Gentle reader, we’re already at our tenth blog post!
Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash
LibGuides for All
Help me celebrate by checking out a resource I created on a theme that’s been running throughout my blogging careeer: Accessibility.
Take a look at “LibGuides for All” — it’s a site I created to help folks get started in creating accessible LibGuides.
I think that switching how you do stuff at work in your professional practice, as an individual but especially as a group, can be a little overwhelming and stressful. So, I collected some introductory material on digital accessibility, especially as it pertains to larger social questions in academia and STEM and college, and also created some how-to videos. I’m hoping this website can be used in conjunction with an in-house workshop on creating accessible LibGuides.
I asked for some feedback from colleagues and they were all for changing our practice to include digital accessibility. However, there was some reluctance in spending time on it without a directive from on high. I think I need to emphasize the fact that these are habits not big huge new ways of mind-altering change.
Big Questions
What has your experience been with professionals and whether they are willingness to incorporate small changes such as those found in LibGuides for All?
Please let me know what you think of LibGuides for All. You know me by now — I love your feedback.
All of this thinking about evaluating resources has inspired me to create a module — Evaluating Resources. It serves as an introduction to types of resources and how to evaluate them for first year college students.
I love teaching information literacy to first year college students. They are so passionate and their topics show great concern: safety of self-driving cars, LGBTQ sex ed, anti-vaxxers, the environment. They are often focused on WHY something is going on. It’s my job to help them focus their topic into a paper that takes the form of an argument on how to go about things better in this world and to use supporting evidence. Hence my module on evaluating sources.
Loom vs. Kaltura
A few posts ago, I asked your thoughts on Loom and Animoto. Now I’d like to know if anyone out there has used Kaltura. I used Loom for this module but am extremely disappointed by their not providing captions in the “freemium” version — so I added a transcript to my Evaluating Resources module instead of providing captions. But I’d prefer to provide captions! Kaltura provides captions but I don’t like the way you can’t control the “picture in picture” function easily. Then there’s the fact that Adobe Express — which I used to create the module — doesn’t make it easy to embed a video unless it’s an Adobe-created thing.
Enough with the whining.
What should I do about making my screen cast accessible with captions? Talk to me.
Feedback
Please give me some feedback on Evaluating Resources — I’m all about the improvement-through-feedback thing.
Because sometimes it’s good to understand how my digital content looks “under the hood.” Screen readers don’t read in a linear fashion. They don’t read content from beginning to end. When you think about it — you don’t do this when you look at a webpage. You use the navigation cues like tables of contents, lists, links, etc. to decide what’s important to read.
Screen readers use HTML “hypertext markup language” to help the user navigate by reading certain parts of the website first like the headers and links and other navigational features. HTML is also the instructions that a browser uses to display your webpage. HTML structures content — browsers and screen readers use these structures in their own ways to help the user navigate.
Take a look at what I made:
Be kind in your judgment!
As i created it, I sometimes used the WYSIWYG editor when I wasn’t familiar with an HTML tag I needed to use (such as resizing the image). As I used the WYSIWYG, I saw that it sometimes misinterpreted what I wanted to do. For instance, it added <h2> tags to stuff I didn’t want to be in the heading. This would have confused the screen reader.
I also feel happy about the HTML5 community on the web. I decided to add a caption to my image. I googled and found many forums of happy HTML5 users who had shared how to do just this with the <figcaption> tag. I also rediscovered the <small> tag.
What’s the moral of the story? Maybe you don’t need to code with HTML — but you do need to know how to edit with it.
Tell me what you think of it! It is meant to be a little feel-good introductory video to a website I’m designing for my colleagues to launch a project to make our LibGuides more accessible.
I used Animoto. I’m not sure what I think of Animoto. I have been using Loom a lot for screencasting when creating instructional materials. So, I thought I had better try out a new tool. I am trying to think of why I’d want to use Animoto over Loom. Animoto seems good for stuff you want to try to market. Or perhaps it would be a good way to get someone’s attention at the beginning of a class. Perhaps it would be best for introducing an idea. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around using it for anything in-depth. Loom seems a bit more personal and I have more control over the pacing and the layout of the slides I’m voicing over. I may just need to play with it a little more…
I think for the website I’ll end up using Loom after all.
Questions for y’all
Gentle reader, which do you like better — Loom or Animoto?
Have you used Animoto for anything more than an introductory material?
P.S. Also, I inserted the “add source” text box for the images I grabbed from unsplash. However, I don’t really see them. Do you? What’s up with that?
Here are the sources for the images — just so they’re acknowledged somewhere!
“There is access and then there is accessibility” is a phrase used by C. Booth in “Why Accessibility?” authored for the American Library Association. This may sound like a Jane Austen title, but, in fact, it’s a clever way to show the distinction between access and accessibility.
Accessibility in STEM
Creating accessible materials is important for everyone. Let’s take that for granted. However, it’s important to ask about science’s particular relationship with accessibility. According to an article in Nature, ableist cultures in science have made it harder for science people to declare a disability. This means that there are more science people with disabilities than we know of. This is in keeping with a National Academies report that shows a predominant attitude in STEM that “innate talent” is the key to success in STEM fields.
Knowing this helps me to realize that it is more important than ever to create accessible materials in my role as a science librarian.
Accessibility in STEM Libraries
As a librarian who has worked with science and engineering materials, I can tell you that there is a challenge to creating and maintaining accessible information. I think there are two fronts to the battle:
Librarian created material
Publisher created material
In this post, I’ll talk about Librarian created material.
Accessible Research Guides
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working to update Research Guides at my temping gig. Research Guides are online pathfinders created to help students learn the best sources to find books and articles for their research papers.
What have I found?
A lot of pdfs that need to be replaced with machine-readable material
Guides that have little navigation or hierarchy
Images without alt-text
A feeling that the guide was more about the creator’s knowledge than the reader’s path to success
I don’t want to sound like I’m just complaining — these guides are rich with very good content. The access is there. Just not the accessibility. I’ve also found that revising and remediating for accessibility has improved them in so many ways that will benefit everyone. I’ve been chanting the W3.org mantra “Essential for some, useful for all.”
I’ll roll up my sleeves and get back to work on it!
Question for you
Gentle reader, I ask you to comment on this:
Have you ever introduced the concepts and practice of accessible design to fellow colleagues? If so, were you met with any negative reactions? Did they ease over time? When I first was introduced to these concepts, I will admit that I encountered a mix of emotions: overwhelmed and guilty as well as motivated to change the way I work. I think it’s important to realize that it may take a little time to adjust to these ideas. What has been your experience?
