen: And then I guess the last kind of thing that happened was
Jennifer Jensen: I found out about like there's other repositories that had accessibility metadata fields where we could make it clear to users.
Jennifer Jensen: I think there's a lot of different ways. People are doing this, and you it can be very complicated, or we ended up doing something very simple. And so, which is we? All this created a or Yvon, and at Meyer and others
Jennifer Jensen: created an accessibility statement. Metadata field that's now available for anybody who's updating materials into so, and which I now use for every item that I upload
Jennifer Jensen: right? So the results, so far, so all of that kind of happened in the spring and the fall, and I've been doing it. I've been using the accessibility statements on every item that I upload to source. Since then I record
Jennifer Jensen: all the remediation that I do in sort of simple language basically that I understand, because if I don't understand it, my users Aren't going to understand it. And then I
Jennifer Jensen: I feel that we have a more transparent
Jennifer Jensen: kind of approach to accessibility in our repository. It's not perfect. Our materials are not perfectly accessible, but at least we have a way for folks to request
Jennifer Jensen: specific types of remediation if they need it. And
Jennifer Jensen: yeah, oh, yeah. And then, just like working with all these folks on our campus. And now, you know, meeting you guys and working with sunny, level folks on these issues, I think, having those stronger partnerships, and like knowing who to go to with questions is a huge
Jennifer Jensen: has been a huge help to me. And
Jennifer Jensen: yeah, so I guess what I was gonna do from here was just show you. Our accessibility statements in so is that an appropriate thing to do? Is that okay?
Jennifer Jensen: So I want. Is that okay? Oh, yeah, I was looking at some of the resources i'm going to share later. But what did I want to do? I want to go to so
Jennifer Jensen: So you guys are looking at sort. Well, you're looking at Google right now. You're looking at sore, right?
Jennifer Jensen: Okay? Great. So in our instance, in so actually so preparing for this presentation, I realized I had never updated the front page of the only on a collection with our specific statement. So I actually did that yesterday.
Jennifer Jensen: based on the one that we use for all items. So thank you for kind of helping me go back. And and this
Jennifer Jensen: So the page. Wide accessibility statement is right here, just in the general information, and it includes the the Sunni on a statement about providing our our desire to provide equal access to users. And this comes straight from our electronic and information technologies
Jennifer Jensen: website
Jennifer Jensen: for our college. And then I have. And you'll see. This is true also in the item level statements. I have a statement about like what I do, and I try to be really transparent about it, because I know i'm not using like the most high tech tools. I'm not.
Jennifer Jensen: I'm not doing this in like the most cutting edge way. And so I try to be really clear about what tools i'm using, and what i'm doing. So the second statement is about Our second sentence is about
Jennifer Jensen: what's being checked, and what tools i'm using. So right now, what I use is adobe acrobat.
Jennifer Jensen: and
Jennifer Jensen: then in brackets. This is sort of as an example, and this one in brackets for the item level materials is the specific remediation actions that I've taken for that item and remaining hazards, and i'll show you that in a second, too, and then the last one. The last sentence of the accessibility statement
Jennifer Jensen: is what I mentioned before. Like if people need more help.
Jennifer Jensen: how they can get that help.
Jennifer Jensen: And that email address goes to me and our library director, and then, if the request is something I can handle, or I can go to LED and ask him to help me handle it. I will do that, and if it's not, then I will escalate it to my supervisor, the library director and or the electronic and Information technology group who have access to like
better tools than I do potentially.
Jennifer Jensen: Okay, so that's the page. Why, it and i'm just part of that group. And so one of the things that we've talked about is okay. If we can get the files to a defensible standard that we can agree on.
Jennifer Jensen: can we? If there was a request that came in that said, oh, I need this, and you're the place to get it. Could we use like able docs, for example, as a way to remediate, so that we have some fun set aside for doing things like that. But that we're not.
Jennifer Jensen: We're not, you know, sending every single thing we do to able to so like? What is our defensible standard that we do this much. And this is what we think that we can do with our own labor and build it into our processes. And then what do we need to outsource because it goes above and beyond?
Jennifer Jensen: I appreciate my connection with them, because they know, like what the new tools are, what they have access to, what they're testing out. I don't know all that, and so I can go through them for that. So that's really helpful.
Jennifer Jensen: And then I guess I'm just gonna show you that the item level.
Jennifer Jensen: But I don't. I'm just gonna go to my our most recent
Jennifer Jensen: item, and so it used to be. Before we had the accessibility statement metadata, I would put it in just the general description metadata. But now we have
Jennifer Jensen: this special area for it. And so it's a Dublin Core Accessibility statement. Can you see that? Okay.
Jennifer Jensen: Not okay. I remember type. Here you go.
Jennifer Jensen: Can you see that now, Rebecca.
Jennifer Jensen: Okay. So this is, you know the general field that we use, and then you'll recognize the accessibility statement for this particular item. Once again I use the exact same statement from our website about the colleges general desire to do this right.
Jennifer Jensen: And then this is what a specific item level
Jennifer Jensen: description looks like, I guess. So again I checked it with a do adobe acrobat.
Jennifer Jensen: The accessibility check and I remediated with the following result. I fixed the metadata title, title, information. I tagged on Mark Content, and then the remaining hazards that I cannot or do not or will not fix in this case.
