Shannon Pritting: But just wanted to.
Shannon Pritting: Welcome everybody to our second of the suny library accessibility cohort presentation, so the first presentation we gave an overview of.
Shannon Pritting: The project and talked a little bit about the work that we're doing, including collaborative V pat reviews and then we'll be soon working towards collaborative tool kit and process type document reviews as well.
Shannon Pritting: But we you know, since we talked a lot about the collaborative part of this group we figured it would be good to get input from the.
Shannon Pritting: campus representatives on the cohort and talk a little bit more about how he it compliance and he it strategies are going at their own campus and we'll go through a variety of questions and have different individuals talk more about.
Shannon Pritting: Their perspectives so i'll turn it over to carly to kick it off, and I cannot just let me know I can drive drive the slides.
carli: Okay sounds good, so today we're going to be talking with a bunch of people about their experiences and who we have on who are going to offer some of their experiences today from the group are Rebecca olin from purchase who's my co chair Claire pain from stony brook.
carli: colleen login from new paltz Adam Saunders from morrisville know a Roth from broom and Andrea kingston from Monroe So hopefully i'm not missing anyone in that list, but I think that's everybody's going to be participating, and I think a few other people from the.
carli: cohort maybe on, but these are people are going to be answering the question, so if you could launch into the first question Shannon.
carli: So first we're going to be talking about what has your library been working on in relation to accessibility.
carli: And if you want to maybe get started with this question Claire.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: Sure, I can do that so again i'm from stony brook, so I am at a relatively large library group of libraries i'm the Web services and data library, and so my perspective on accessibility.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: is heavily drawn from my my experience with web accessibility, in particular, but I think I can speak a little bit to what we're trying to do, collectively as a as a library as a.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: As a campus that has a lot of different people working on many different things to to try to get a cohesive movement towards accessibility together.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: So some of that is pretty long standing we've always not always but for very long time, had a resource room with computers with assistive technologies we've had paging services ad hoc workflows for making accessible scans.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: All that kind of stuff but we're we've been working on instituting some more formal policy so, for example, we've named a an official accessibility liaison quote unquote for the library, which is me.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: So there's now that sort of named person to filter queries, to which I think is really useful for folks to have.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: I also started with stony brook in July 2019 as the Web librarian and I came in, with some background and accessibility so i've been working towards remediating content and creating best practices for our patron facing interfaces which has.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: As any of you who've worked on a meeting content knows is really important, and kind of can go, it can be a stop and start process but helps to for those patrons who are using those assistive technologies.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: So that means doing things like converting our live guides to new, more accessible templates updating our main website, you know, removing old pdfs confirming old texts and heading structures and then kind of really basic.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: Work and then I think the last thing that's been really exciting that we've been doing on our campus is in our library.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: is really emphasizing educating library faculty and staff and working towards a culture of accessibility work.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: So, for example, our social media team has done a lot of great work towards making sure all our social media presences are are doing accessible things and not just like posting an image of a banner with event information on it.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: we're hosting faculty and staff professional development events like one where we brought in our campus.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: web accessibility officer and he it coordinator, as well as the director of our student accessibility support Center who were able to share like why accessibility matters.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: kind of one on one course along with some best practices for folks to draw on and then building on that event i've also done some we've been calling them like working brown bags for folks to to make their own content their own documents, there are live guides that they're sharing accessible.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: And and have a space to kind of ask questions and discuss that.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: we're also moving of course towards the procurement accessibility workflows if the campus level and have knowledge that we need consistent workflows for providing accessible versions of resources within the library so that's all kind of emotion.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: as well.
carli: Great thanks does anybody.
carli: else want to jump in with any updates from what their campuses are doing.
carli: I can say for my campus we're we're sort of similarly doing some accessibility activities, one of the big things that we've been doing is a push towards.
carli: captioning content that we create, especially as we're creating more video content in a remote environment so we've created a lot of training and a whole team that.
carli: is available for captioning videos that are created and going back and captioning older videos that we want to be able to share online from.
carli: Many years ago events on campus so that those also have captions and that's sort of just one of the big initiatives we've recently been working on for accessibility so Shannon if you can move to slide to we can move on to Question number two.
carli: What is the library's role in e it accessibility, on your campus and Noah if you want to be the first one to answer this.
