How to Plan an �Accessibility Page for Your Library's Website

Presented by BCLS IDEA Task Force

Burlington County Library System

IDEA�

Our Team: Shazia Zaman, Chair; Naju Webb Johnson;

Sarah Dziunycz; Jennifer Boeseman; Gabriella Graziul

Burlington County Library System

Inclusion . Diversity . Equity . Accessibility

Task Force

��BCLS is committed to actively pursuing inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility within our staff, services, collection, policies, and marketing using the following to guide us:��- Empowering relationships through education, communication and support.�- Practicing recognition of and empathy for all staff and community members.�- Creating and maintaining spaces, services, programs and resources that are welcoming and accessible to all.�

Burlington County Library System

Our Values Statement

Burlington County Library System

So Far…..

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• Staff Trainings
• IDEA Floating Collection
• Intranet Resources
• Quarterly Featured CE Resources
• Cultural Festival & Craft Fair
• Accessibility Page

Burlington County Library System

Accessibility Page - 2001

Burlington County Library System

Accessibility Page - 2011

Burlington County Library System

Accessibility Page - 2018

Burlington County Library System

• New Website - Late Fall 2021
• Accessibility Page - Spring 2022
• The Research
• NY Public Library
• Vancouver Public Library
• Branch Auditing

The Plan……

Burlington County Library System

Branch Auditing

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• Magnifying glass (how many)
• Magnification readers (if any)
• Any hearing device to assist the hard of hearing? If yes, how many?
• Any staff who speaks ASL (American Sign Language)?
• Any staff member with sighted guide training (for the blind)?
• ADA compliant spaces. For example; in meeting rooms, by

public PC's etc.

• Any special signs for the Deaf or Hard of Hearing?
• Any signs in Braille?
• Collections in Braille at your branch?

Burlington County Library System

• Organizing Content
• Accessible Resources
• Accessible Equipment
• Branches

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• Our Plan vs. Reality

The Plan……

Burlington County Library System

Accessibility Page - 2022

Burlington County Library System

Accessible Resources

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Physical, Digital and Streaming Materials

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• Audiobooks/eAudiobooks (Adults/Teens/Children); Read Alongs
• eBooks with text formatting features on Libby
• Sight Savers/Large Print Material (Adults/Teens/Children)
• Books in Braille
• Access to BARD Express for downloading audio material (TBBC registration required)
• DVD/BluRay Collection with Closed Captioning and Descriptive Audio options for the vision impaired
• Film Streaming on Kanopy with Closed Captioning
• Webreader for Newsbank Database – Newspapers/Magazines
• Flipster – Digital Magazine Database – Zoom Feature

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Burlington County Library System

Accessible Resources

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Services and Events

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• Mobile Library Service
• Library by Mail Service
• ASL Classes
• Sensory Events

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Burlington County Library System

Accessible Resources

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Burlington County Library System

Accessible Equipment

• The accessible equipment covers the physical items that make the library a usable place for our patrons.
• Information organization:
• The equipment is listed in alphabetical order on the webpage, followed by a description and which locations provide it.
• Sidebar: Branch breakdown
• Audit your branch!
• You won’t know what you need until you know what you have.

Burlington County Library System

• Items that you may already have in
• your library are:
• Grabber tool
• Magnifying glasses
• Magnifying readers

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• Branch Spotlight: Burlington County

Library

• Optelec desktop video screen magnifier
• Ramp AND accessibility lift to

auditorium

• Sound enhancement device for

auditorium

Accessible Equipment

Burlington County Library System

• Equipment to consider adding to your library is:

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• TBBC Player
• To learn more about the Talking Book and Braille Center, check out the presentation, That All May Read: Resources for Your Print Disabled Community From the NJ State Library Talking Book & Braille Center, scheduled at 2:30 p.m. today!

Accessible Equipment

Burlington County Library System

Accessible Equipment

Burlington County Library System

Library Accessibility Websites and Software

Burlington County Library System

Accessible Software at BCLS

What We Have:

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Windows 7 Native Accessibility Settings:

Accessible Website:

• Alt text required for all images
• Other than homepage, we try to stick to “2 scrolls per page”
• Mobile responsive

Burlington County Library System

Accessible Software at BCLS

What We’d Like to Have:

• JAWS or NVDA screen reading softwares
• Work better and more consistently with 3rd party applications than the native Windows narrator
• Accessibility settings on our loanable tablets

What We Learned:

• Different softwares interacting affects accessibility!
• Our loanable tablets are Android, and came with various native accessibility settings, but we found out later the management software we use to enable lending makes those settings unavailable to end users

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• Windows narrator does a good job narrating Windows, but 3rd party softwares are more consistent across diverse applications

Burlington County Library System

Building an Accessibility Page: How?

• Does your library already have a website where the page will be built?

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• To what extent is your website an in-house affair or a vendor-contracted project? How much/what aspects of it are maintained in-house?

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• Who are the players involved in your website maintenance? Multiple people, multiple departments, outside vendors?
• What is the scale of your library’s website? Do you have multiple locations?
• What platform is your website built on? What type of accessibility is

built into the platform?

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• Alt-text
• Mobile responsiveness
• Navigation structure/options
• Dyslexia friendly fonts
• Etc.

Burlington County Library System

Configuring What you Have for Accessibility

• Try to limit scrolls per page
• Accordion menus → declutter pages, and work neatly with screen readers, allowing users to choose between clear options without needing to listen to an entire page
• Reusable side bars → share frequently needed information in multiple places, organizes the information on the page
• How is your page accessed? Are there multiple access points?
• What does your overall site navigation look like? Lots of drop down menus? Landing pages?
• Centralized, thematic landing pages organize information in a less cramped and easier to conceptualize way than increasingly long/complex drop down menus
• Accessible font
• Sans serif to appear less crowded, better for dyslexia
• If your platform has it/can add it, Open Dyslexic Typeface

Burlington County Library System

Lessons and Takeaways

• Accessibility and Accessibility web pages are an ongoing process → Start good, but there’s always room to get better!
• Software accessibility has lots of moving parts, from different softwares interacting with each other, to different teams collaborating on your website!
• Accessible software has to do with what software you choose, but also how you configure what you have: think about how to best take advantage of what’s possible through the software available to you

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• Ex: Alt-text is built into our site and we must use it, but limiting the amount of scrolls per page by keeping down wordcount and utilizing accordion menus, moving from a complex menu structure to central landing pages for our primary services, and limiting the number of items that appear on our mobile menu were conscious choices about how to use our software in a more accessible way

Burlington County Library System

Questions?