Jennifer Jensen: or I didn't. In the this example I don't add all text.
Jennifer Jensen: There was an issue with the table headers, which I think is a
Jennifer Jensen: typical issue, where, if they they probably had table headers, but if they make a double like layer table header where the second layer is split, which a lot of people design their tables like that. It's gonna always result in a table header, header, issue
Jennifer Jensen: and table regularity. I think those are related.
Jennifer Jensen: So this one was actually pretty good, because I didn't have to make a lot of changes. And then again, to request further accessibility, remediation on this particular item same thing like this is who you contact, and I would elevate the the request.
Jennifer Jensen: So not only is that information, because I know you're like. Oh, well, that's way far back in the minute, you know. We even looks at the additional metadata. I'm going to go back to the main page, right? It's not even on the front page here.
Jennifer Jensen: But users of the Ir actually generally are coming in directly from Google Scholar where they're gonna actually, in many cases, not be even looking at this page, but are going to be directly given access to the download file.
Jennifer Jensen: And one thing that we did do, Ivan and I had talked about. Can we make sure the accessibility? Metadata statement is on the the page that's created by anybody for any item that's downloaded from. So
Jennifer Jensen: it always has this cover page right? So here's the actual item. But here's the cover page that's generated every time someone downloads from sort, and the accessibility statement is part of that, so they'll always see it
Jennifer Jensen: so, even if they never come to our actual repository. And see, my, you know my home page statement, or the statement in the way Deep metadata page.
Jennifer Jensen: They will have it here, and this is the place that are most likely to see it anyway.
Jennifer Jensen: So I think the last thing I was just gonna show you
Jennifer Jensen: is that is what I do, and don't do with with remediation. I think this was probably what you want actually asked me to talk about.
Jennifer Jensen: And so this is where I am, and I would love feedback on this, because maybe there's better better ways I could be doing this. But what I do remediate
Jennifer Jensen: is when I get the word version of something which is not that often. But I do sometimes for the theses and accepted manuscripts.
I will go through, and I will do the the paragraph styling. I'll add headings and
Jennifer Jensen: make sure things are nested correctly, and all that. I check the table headers, although I can't fix it if they've done the double layer header that you know that's
Jennifer Jensen: a design decision that they've made, that I can't change, and i'll add publisher statements if it's for i'm using an author accepted manuscript, and the publisher requires that you
Jennifer Jensen: mentioned the doi there. I think the example I just showed you actually had one of those on there. I put it in the
Jennifer Jensen: the heading area.
Jennifer Jensen: and then for Pdf. Versions, which is really this is where I live a lot more, and maybe the rest of you doing repository work.
Jennifer Jensen: I run the adobe accessibility check, and
Jennifer Jensen: I always fix the title metadata, Even if it says it doesn't have a problem. It often is incorrect. So I fix it there.
Jennifer Jensen: The language metadata. I'll add it if it's not there.
Jennifer Jensen: and then I will check, and i'll fix basic tagging issues. So if there are no tags, I will run an auto tag, and I know that that is not.
Jennifer Jensen: It doesn't always work.
Jennifer Jensen: but it's definitely, I think, and I totally argue with me on this. If if i'm wrong like, teach me, but I think it's better than nothing, so i'll run the auto tag and then I will, whether it's tagged or or I auto-tagged it.
Jennifer Jensen: I'll check on the tags. Are they actually tagged as headers like the different sections? So people can kind of move through a little easier recognizing things as heading ones and heading to
Jennifer Jensen: things like that. And then I look for unmarked content, and I try to tag that.
Jennifer Jensen: and i'll mark some things as artifacts if it's tagging all sorts of wacky things that we don't want
Jennifer Jensen: screen meters to be pausing on, and then
Jennifer Jensen: I try to fix the tag and reading order as much as I can. I have to spend a lot of time on that with the posters actually.
Jennifer Jensen: And then what I do not remediate
Jennifer Jensen: is, I do not add all text unless it's something really simple, or it's a decorative image.
Jennifer Jensen: and there's like one of it. But i'm not going through, and i'm. I'm not adding all text to people's work. You know their published articles. I'm not doing that.
Jennifer Jensen: and
Jennifer Jensen: I have to sort of like walk away. If there are issues that are complicated related to like auto tagging fails to that. The table had our example. I give you before
Jennifer Jensen: that. I report whatever. Adobe acrobat is calling an issue, and I use the language that adobe acrobat
Jennifer Jensen: accessibility check gives, so i'll say there's a table regularity issue. There's this issue. There's a that issue in the Hazards list of accessibility statement for that item.
Jennifer Jensen: and that's all. So I just included some of the resources that I used. Now i'm gonna use your resources that I see on your web pages that Yvonne just shared with me. But I learned a lot from the Dq. University. I did the basic Pdf.
Jennifer Jensen: Accessibility course, and that was super super helpful, and I actually downloaded all their materials, and I I like open up their materials when i'm doing check sometimes when I need to, with something more complicated.
Jennifer Jensen: These Cornell Metadata guides are things that when I first got started I use them as an example of somebody else who is already doing this in the ir having accessibility statements.
Jennifer Jensen: and as that's it.