Noah Roth: yeah sure um so I have to thank the accessibility cohort and and you carly and Rebecca and everyone actually because.
Noah Roth: Being a Member in this cohort has really enabled me to learn a lot and I think since i'm from a smaller campus then stony brook kind of contribute.
Noah Roth: A lot i'd like to say significantly to the education some accessibility related items so.
Noah Roth: was able to talk to Community Members about what the pads are and how to look at them kind of share some of the resources and tools that we discussed in the cohort and that are on the live guide, which, if anybody hasn't checked out yet should should check it out.
Noah Roth: And to assist in development of procedures.
Noah Roth: On our campus the library's represented on the campus it advisory council.
Noah Roth: And we are also represented in the campus it procurement committee.
Noah Roth: The Advisory Council is kind of composed of the campus the it officer myself another life brand, who was the it liaison for the library and representatives from our marketing department it procurement.
Noah Roth: Access to the resources officer staff on the dean of students, a REP from TMC distance learning and kind of a facilities representative.
Noah Roth: And then on the procurement committee which is sort of a sort of a little subcommittee of the of the Council it's comprised of some of the same members, but a few, a few less.
Noah Roth: A librarian instructional designer marketing communications and accessibility specialist.
Noah Roth: And what we've done so far and when the slides come out there's there's some links to the forums that i'm talking about but.
Noah Roth: we've kind of developed a procedure so.
Noah Roth: Whenever there's a purchase request.
Noah Roth: The request or fills out a yeti accessibility review form to the procurement committee and they give some basic info about the product, the audience.
Noah Roth: Their estimated assess the impact category and the form includes a request for the product feedback to be forwarded to the it procurement committee for review, so our procurement Committee meets about once every two weeks.
Noah Roth: Members review the pad separately, using a checklist that we.
Noah Roth: device from the queue.
Noah Roth: and which I learned about here actually.
Noah Roth: And the purchase is either okayed with some information regarding potential accessibility issues.
Noah Roth: And a reference to the suny accessibility policy and some advice to be prepared to remediate if necessary if there's.
Noah Roth: A slight issue you know be prepared to have some equally accessible alternative available.
Noah Roth: or the other option that can take place we haven't actually done this yet, but a purchase request could be provisionally denied.
Noah Roth: In that case, the purchase request would be given a link to a separate form, which is an accessibility exception and alternative access form.
Noah Roth: And that will go to the E it Advisory Council, and primarily the campus the it officer will look closely at that one.
Noah Roth: And then she'll approved for or deny the appeal so so far, the library said, really.
Noah Roth: I think, active and beneficial role and part of that is just because of all the electronic resources that.
Noah Roth: The library bias, and this may be.
Noah Roth: We may be especially overweight it on a on a small campus but.
Noah Roth: it's it's been really kind of beneficial for us.
Noah Roth: To to be a small campus and and really be on the ground floor of this whole thing so.
Noah Roth: If you can, if you can get in on some of the IT committees, I would recommend it because.
Noah Roth: You know, one of the things you'd be able to do, hopefully, is.
Noah Roth: kind of.
Noah Roth: head off some potentially misguided ideas that others may have so it's could be a kind of a way to.
Noah Roth: protect yourself and and library procurement if it should ever come to that.
carli: No thanks very much we have one question from the audience colleen asked so all the databases have been going through this review process is that correct.
Noah Roth: um the review process just started, so they haven't had to to go through that process, yet I think there's been a few major campus wide procurement requests that have gone through we've.
Noah Roth: So far, stuck to the.
Noah Roth: Low hanging fruit, I guess, I would say stuff that's easy to review and easy generally to approve, but we have our eye on some.
Noah Roth: Well there's there's one in particular is custom built a program that somebody in in bio is using that's that's very, very unsuccessful, so I I know for sure that's going to be one that will be at least provisionally denied.
carli: and
carli: So then it's sort of the long term goal would be more comprehensive it sounds like but.
yeah the author.
Noah Roth: The long term goal is is everything goes through this this process.
Noah Roth: Oh yep.
carli: Thanks very much um does anybody else want to weigh in on this question before we move on.
