The Accessibility of Online Library Resources for People with Print Disabilities: Research and Strategies for Change

Axel Schmetzke

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Library, 900 Reserve Street,

 Stevens Point, WI 54481, USA

Abstract.   As more and more learning in higher education takes place in cyberspace, the accessibility of online resources to all people, including those with disabilities, has become an important issue. This paper reviews the research on the accessibility of library web sites and selected online information resources, and it discusses the role that future research should play in facilitating an inclusive learning environment.

1           Introduction

Recent developments in telecommunication—particularly the coming of age of the internet—have had a strong impact on higher education. Over the past decade, the way information is disseminated in the campus environment has undergone drastic changes. Increasingly, print-based information is being substituted with its digital equivalent. Today, the web, along with email, provides the main, if not the sole, channel for a variety of education-supporting resources: official campus web pages with crucial administrative information, class syllabi, course readings, and web-mediated distance education programs. Libraries are particularly strongly affected by this digital revolution. The shift from the physical to the virtual permeates almost every aspect of their operation. There is hardly a single type of library resource that has not shifted, at least to some extent, to a digitized, web-based format. Catalogs, indexes and full-text article databases, dictionaries and encyclopedias, e-books and e-journals, reserve materials, virtual reference services as well as information about the library itself are now commonly accessed through library web sites.

With the growing importance of digitized, web-based information, the issue of access to information is no longer limited to the physical realm. Just as there are enabling and disabling conditions in the physical environment, so are there conditions in cyberspace that result in the inclusion or exclusion of people. To some extent, the ability to access web-based information is a question of the proper assistive technology, such as a modified computer keyboard, an enlarged screen display, or a properly configured screen-reading program. However, assistive technology alone cannot overcome the barriers that are created at a more basic level: the format in which content is presented. If not properly formatted, or designed, online resources are not accessible to people with certain disabilities—no matter how advanced and plentiful the assistive technology available to them may be.

While the notion of universal design has been discussed extensively in the architectural and exterior/interior design literature, its application to the electronic environment was, until a few years ago, rarely addressed in traditional print media. Instead, the theme was mainly carried by a rather tightly knit network of dedicated people who gathered at disability- and web-related conferences and shared their insights in form of presentations, white papers and web-posted articles. It was not until 1996 that accessible web design emerged as an issue in the professional library literature. The past three years have seen a noticeable increase in library-related journal publications that seek to raise awareness concerning the need for accessible web design and provide practical tips [1, 2]. In 1998, researchers began collecting data on the accessibility of library web sites. The first studies on the accessibility of online library resources (other than web pages) will appear shortly in two special-theme issues of Library Hi Tech (2002, Vol. 20, Issues 2 and 4), guest-edited by this author. Methodology and findings of these studies will be described in the following sections.

2           Web Site Accessibility Studies

24 studies investigating the accessibility of web sites are known to this author. Of these, 10 include library web sites. Most of the institutions targeted are in the United States. Caution is advised in extrapolating from these findings to the situation in other countries.

2.1    Methodology

With very few exceptions, all studies relied exclusively on the automated checking capabilities of “Bobby,” a tool created by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) to help people evaluate the accessibility of their web pages [3]. The downloadable version of Bobby, which runs as an application on a personal computer, is capable of testing larger sets of web pages on a given web site. For each page checked, Bobby provides information pertaining to the type, number, and location of accessibility errors—both minor and major ones. Bobby also issues a summary report for each set of web pages.

Within the context of this article, the term “Bobby-approved” is used, in a rather lax manner, to indicate that no major access barriers (“Priority 1” errors—in the terminology of the 1999 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative) were detected by Bobby’s automated function. Strictly speaking, this use of the term is incorrect: Full Bobby approval would also require a “manual” evaluation of those Priority 1 items that Bobby cannot automatically check.

The exclusive use of Bobby’s automated function for evaluative purposes is also problematic for other reasons, which this author discusses elsewhere in much detail [1, 2]. Suffice it to say here that Bobby testing will result some falsely negative and positive findings. Despite such shortcomings, Bobby is a good evaluation tool in studies where the accessibility of hundreds or thousands of individual web pages are evaluated and a rough measure of accessibility will do.

2.2    Findings

Table 1 summarizes the data yielded by library-related web studies. Average accessibility in the various library data sets ranges between 19% and 75%, and the average number of errors per page varies between 1.3 and 6.1. Web accessibility tends to be higher at academic libraries than at public libraries. While web accessibility has improved in some pockets (University of Wisconsin libraries), larger data sets show no progress.  Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that the web pages of North American library schools tend to be particularly inaccessible. It is reasonable to assume that such disregard for accessible web design reflects not only the attitude of web designers but also that of the library school faculty and staff, who hire the designers and give them direction. The low web accessibility at library schools also has another consequence. Students with print disabilities have a lower chance of successfully passing through library school programs.

 

Table 1. Average accessibility of library-related web sites, by type of institution and study, in terms of the percentage of accessible web pages and errors per page

 

Study/Data Set

Year

Geographic Focus

Accessibility- Home Page

Accessibility-
Top Layer

 

 

 

%

%

errors/page

Academic Libraries

 

 

 

 

 

Blake [4]

2000

Arkansas, U.S.

37

–

–

Craven [5]

2000

U.K.

37

–

–

Lilly & Van Fleet [6]

1998

U.S.

40

–

–

Schmetzke [7]

2002

Wisconsin, U.S.

64

75

1.3

Schmetzke [7]

2001

Wisconsin, U.S.

69

43

6.1

Schmetzke [7]

2000

Wisconsin, U.S.

54

40

2.9

Schmetzke [7]

1999

Wisconsin, U.S.

–

31

3.6

Schmetzke [1]

2002

U.S. (49 sites)

51

47

5.0

Schmetzke [1]

2002

Canada (7 sites)

43

53

5.9

Schmetzke [1]

2002

U.S. (24 sites)

71

53

4.2

Schmetzke [2]

2000

U.S. (24 sites)

71

59

2.8

Yu [8]

2001

California, U.S.

38

–

–

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Libraries

 

 

 

 

 

Kester [9]

1999

N. Carolina, U.S.

21

–

–

Lilly & Van Fleet [10]

2000

U.S.

19

–

–

Ormes & Peacock [11]

1999

U.K.

<31

–

–

 

 

 

 

 

 

Library Schools

 

 

 

 

 

Schmetzke [1]

2002