Rebecca Oling: that's that's terrific. I popped a whole bunch of questions in the chat. I'm: sure it's okay. I just want you to forget. I've got like, you know, in your brain. So
I just didn't want to forget. So first things first for you as a helper. Are you part of Dax Castro's, Pdf. Accessibility group on Facebook
Rebecca Oling: you to
Rebecca Oling: wholly should be so. Dax Castro is amazing, and for anybody else is dealing with Pdfs. I would highly suggest, if you are able to take a workshop with him and Chad Chilias. I'll put the names in the tax, Castro and Chad.
Rebecca Oling: so you know they can't always help me, because a lot of what I deal with that. The Purchase college library. In dealing with course, content is scans
Rebecca Oling: right? So so that's a different. It was a slightly different animal than what they tend to deal with. But Chad is oh, you had Chad for a workshop, Laura, that's amazing. Chad's wonderful, and so is Dax Dax is
He's he's got his stick, but he's amazing, and they have a great, really active Facebook group where you can ask any question about a Pdf. And somebody will answer you. So it's pretty amazing. There's also a whack hack professionals group on Facebook. So if you're on Facebook, i'm happy to send you invites to these groups. But there's
Rebecca Oling: professionals, and I think it's just called Pdf.
Rebecca Oling: Accessibility. But I can check that in a minute. so I give you. I give you a gift before I before I bombard you with question.
Rebecca Oling: and everyone is in this group knows I have a tendency to do that right? So so yeah, I
Rebecca Oling: i'm wondering if there's any effort to encourage people to
Rebecca Oling: submit in the native word files, or to make their materials accessible before submission. And how can we begin to do that, because ultimately it seems to me right. If we're getting really meta about our jobs as educational institutions, I know LED is gonna
Rebecca Oling: is gonna not and agree right like ultimately isn't this what we should be churning out in terms of content creators for the next generation of people who understand this and and want. People want the largest possible audience to be able to consume and digest the work that they're doing and sharing.
Rebecca Oling: So is there an effort to do that. And then my guess. My last question is, I love the idea of being able to have able Docs as a backup. There is no possible way that is gonna happen at purchase right now. We don't have a dollar for collection development. We have no collection development budget right now. So the question is.
Rebecca Oling: how do you get funds to do that? And is there a way that perhaps you know we've we've done so much in the cohort, I think, and really teaching each other, and learning and benefiting from each other. And sometimes these groups can, you know, get help from. You know we had the
Rebecca Oling: the Dei Collections group got a grant from ebsco host wasn't that wasn't that that group, and it wasn't much $250, but something is better than nothing. And is there a way we can band together to try to move the needle on getting some help
Jennifer Jensen: to get these materials accessible when we can't. That's a conversation we have constantly in our Eit group. I'm on the it group from my campus i'm there, representing course content not the library and and and the it officers our CIO.
Jennifer Jensen: We have to look at it from a holistic perspective. and
Jennifer Jensen: our it group
Jennifer Jensen: is able to budget funds for document remediation
Jennifer Jensen: that we need to target towards the highest priority documents.
Jennifer Jensen: And so we are trying to do a kind of 2 pronged approach. Here
Jennifer Jensen: we're trying to set up standards for ourselves when we create new things and build it into the workflow. And we're also trying to identify when
Jennifer Jensen: it doesn't make sense for us to do it anymore, and we've got to pay someone. So
Jennifer Jensen: our campus map
Jennifer Jensen: was an inaccessible document on our web page
Jennifer Jensen: that we need to get remediated.
Jennifer Jensen: Making a map accessible is beyond my capabilities. and I think I could invest 40 h of work in
Jennifer Jensen: that map, and it still wouldn't be
Jennifer Jensen: accessible.
Rebecca Oling: Yeah, we have the same. We have the same issues and discussions, but it was the best $40 I ever spent.
Jennifer Jensen: I would have paid it out of pocket, but we so so the discussion we had yesterday in our meeting we just met yesterday. We were saying, okay, we have this funds, and we are pushing some things towards it.
Jennifer Jensen: but we were. We budgeted
Jennifer Jensen: thousands of dollars for our Middle States Review to have our Middle States Review.
Jennifer Jensen: We've done by able docs.
Jennifer Jensen: No, I had said to them. That's a text based document.
Jennifer Jensen: We just put headers in there. We did the cables in there, and they're like, and we're gonna put the budget away just in case because we're not gonna. If If this, if we get complex tables in there, we get money. If we get things in there that are, you know, screenshots of excel data tables, you know you who knows what ends up in the appendix of a Middle States document. Oh, gosh, we're recording.
Jennifer Jensen: I always I mean, we're human. We're human. We're smooth, and was was a a pinnacle of so
Jennifer Jensen: who knows what's going to end up in that appendix that we're going to have to remediate right? So we budgeted for it.
Jennifer Jensen: The CIO did it himself.
Jennifer Jensen: We've been working on building capacity. We've been working on, making sure that we know what standard we can get to.
Jennifer Jensen: and he took it on himself to be able to do it.
Jennifer Jensen: It's restarted. A conversation with us where we want to train some students that can do some accessibility mediation. But what I always say when we get there is, we need to understand the difference between what we need to have an expert look at
Jennifer Jensen: and pay for, and what we can train students to pay for, because the first thing that happens after we say, oh, we're training a student, and accessibility is someone walks down with the app form. Is that a standard form across all soon
Jennifer Jensen: the atp form.
Rebecca Oling: I don't know the apt for them. The app form is a form that is you.