Rebecca Oling: Okay, Charlie i'll just say that purchase i'm also part of our accessibility committee on campus.
Rebecca Oling: But what I found particularly helpful and what I think you know as group is getting at is that you can push vendors, a little bit to improve their services and.
Rebecca Oling: One of the things I recently posted to our group is that had been in talks with Alexander street press that provides Avon and they now have.
Rebecca Oling: A process for audio description of videos so just by the library emailing them and asking for it, you that's a really important thing to know that you might be able to advocate for on your campus if you need it.
carli: Great thanks.
carli: Okay Shannon if we can move on to the next slide.
carli: So next we're gonna be talking about what resources have you found most helpful for learning about accessibility and Adam if you could start us off with this question i'd be great.
Adam Saunders: yeah absolutely, so we are listed a couple links here useful websites that we found very useful going through this process so i'll just explain a just a few of these so first, you have the w three see website.
Adam Saunders: which really walks through the web, a lot of the Web development aspect of accessibility in this can get very granular it can get very technical.
Adam Saunders: If you're on the web development side of things.
Adam Saunders: So the next one, is a web aim, which has a number of really useful articles and resources that you'll be able to utilize it does have some paid for trains as well.
Adam Saunders: But it's got a lot of really helpful evaluation reports certifications you can get.
Adam Saunders: And a couple other things that we've we've found pretty useful.
Adam Saunders: The third one dq university is the one I really want to highlight here.
Adam Saunders: So right now for those who don't know Sunni does have a subscription to dq, and that is currently going through, I think it's the end of February.
Adam Saunders: And they're trying to extend it until the end of May, but if you can I highly recommend you check this out and in order to get.
Adam Saunders: An account for it if to contact your it accessibility officer on campus on and Nobel the hook you up with a with an account but through dq they have a lot of courses that you can go through on that really walks through through the process.
Adam Saunders: of getting really understanding what accessibility is all about, and it really starts you off at.
Adam Saunders: A real sort of bottom level just getting understanding the fundamentals of accessibility some general guidelines and laws.
Adam Saunders: And then it walks you through and gets it can get to a very granular level, depending on how deep you want to get into this going into things.
Adam Saunders: Like javascript Microsoft Office products, making accessible, you know word documents in PowerPoint presentations pdfs understanding screen readers.
Adam Saunders: And each one of these courses is pretty comprehensive they'll run you about an hour to three hours long and once you complete the course there's a course certificate.
Adam Saunders: So I highly recommend taking a look at it and and check it out and see if any of these courses would would work for you.
Adam Saunders: Another one is the Sunni accessibility playlist, which is actually part of the Sunni accessibility week.
Adam Saunders: So they have again just a lot of really useful resources PowerPoint presentations some articles PDF documents.
Adam Saunders: going through you know again just started an introduction to accessibility accessibility in course designs and money management systems various authoring tools and the like.
Adam Saunders: And the last one i'm going to mention here is accessibility eyes and no worries i'm going to mention this one primarily is this one was shared to us, for the most part for V pat.
Adam Saunders: I really understanding the pets and how they're organized interesting Lambda the information there so that one was really helpful in that regards.
Adam Saunders: So outside of just the websites, I really want to highlight campus collaboration.
Adam Saunders: Primarily, with our accessibility office our instructional designers and ended web developers and you know we really function within our campuses as a real team sharing best practices.
Adam Saunders: And a lot of these representatives are pot are part of our e it accessibility committee.
Adam Saunders: And so just being able to work together and share ideas.
Adam Saunders: And you know work through the problems that we're that we're seeing on campus and helping our students out it's it really has been a real.
Adam Saunders: collaborative effort.
Adam Saunders: Through it, especially this pandemic, which will which we'll get to later.
carli: Thanks and colleen did you want to talk a little bit about what you found most helpful for learning about accessibility as well.
Colleen Lougen: Sure um Adam pretty much went over a lot of the stuff that was going to bring up but i'll just repeat some of the things that he said, you know de que Tu que que.
Colleen Lougen: definitely take advantage of the queue while it's still available that was really the most helpful resource, by far, for me, I learned a lot there's so much information in there.