Jennifer Jensen: It's like a choose your own adventure form. You have to bit. Fill out boxes, 1, 5, and 4. If you're you're doing an extra service payment and boxes, 1, 2 and 6. If you're hiring a new faculty member, it's the form that gets you paid in the operated campus.
Jennifer Jensen: either a new job or an extra service. It's the most complicated form I've ever seen, because this one form does like 7 different jobs.
Jennifer Jensen: So the first thing that people always ask when we go and say, oh, we've hired a student. They're like oh, could you make forms accessible?
Jennifer Jensen: Could you make that accessibility? You have the ap form accessible, which is not just a form of like the most complicated form in the world, and I'm. Like we have to get those off of our desk. We need to be able to train students to a defensible standard.
Jennifer Jensen: And then also, we need to have a budget that when things are beyond our abilities we'll just pay for it.
Rebecca Oling: Yeah.
Jennifer Jensen: no one's gonna want to give us a gram to keep the wheels running
Jennifer Jensen: for document remediation.
Jennifer Jensen: It needs to be budgeted for, and
Jennifer Jensen: the Collections Department doesn't have a budget for it. This Isn't Jen Jensen's money that she's spending the institution has
Jennifer Jensen: created funds that will push towards the higher priority projects, and if we got a request that means it's a high priority project for us, and we would put that in the queue to your mediated by able docs, and who ultimately gets that request. Does that go? You're in the Tlc: right? So does that go to you?
Rebecca Oling: Who is the arbiter? The arbor has got to be the CIO.
Jennifer Jensen: That's our you know we we we have chief it, Officer. That's the CIO, and so that lets that be pushed to a bigger
Rebecca Oling: conversation. And one of the things that he has been really big on in is that Shawn Moriarty at your school? Am I at the wrong school. I'm at the I'm. At the wrong school. Sorry I started with a No.
Rebecca Oling: Yeah, a skeleton. Oh, okay.
Jennifer Jensen: Other events.
Jennifer Jensen: So yeah, he's been really good about this because one of the things we didn't, we research these accessibility statements is, we said, okay, we need to create action oriented accessibility statement. What are we doing in order to do these things?
Jennifer Jensen: And just be honest about what we're doing?
Jennifer Jensen: She said. She looked at the one from the open lab which is, which is what we wrote. Our open lab is a wordpress website. I here's a link to wordpress's accessibility statement.
Jennifer Jensen: Here's a link to the accessibility statement of the plugins that we're using. Here's what I do when I choose themes. Once a year I do a review of the open lab to make sure that the lot you know the theme and the logical clicking and and things like that. Here's what I am doing in my accessibility statement.
Jennifer Jensen: and then I point out what the potential hazards are. This is a website created by students, some of them aren't great at putting alt text on.
Rebecca Oling: I love that you call it hazards. I actually. I've been in the space a long time, and I see you know we use the word barriers a lot, but I like that. You I like that. You call it hazards. Actually, I think it's more.
It more. Seems like a big hole in the road that you might run into right.
Jennifer Jensen: I got that what that term from the Cordel documentation.
Jennifer Jensen: So they use it actually slightly differently than I do. But I like the term
Jennifer Jensen: i'm willing to change it if the standard is to say barriers. I I want to be clear. I want to. Yeah, I think we're really interested in doing this job well
Jennifer Jensen: right
Jennifer Jensen: clearly, but we don't
Jennifer Jensen: we're. We're still growing, and we're still learning and so we're depending on people who know a little bit better than if, like i'm saying something that's wrong. We'll pull me aside. But, like I never say that again.
Jennifer Jensen: you know, like we got to build that community.
carli_spina: Can I ask a question? So you mentioned that you get well? I mean you get some creative works, but i'm not sure exactly what they that means for you. I'm: Obviously, I'm at the fashion into technology. So our final projects are a lot different. I know you mentioned that you don't necessarily do
carli_spina: all text Have you dealt much with purely visual projects, so either images or videos? And what's the workflow like for that? What do you work on?
carli_spina: Yeah, how's the statement? Different?
So
Jennifer Jensen: when I get things like videos or audio.
Jennifer Jensen: I always try to have a transcript, and I basically won't, put things in that they won't provide a transcript for at this point it's pretty easy to get. You know, a computer generated basic transcript.
Jennifer Jensen: Of course it's better if people can go through and fix it a little bit, because the computer is inevitably going to get Sunni on on to wrong Sunny on it is not, by the way.
Jennifer Jensen: So for videos and things like that.
Jennifer Jensen: Yeah, there's always a secondary text based version
Jennifer Jensen: for some things that are purely visual. I haven't really had anything that's purely visual. I mean, we do posters, but they generally have some information, you know text based information with them. They almost never have all text, and I just
Jennifer Jensen: allow that they're mostly student created. Some of them are faculty created. We are actually doing a student poster workshop today where we will talk about like this is something you should do. But you know they're still just like learning how to make a poster, so that's kind of advanced for them.
Jennifer Jensen: But we do have a I see Lori's here. I don't know she's listening right this second, but we do have a project on the docket where which is kind of up to all of what you're talking about. I think, Carly, where we're gonna hopefully start collecting our the catalogs created by the art galleries on our campus for each show.
Jennifer Jensen: and we have talked about how we can create really effective all text
Jennifer Jensen: in house and in partnership with the art gallery for that so that we haven't worked it out quite yet. And this goes back to one of your questions to Rebecca about like
Jennifer Jensen: you know, as an as a
Jennifer Jensen: artist is presenting their work in the gallery. I would love to see. You know these are the images that are gonna be in the catalog. How would you describe them in the all text, and so generate some of that ahead of time? Lori has has offered as someone within our background to to assist with that process.
Jennifer Jensen: and then I also just wanted to jump for 1 s to Rebecca's question. I see in the chat about. Of course it's easier to to work on these things in a native word file. I do request that when, if I can get the thesis in a word file, I do Sometimes it's not possible, based on like signature stuff.
Jennifer Jensen: but a lot of times it is. If it's an author accepted manuscript so
Jennifer Jensen: like a pre version of record version of a journal article that I can often get that in word.
Jennifer Jensen: But the worst offenders are. The journals themselves are putting out like materials that are not accessible, and so I run accessibility check on, you know. If a version of record I'm. Allowed to use it. I'm gonna use it, but it's gonna be like one of the ugliest things accessibility wise in our repository. And i'm gonna fix what I can. But those are going to be the ones that are more complicated. There's more links. There's more
Jennifer Jensen: on Mark content.
Jennifer Jensen: So I actually struggle a lot with the professionally.
Jennifer Jensen: Oh, and then one last thing is.
Jennifer Jensen: Rebecca, you also asked about. Is there anything you missed about alerting people that their submission should be made accessible? So I do have that, especially in the graduate student thesis. I have a whole live guide for the grad students.
Jennifer Jensen: and I have a little section in there about accessibility where I have video tutorials, and I
Jennifer Jensen: and I don't think they look at any of it, except for when I work with their faculty members, and they make it a requirement as part of their like.
Jennifer Jensen: It's like part of the rubric now, and those programs are giving me accessible materials or more accessible. So that's been exciting. I have 2 departments that i'm taking it really seriously. And it turns out that faculty members themselves needed a lot of education
Jennifer Jensen: on this I mean, I didn't know this, either. I'm not surprised. People don't know all of this information how to check where the all text is all that. So? So I am trying to work with them kind of program my program, and it's that is growing.
Jennifer Jensen: I had a really interesting learning experience of mine
Jennifer Jensen: working with city press and seeing what they do as they build a textbook. and what they do is they build a book and some of the things from the professional publishing world.
Jennifer Jensen: Our so surprising to me as someone who understands accessibility.
Jennifer Jensen: For example, in Sunni Press, when they go through and do a manuscript and get it ready for publication.
Jennifer Jensen: They create custom styles
Jennifer Jensen: style 1 2 3 4 5 going down the list that are their heading levels
Jennifer Jensen: that are not mapped, even though they're doing it. Microsoft word. They are not mapped to the accessible
Jennifer Jensen: heading levels of 1 2 3, and 4. So what their their workflow actually is going through. It
Jennifer Jensen: is they do all this tagging. Every single thing in the word document is tagged according to their custom structure, which is not the same as mapped to the Xml structure that we really need for accessibility, or what a a computer would need.
Jennifer Jensen: Then they transfer from word to in design.
Jennifer Jensen: and then they build it again, this time putting taking the the formats and making them into the visual display of the book.
Jennifer Jensen: and then they pay someone afterwards to take the Pdf. From in design
Jennifer Jensen: and manually tag intermediate the document. So the book basically gets tagged
Jennifer Jensen: 3 different times. And this is not like me like
Jennifer Jensen: they actually got on to me press like they don't know what they're doing, but that's so stupid. Why, why, why? Why, right? As someone who publishes in press books and we build the headings from the very beginning, and build an HTML first document, and then export accessible Pdfs
Jennifer Jensen: and accessible epubs, because it's already in the Xml and Don't remediate. Afterwards we're building it into the source material first, and then so all of our alternative formats retain the same accessibility as the initial that it it it it blows my mind. But that's
Jennifer Jensen: like when. When when Jen told me that the worst ones were coming up with from the publishers, I was not surprised in the least.
Jennifer Jensen: And if you're preparing a manuscript and you're following their standards that they give you, and they might even give you a file that has their pre made codes. Put in that once again. Also do not map to the accessible heading levels.
Jennifer Jensen: You know it. It it's it's
Jennifer Jensen: it's a discussion that our our the the journal industry, is failing us because they're not at the good place, and so building repositories of stuff that they're building is very difficult.
Jennifer Jensen: You're muted.
Yvonne Kester: Jamie.
Jaime Neudecker: I'm. Interested in the workflow that you undertook to actually individually scan those files and get those accessibility statements.
Jaime Neudecker: particularly because I have 1,400 student projects of varying formats.
Jaime Neudecker: like some I did some spot checking, and some of them are just like
Jaime Neudecker: and just like how much time did you take with each one? Were you able to do them in mass and generate multiple statements like you know, per 1020, 30,
Jaime Neudecker: You know, projects files that you were doing, or did you have to do them individually? Did you have to
Jaime Neudecker: sign like 5, 10 min to each one?
Jennifer Jensen: Yeah. So i'm not using stand projects. I'm. Using things that are the things that are downloaded from the publisher are usually like Pdf. Like well, not accessible, but they are like they have metadata, and they embedded, and they're not just like scams.