Colleen Lougen: But there's also a lot of free resources on the Internet that you can take advantage of my favorite by far was the w three c's web accessibility initiative site so on the w three see website there's like a special section.
Colleen Lougen: So w three.org slash w Ai it's their web accessibility initiative section.
Colleen Lougen: Definitely check that out the w three see actually developed the web content accessibility guidelines or Wick egg and that's how you pronounce it Wick egg.
Colleen Lougen: that make up the standards and V paths.
Colleen Lougen: So this site has like a huge amount of information, like Adam was saying, it could be very advanced, it also has very basic beginner or information as well um.
Colleen Lougen: I would start off with their accessibility fundamental section, which is on that initiative site.
Colleen Lougen: um you should also check out their perspective videos to these are short videos that go over how different accessibility features like color contrast.
Colleen Lougen: are essential for people with disabilities, so the w three See also has different guides that can help you follow and learn the standards that were cake, I recommend their understanding wicked guide.
Colleen Lougen: And then.
Colleen Lougen: One other say I want to highlight that was already mentioned, I think it was by carly in monday's presentation was the Web aim site.
Colleen Lougen: This site is fantastic it's a great resource for beginners.
Colleen Lougen: I use their wicked guidelines checklist all the time, so definitely take a look at that.
Colleen Lougen: Like carly mentioned, they have some really great articles, the articles, I refer to all the time, are the keyboard and screen reader testing articles, as well as the keyboard and screen reader shortcuts these are really great for referencing.
Colleen Lougen: But just there's so much information out there on the Internet.
Colleen Lougen: So much free stuff webinars web pages is just um it's a little overwhelming and you just have to find the time to do it all but there's definitely a lot of things that can really help you and learn more about accessibility fee pat's.
carli: Great thanks very much.
carli: yeah I guess as one last thing I will add I have also found that there are some pretty good when it comes to web design questions.
carli: Good trainings on linkedin learning if your campus or your local public library has access to those Shannon if we can move on to the next question.
carli: How is your library, creating your local ei T strategy with a Sunni wide initiative in mind and Rebecca I was thinking you were going to answer.
Rebecca Oling: Yes, so I mean, I think it went a little bit backwards at our school because we had been hit with some complaints on our.
Rebecca Oling: Forward facing pages, we had started developing our Ai te plan before Sunni had codified its plan, in the end they both look very much the same, so I think we're sort of one mind with regard to what needs to be done, and we think that there's a very.
Rebecca Oling: You know, natural role there for the library, because we have so much content that the Faculty could and should be using to integrate into their classes So hopefully our our work and understanding the suny initiative will help us.
Rebecca Oling: advocate, and I think having that system, this really changes the leverage we have with our vendors.
carli: that's great.
carli: Does anybody.
carli: else want to respond to this question.
carli: at all.
carli: Okay, if we can move on to the next one.
carli: What are two areas of E it accessibility, that you feel strong in calling, would you like to answer this one.
Colleen Lougen: Oh yeah sure.
Colleen Lougen: it's definitely been a tremendous learning curve, but I am starting to feel stronger with collecting the V pat's we've contacted vendors directly and receive the pads for roughly 70 products, out of 90 products we subscribe to.
Colleen Lougen: So it doesn't seem as impossible, as it did when we first began i'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with managing the annual review cycle to.
Colleen Lougen: Especially with the added support of the cohorts conformance reviews, those are going to be really helpful so definitely take take a look at those on the SLC website.
Colleen Lougen: i'm also feeling a little more confident when reviewing the V pat's themselves, I read many from different vendors, they all have different.
Colleen Lougen: vendors fill out the V pass differently and i've also written a couple of the cohorts conformance reviews so that's definitely helped me build my confidence and accessibility.
Colleen Lougen: when reviewing the V pat's I like to use the Sunni web accessibility guidance document, this document is on the Sunni blue site.
Colleen Lougen: So you know definitely check out the Sunni blue site there's a really great section on the it accessibility there's a ton of documents, with all the different standards.
Colleen Lougen: But the Sunni web accessibility guidance document explains the Web standards, clearly and makes it easier to grasp what the minimum requirements are for compliance.