Jennifer Jensen: And then anything else. I'm getting from students and faculty. They're just their digital files, so I am not starting with scans, thank goodness.
Jennifer Jensen: probably will have to do that some day. But I haven't had to do that now, and in terms of how much time I spend. I try to limit the time I spend, but I do things one at a time. and so I You know a lot of things. I can finish it in
Jennifer Jensen: 3 min, if it's. It's kind of a simple case. Or if I started with the word document, and I went through, and I fixed the headers basically the headings.
Jennifer Jensen: I'm gonna say that right? What's your whole job? No, i'm the only scholarly communication library and on our campus, so I do a lot of different things. This is a very small part of it.
Jennifer Jensen: But yeah, I try to limit each like. Once I start to hit a lot of snags. I I have to just
Jennifer Jensen: record them as hazards. Yeah. And so that is my approach, because I also
Jennifer Jensen: hope that the accessibility statement is helping me with.
Jennifer Jensen: You know, if you need help on this item. That's what I want to know.
carli_spina: I think you could
carli_spina: for all the ones you already have, especially since you have so many. Maybe you could just like programmatically add a an accessibility statement that basically
carli_spina: it maybe says that it Hasn't been scanned, or if not even just a statement that says, if you need help remediation. And then just
carli_spina: focus on going forward, because I mean, I just don't see how any campus can go back and do 1,400. Yeah, that's what i'm starting to think this is probably really sad terminology that's kicking on my brain. But i'm thinking i'm going to end up with the accessibility. Disclaimer
Jaime Neudecker: rather than a statement.
carli_spina: Well, but I think it can focus on, like, also point people to how to get remediate like that's the part of it that I think you could really focus on is just. And then that way it would help you focus your efforts, because if you get one request, you probably would be able to set aside some time to work on on that one. But
carli_spina: you're not gonna presumably get 1,400 requests tomorrow, so it can help with the prioritization of that backlog. And then
Rebecca Oling: is there anybody who's real up on the legal ramifications.
Rebecca Oling: Listen. We we are legally obligated to to make a reasonable effort, right? And it's going to be that reasonable. That's gonna be the deciding factor, if there is something. But
carli_spina: it's not. Oh.
Rebecca Oling: yeah, I mean, Carl.
carli_spina: Well, I mean not I. I can't offer legal advice, but I would say that, like a lot of it, is also focused on a willing to stop our accommodations. So I think that if you really focus that statement on like, here's how you approach us. If you need something to be made accessible, and then you have an actual process like that shouldn't obviously just be getting like sent directly. Somebody's email track needs to actually be like. Have, then, a plan for what you're gonna do. I think that will be a good first step, at least, and then, if somebody you'll work with people.
carli_spina: they actually need it, because there's a lot of content out there in every library that isn't
carli_spina: accessible right this minute that doesn't mean we have to proactively scan every book we own. It just means that if somebody approaches us we have to have a plan in place is usually how people act. So I would, I think, focus on it that way, like not so much a disclaimer, or maybe not even an accessibility statement. But you could just have a footer across every page of your ir. Even that just says if you run into any accessibility issues here. If you contact or something like that, maybe
Jennifer Jensen: maybe, Carly, let me step ball one and let me see how you think about it. We are working to make all new submissions into the repository accessible.
Jennifer Jensen: We are working through the backlog
Jennifer Jensen: as time allows, and if you need access to a specific document. Here's my email address, and we will bump it up in the prioritization list.
carli_spina: I guess my thing is always you. You do want to be really as specific as possible. So I always try not to say that
carli_spina: I'm working towards something being accessible, because nothing's going to be accessible for every single person or almost nothing. People might always need an additional accommodation, so I think it might be better to say You know something more specific like what you do with each of the new submissions if you have a process in place, so we run it through like your statement. Set adobe accessibility, checker, past submissions may not have been. But here you can contact
carli_spina: something along those lines
carli_spina: just because it's hard to say Anything is fully accessible at the end of the day.
carli_spina: Who knows? Somebody might run into a problem, especially since everybody uses a different setup of assistive technology.
carli_spina: It's just really hard to say that anything is perfectly accessible for all scenarios.
Jennifer Jensen: That that was one of my big takeaways was just like, okay, let's focus on actions. Let's focus on what are the things that we are actually doing and able to promise to do.
Jennifer Jensen: And then how will we all through on that?
Jennifer Jensen: And making sure that you feel comfortable? That is. This is what I just, you know, wrote down defensible and actually actionable.
Jaime Neudecker: Oh, thank you.
Jennifer Jensen: I'm just seeing your comment right now, Carly.
Jennifer Jensen: how about a way publishing.
carli_spina: Yeah, I do think journals don't think about it and need to more. And
carli_spina: I kind of get very annoyed about it because I actually do a lot of stuff with open access
carli_spina: as well as accessibility, because I work with a journal that's open access.
carli_spina: and I I nothing a noise me more than when, like people are talking about accessibility, and they're not talking about like the stuff actually isn't 88 compliant, but they're talking about it being accessible like worldwide or something. It just seems to me very annoyed, or like talking about how open their materials are, and then you like, run a simple accessibility check, and they're not at all accessible.
carli_spina: But I don't think journals are thinking about it just like so many other things. I think people don't necessarily
carli_spina: thank you
carli_spina: about people with accessibility needs as their primary readers, which obviously they should. But
carli_spina: I just don't even think it's something that occurs to people.
Jennifer Jensen: Is there any element of like
Jennifer Jensen: submitting your journal, or making your journal eligible to like the direct team, open access journals, and like what if we could advocate? For there should be an accessibility.
Jennifer Jensen: a like a digital accessibility element to that or something, and sort of standardize it as part of the package of things you have to do to be recognized as a sort of legitimate with an access journal. By
Jennifer Jensen: that, like the group.
Rebecca Oling: I mean, it seems it seems like common sense right? It seems like, but i'm biased so I mean access should not just be about money
Rebecca Oling: right? And especially when you consider that people with disabilities often have a disability tax in terms of, you know, if they really needed it, and you didn't have a process for it, they would have to figure out a way to get it done for themselves, and that's what's been happening.
Rebecca Oling: so
Rebecca Oling: I mean it seems like it should be folded into processes.
Rebecca Oling: I'm.
Rebecca Oling: I'm shocked. I've lived as long as I have, and it Hasn't been as much of my focus until the last couple of years, and you and I will talk about course, content and libraries
Rebecca Oling: another time.
Rebecca Oling: because half of my remediation is a shoot by going through the library almost.
Jennifer Jensen: But you know, I I think one of the big things that I've
Jennifer Jensen: try to notice more as I start to grow in the space is when technology gives us good workflows for open access. So when you talk about open access journals
Jennifer Jensen: and you say, like, okay, I know that a lot of the open access journals are using that open journal system
Jennifer Jensen: from the Public Knowledge Project, and they, in their next version, are coming out with a idea that the primary version of the of the the the primary version in the galley will be the Xml based version. They'll be displayed in HTML. And then the Pdf. We generated it.
Jennifer Jensen: not just alongside of that, but generate from the Xml version, and that it will inherit some of the accessibility from that like. Okay?
Jennifer Jensen: Well.
Jennifer Jensen: then, we have to notice these things. We need to make sure that we're updating our processes to use the accessibility features if they're being built in, because you can build a inaccessible journal and Ojs, and you could build a a great journal in Ojs. But also what I want to notice is.
Jennifer Jensen: when do, when does the technology make the accessible version the easiest thing to do.
Jennifer Jensen: where, like the default, is already accessible. Not that you have to like. Find it in the 15 dropdown menus in this section that no one ever goes to. But like I was really impressed that in to me we were able to get that accessibility statement right on the front cover of the download.
Jennifer Jensen: I think that's awesome. But like
Rebecca Oling: how do we not only have a statement, but not just hide it away somewhere where no one ever sees it. But I get it printed on the front page everywhere. Yeah, is that is that because you just worked with Yvonne, and is that like something that's like. Now. Standard for every Sunni. That's Jen. That was you. That was so. It's now Standard, right? But now that you've done, it is is, everyone?
Rebecca Oling: Is everyone doing it now?
Jennifer Jensen: Well, it's available to everyone to do it. And is that being pushed?
Rebecca Oling: Who's pushing it? In other words, I mean, I think this is, You know I know we're recording. But this is part of the problem with the Eit and city right is that you know we really need that that leadership from above to ensure that that structure
Rebecca Oling: is there, and it, and that that road is maintained right. It's one thing to have a road, but if it's covered in weeds, you're not going to get through. So yeah, i'd like to see more of that. That's terrific. So thank you.
Jennifer Jensen: This has been really fun. Thank you guys, for hosting us. And
Jennifer Jensen: okay, I plug this one more thing.
Rebecca Oling: Please plug away one of the things that I am thinking about constantly is, what is the entry? Point
Jennifer Jensen: to communities like this
Jennifer Jensen: like? How do we invite more people to be part of the community? And so one of the things that Jen and I did recently on campus is we did some basic screen meter training.
Jennifer Jensen: and we did some basic accessibility training
Jennifer Jensen: to our core group
Jennifer Jensen: of people, because that was my first step.
Jennifer Jensen: Get accessibility. Go into like a 3 day training with my Blind Spot and Dq. And doing screen and stuff.
Jennifer Jensen: I'm doing that set. I'm going to try to do that session again at Cit. It's a pre conference workshop. If there's people that we want to like, invite into the space which, even though it's like working with screens which can be difficult and can be frustrating. We're trying to build. That is like a
Jennifer Jensen: first step opportunity, where people who are like our true believers, yet that aren't like fully ingrained in it. Yeah, I mean, this is something that I really struggle with, and everybody who's been on this group for some time knows that I have not imposter syndrome, but I have a lot of insecurities around my use of a screen, reader, and
it is. It is like learning a new language, and you do have to practice. I don't practice enough.
Rebecca Oling: but
Rebecca Oling: I think I think it's a hard place to start for a lot of people because of all of the you know keyboard controls I can turn it on. I can't always turn it off like a better an Nvda than I am adjust. You know i'm learning.
Rebecca Oling: But you did a workshop yesterday for an outside library system, the South Central Regional library system in the Finger Lakes. And you know one of the approaches that I used in this workshop, which I think might actually be a good hook
Rebecca Oling: is that people don't really understand accessibility, I think, as a whole, and it's really overwhelming, and they don't know how to start engaging the practice as almost a yoga practice.