Colleen Lougen: They describe what each standard means why it matters and i'm constantly referring to all these different documents, especially the library web and procurement guidance so definitely you know, take a look at the Sunni blue site.
Colleen Lougen: i'm also starting to feel okay about communicating with vendors.
Colleen Lougen: You know it's been about six months of doing this, so talking with the vendors asking questions discussing their products, their plans for improvements and just being proactive when monitoring compliance of our libraries, he it.
Colleen Lougen: becoming more of an advocate for accessibility and making it a priority, so vendors make accessibility, a priority I think that's really important.
Colleen Lougen: And you know something that we should all be doing so, these are just some of the skills that.
Colleen Lougen: i've been slowly developing and I just want to thank the cohort because I I joined the cohort back in September and it's really helped me a lot these past four months, in developing this different skills.
carli: Great.
Thank you so much.
carli: Can we move on to the next question thanks perfect what are two areas that he it accessibility they're still in development and Rebecca I knew, you were gonna.
yeah.
Rebecca Oling: Is there anything, not in development seems like there's so much all the time, but I would say, I think it was.
Rebecca Oling: Claire who was talking about that culture of accessibility and I think that that's an ongoing goal for us, I think that.
Rebecca Oling: People recognize rationally that accessibility is important and we want to get there, but I think that in the crush of everyday workflows it's really hard for people to get in the habit of remembering to do that.
Rebecca Oling: And to check things so you know you stumble and you learn so we've even had people on our accessibility Committee who put out things and then don't have the little.
Rebecca Oling: disclaimer that says, you know if if you need if you need an accommodation, let us know and we've learned from all of those things, I think you have to stumble in order to get better in this case, because it is building a habit.
Rebecca Oling: And I would say that the procurement is definitely an issue I don't know about you know the other 46 people on the call, but you know i've been at my library for 20 years and i've never really had a lot of.
Rebecca Oling: Face time or understanding with the procurement process and a lot of our procurement processes have changed dramatically in the last year because of Colvin and the budget issues, so I think that that's going to be ongoing it's hard to demand a lot of procurement right now we did have.
Rebecca Oling: Some victory that at least when they put things out into the state reporter that they are.
Rebecca Oling: Making sure that in their bids, they say that accessibility is important.
Rebecca Oling: But we need to really get that to filter down into everything and how do we get people to think about that and and engage with that process it's very intimidating at the beginning, and I think that that emotion is not something to be underestimated.
carli: Great Thank you.
carli: Shannon if we could go to the next question.
carli: How has the pandemic affected your approach to accessibility and Adam I think you were going to take this one first.
Adam Saunders: So i'll cover i'm going to skip down a little bit.
Adam Saunders: To cover just the greater emphasis on remote learning content.
Adam Saunders: So go back to March.
Adam Saunders: All of our classes start moving into a remote environment.
Adam Saunders: During this time we formed a new committee to address concerns regarding technology and assisting faculty during this transition so needless to say, it was a very stressful time for faculty, not only do we have a lot of faculty who are learning how to.
Adam Saunders: Teach online sessions, for the first time, but now we also have to address accessibility concerns.
Adam Saunders: In that online environment mainly when it comes to captions so looking at faculty who are going an asynchronous route and providing.
Adam Saunders: professional development opportunities to teach them how to add captions to videos that they upload to blackboard and Microsoft teams, or if they're going to synchronous approach.
Adam Saunders: What platforms, can they use that have live captioning and, unfortunately, back in May, a live caption was a bit of a luxury and not many people were offering it actually.
Adam Saunders: So we did have Microsoft teams which does have live captions so we had a number of faculty switch over to that platform for synchronous sessions um.
Adam Saunders: and luckily again working with our instructional designers and web developers coming up with.
Adam Saunders: Opportunities for faculty to learn how to add these captions again depending on depending on their platform of choice and their teaching style.
Adam Saunders: Another one being assessed in our online platforms so i'll use blackboard, for example, um so we use a blackboard on campus as our LM s.
Adam Saunders: And there are a number of tools built into blackboard that faculty can utilize to assess how accessible their courses on the platform.
Adam Saunders: So again, providing those professional development opportunities so faculty can learn how to use those tools built built into the platform um but also addressing things like blackboard itself it's not really that compatible with with mobile platforms honestly with cell phones.