And one of the things I did, and i'm not sure it worked. I mean, you have to ask the attendees, and we'll have to wait for the evaluations to come in. But
Rebecca Oling: I really focused on social media because I feel like so many people are using social media. It's a good place to personally start the practice.
And so one of the videos that I had was, I'll just pop. I'm not going to play it, but i'll pop in the link
Rebecca Oling: to the chat.
Rebecca Oling: It's a newer video I found. Unfortunately, it's like auto captions, and I mean it's. It's pretty good, though, but it it talks about decorative fonts, because now people are beginning with their own little podcast tik toki things.
Rebecca Oling: and they're using all these decorative fonts, and they're, you know, auto captioning, you know, like homesy or whatever. And they're it's really bad. So getting people to understand that you're creating this problem for your neighbor. You're creating this problem for your fellow congregate. You're creating. So I think.
Jennifer Jensen: Yeah, and that's that's what I would like to. I'd like to work on this approach, because I think it begins with us.
Rebecca Oling: When is it not an accessibility air? What is it? Not a. W. Can 2.1 violation. Yeah, it's it's jargony. All of our stuff in accessibility is very jargon and scary.
Jennifer Jensen: and and and so like being able to demo to somebody. Here is a website that passes an accessibility checker with flying colors.
Jennifer Jensen: And here's what the actual user experience is, and maybe i'm not training people to be to the point where they can do it themselves.
Jennifer Jensen: But maybe they could just sit and watch the demo.
Jennifer Jensen: and maybe they can navigate a a page by headings. That's the extent of their ability when they come out with a little bit of more of awareness of why we're doing this.
Rebecca Oling: I was. I was proud of myself because I I just put in another link. I use future me.org to get people to create
Rebecca Oling: goals, and i'm like, all right. If i'm going to use it in a workshop, I gotta make sure it's accessible right, so I gotta practice what I preach. So I I did my jaws look at it, and i'm like, Hmm.
Rebecca Oling: that I didn't hear the public versus private. So there is one thing that's inaccessible. Which is it defaults to so future me. You write yourself a letter in the future, and it gets emailed to yourself.
Rebecca Oling: and it defaults to a private letter. If it had defaulted to a public letter. I wouldn't have been able to use it, because that actually that piece, that where you toggle is not accessible, but everything else is. So I I kind of figured that out. And then I asked a friend of mine who's blind to also like user test it, and they were able to do it. So i'm like, okay.
Rebecca Oling: It's it's not the greatest. It could be cleaner. And then, of course, I followed that with all right, let me email them. So I had all the pieces of If this is the diet by which i'm going to try to live.
Rebecca Oling: how do I prepare my food. How do I eat my right Measure it, eat it, and evaluate it
So I mean, I think we'll get there, but I think it really is a very.
Rebecca Oling: It feels very big and overwhelming to people, and people in this group know that I've literally had people physically run away from me.
Faculty physically avoid me, at events, because I've been trying to rope them into. Let me help you with your course, materials.
Rebecca Oling: and and that's like like the kindest, sweetest offer somebody could make. So why are you running away? But it's because it's overwhelming right?
Rebecca Oling: So I think we can get there, and I think that you know for me about the issue. I did. Yes, they sent they, of course. Yeah. But they, you know they sent me their their standard.
Rebecca Oling: You know you're awesome. We are happy that you use our cool website kind of.
Rebecca Oling: but i'll get to them again. It's all right it at a base level. It works for the for the function I needed it to, and it's a great example
Rebecca Oling: of
Rebecca Oling: using the screen reader to try to find what the problem is, and whatnot, but it's building that confidence to did it, miss it, did it not miss it? Let me try that again. Okay, yeah, I did miss it. All right. Let me test it now, and see if somebody can use it. If you would engage more with your more technology based, brethren.
Jennifer Jensen: because one of the things that I do is my part. My thing of advocacy is: I open the issues on Github.
Jennifer Jensen: Most of the Internet. Runs on open source software, and like being willing to open an issue on Github is a scary scary thing for a lot of people reporting accessibility issues with actionable
Jennifer Jensen: ways. To fix it
Jennifer Jensen: is is
Jennifer Jensen: really satisfying for me.
Rebecca Oling: Yeah. I first wrote to them and said, it's not completely accessible, and then I waited for them to get back to me. And then I said, okay, because they said, we'll have our team Look into it, I said, Have your team specifically? Look at X
Rebecca Oling: and it didn't take very long, but it's. I think it's the kind of like walk the walk thing that we need to do, but we need more. You're right. We need more of these. Meet up the the New York City Ally Meetups are great, and they're
Rebecca Oling: They're usually hybrid events, and they're done really well. But we need more of these discussion groups, and you know we we we we have 9 right in here right now, but we've struggled to keep this group alive, and I I
Rebecca Oling: I'm. I'm stalwart about it, because I feel like it just has so much value. So today's a perfect example of bringing Jen in. For you know, when you in for a discussion that we know is something that people are dealing with, and we'll have the recording, and people can use that to perhaps learn a little bit more, and at least know who they can reach out to.
Oh.
Rebecca Oling: terrific! Anybody else have any last questions. I know we're running late.
Rebecca Oling: Thank you so much. Thank you very much.
Yvonne Kester: I will post. I will post the recording in in base camp.
Jennifer Jensen: Yes, i'll. I I was gonna ask you if you wanted to let me just stop the recording.