Adam Saunders: So you know.
Adam Saunders: keep you teaching faculty to keep these things in mind when they do develop content for their courses on blackboard blackboard and and just keep in mind, do the type in environments that their their students are going to be you utilizing these platforms on.
Adam Saunders: i'm not sure I.
carli: Think I needed so Claire I think you were also going to respond.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: yeah thanks um so I go what Adam said, because everything you know everything is online life is online there was definitely a kind of new understanding of the urgency and importance of these efforts.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: But, in some ways, I think that created an opportunity, my library, I think, because that importance was clear for folks That was really awesome and then especially without, as many in person, services or.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: Reduced hours for those in person services, where do staffing on site people's time is a little more flexible, which means that we've had a lot of people pursuing training.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: Having time to do things like those those resources, the that colleen highlighted earlier.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: The brown bags, we did that I mentioned earlier that's something we may not have just been able to make time to do without this kind of remote work.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: Environment and then, of course, on the flip side of that we are generating a lot more video content which has raised questions that we previously didn't have it all.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: there's you know things like we can't do we would always just put our.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: You know all of our videos and YouTube and you can't do audio description and YouTube and thinking about different platforms or ways to.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: upload multiple versions of things in order to make sure that really everyone can use this content and then i'll also kind of echo what Rebecca mentioned earlier about procurement processes and and kind of the the immense pressure that procurement is under right now.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: it's already sort of hard enough to untangle all those pieces.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: I will say to me it's very much a black box of information, and I think it's harder to collectively work through.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: coming up with processes and workflows even with just the internal.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: library folks without even bringing broader procurement into it when we can't you know when you can't pop over to someone's desk to have that conversation and to start to get that ball rolling.
Claire Payne (she/her), Stony Brook: So, so that kind of work that requires collective action from many campus stakeholders has has been a little trickier, but I have been really excited by the the kind of attention, everyone has been paying in my library, in the last year.
carli: Right and Rebecca.
carli: Did you want to.
Rebecca Oling: Also yeah I think I think in terms of accessibility at our library, because my role is to work with faculty on the content for their courses we've seen.
Rebecca Oling: While it's great that you know, some people are going to training we've actually seen some of the opposite, which is a lot of people throwing stuff up into their courses.
Rebecca Oling: really poor scans multiple you know chapters of things so there's a whole copyright issue going on, so we've really tried to we didn't really have a ebook.
Rebecca Oling: approach at our at our school we it was really somewhat happenstance as to how we were developing that collection.
Rebecca Oling: And it's still that that world is still very much a Wild West and some things are really affordable and other things are really outrageous, so we are actually finding ourselves doing a better job of.
Rebecca Oling: intentionally going through ebook requests and also suggesting ebooks when possible, and creating a better process for that so that's been good.
Rebecca Oling: And then I would say that the other side is we've run into in terms of the captioning I also do streaming video at purchase.
Rebecca Oling: And as the point person for that obviously accessibility is always top in my mind, you know, we have our large platforms and they understand, we need captioned, but a lot of these, we have a film conservatory so a lot of these smaller filmmakers and vendors don't necessarily have.
Rebecca Oling: You know, a built in way of doing audio description or even captions so that's been definitely a challenge and I saw.
Rebecca Oling: Claire Claire saying yeah lots of terrible scans we've got from before 2005 she's saying from.
Rebecca Oling: making their way into course content yeah and the older those scans are the heavier they are the harder, they are for people with or without a disability to print out at home.
Rebecca Oling: oftentimes they have if they're not as easily broken apart by layers so the newer scanners have that ability to do that.
Rebecca Oling: And I would say that the other thing is we've had a lot more discussions about how can we ensure that if somebody is engaging interlibrary loan for items.
Rebecca Oling: If they need it to be done in a way that's accessible if they're planning on using it in classes, how can we affect that change because that's sort of out of our control, to a certain extent, so well, I think we're going to see that world changing as well.
carli: Great thanks very much.
carli: Did anybody else want to weigh in on this one.
carli: Okay, then we can move on to the next question.
carli: And this is what is your relationship with your accessibility office or officer on campus and no I think you were going to take this one.
Noah Roth: yeah, so we are again I feel pretty lucky.
Noah Roth: Our library building in the basement is where our HR office is located so.
Noah Roth: we've always had a pretty good relationship with with that office and.
Noah Roth: You know we'll send folks some folks out of that office and sort of regularly regularly in communication with them already, but if you're not I would strongly encourage the development of a relationship with your your office or your officer.
Noah Roth: Ours is has been really great named Lisa and she has passed on a number of accessibility tools and practices.
Noah Roth: To us, and she can really.
Noah Roth: open the doors to faculty and administration stakeholders.
Noah Roth: she's had those discussions already.
Noah Roth: You know, and in a lot of cases.
Noah Roth: I have found that in the past, you know there hasn't been as much of an accessibility push so she's been a little bit frustrated, sometimes in some of her conversations so.
Noah Roth: To to soon he's pushing the library's involvement in it.
Noah Roth: she's starting to feel like she has a lot more.
Noah Roth: A lot more backup and is excited to to help the library and and really anybody who's interested in accessibility, but since we have this.
Noah Roth: sort of pre existing relationship it's it's really deepened and it's.
Noah Roth: it's a really great great thing to be able to have her as a as a resource and especially for us that she's.
Noah Roth: You know just break down the steps so.
Noah Roth: You know.
Noah Roth: Just to conclude I would highly encourage you to seek out your HR office and officer, if you haven't already there a wealth of undiscovered resources for you.
carli: Alright, thanks does anybody have.
carli: Any other questions for the panelists.
carli: Or do any of the panelists have anything else, they would like to add.
Mohamed Hussain: I have a question.
carli: Great go ahead.
Mohamed Hussain: When you request the V pats from the vendors, do you just ask them to send what you have what they have, or do you share with them the Sunni guidelines to give them some kind of guidance.
carli: And if any of the panelists want to answer that they're welcome to I can start a bit of an answer, which is that some vendors will actually have it available on their website.
carli: Other vendors may say we have one prepared we just don't post it publicly and so, if you just ask for one they'll send it to you, but sometimes you will still encounter a vendor who isn't familiar with the idea or.
carli: doesn't have one prepared and in those cases, I think it can be helpful to share an example, or the Sunni guidelines or even both but out of anybody else wants to talk about specific experiences.
carli: or examples.
Colleen Lougen: This is colleen.
carli: yeah go ahead.
Colleen Lougen: yeah in the Sunni procurement standards guidance that sounds Sunni blue they have like a template email that i've been using.
Colleen Lougen: And I just adapted, it was just like something like you know Sunni requires accessibility of their Ai te just like a boilerplate template email.
Colleen Lougen: And I just use that I just like I usually contact the vendors directly, because sometimes the V pat's on their websites are like out of date so like a month or two before renewal i'll send them an email, asking them for a current V pat.
Colleen Lougen: And with that little.
Colleen Lougen: That little templates saying that we require accessibility and then they usually get back to me right away with a V Pat, or sometimes they'll say like they don't know what a V pad is are they never heard of it sometimes you get that kind of a response to.
carli: yeah I think there's still a wide variety out there.
Mohamed Hussain: Thank you very much, now I want to congratulate you all putting this together, I have more questions and answers but i'll keep those two later, thank you.
carli: You can always contact us the group or certainly meet individually, if you have any other questions and i'm happy to pass them along to the group.
Mohamed Hussain: Thanks carly no problem.
carli: Any other questions people want to ask Now you can put them in the chat or just turn on your MIC and go ahead.
carli: Okay well Thank you everyone for joining us, I see Rebecca put her email in the.
carli: chat and I am just putting mine in as well, so feel free to email us if you have any questions and we're happy to pass those along to the cohort or try to respond to them ourselves and.
carli: Please watch for more information, we are always trying to serve add more that we're sharing with the Community to help support these efforts.
Rebecca Oling: And I was.
Rebecca Oling: I was just gonna say that we all struggle with it, so no shame in any question you ask we've we've all been there, I see Claire going oh.
Rebecca Oling: yeah just please all no holds barred.
Rebecca Oling: yep definitely.
carli: And thank you all for coming we really appreciate it.
carli: Hope y'all have a great day.