Sarah George is a Subject Librarian at the University of Bradford. She was made a National Teaching Fellow in 2017 – and her accessibility remit contributed significantly to that recognition. Here she gives a personal take on e-book accessibility and accessibility activism via research and evidence. I am an academic librarian at the University of Bradford, covering the subjects […]
Tag: libraries
The good – it works The e-book accessibility audit (August 2016 to November 2016) was a joint project between several UK Higher Education Institution disability and library services, Jisc and representatives from the book supply industry. More information on the partners is available. The audit had three main purposes: To create a sort of “accessibility Esperanto” […]
The University of Chester has been actively preparing for the changes to disabled student allowances. In this guest post by Pete Scorey – Assistive Technology Officer for Learning and Information Services – Alistair McNaught invites Pete to explain his approach to benchmarking accessibility. There has been much talk of ‘reasonable adjustments’ recently, along with the […]
If you’re currently working in a library service and preparing for the impact of changes to the disabled student allowance this blog post is designed to give you a helpful overview of how Jisc can support you. Our three main areas of focus for inclusive libraries has been advocacy, guidance, and case studies. Advocacy: We […]
When you are procuring new institutional platforms (such as eBook, VLE, content creation platforms) or licences have come up for renewal again, check which of the following features are available. If a significant number of these features are missing you might renegotiate costs based on the extra costs you might incur in supporting print impaired […]
There is no single ‘ideal’ way of sourcing your alternative formats because so much depends on the nature of learner, the nature of the resource and the amount of information required. However, just because there is no unique ‘magical workflow’ doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking at what’s available and putting together a starting point […]
Providing alternative formats for staff and students can be a challenging business. What happens when an external library member or an ex-student library user makes a request? This question came to us recently so we put it to our subject specialists for technology and the law – John Kelly and Jackie Milne worked together to give […]
How can you improve the offer of textbooks in alternative format for disabled learners, particularly for those hit by changes to the DSA? The best solution is, ideally, to already have an accessible e-book on an accessible e-book platform. Even if the book or platform lacks accessibility they may often be more than adequate for […]
It’s good to share, it’s easy to share, it’s legal to share For many years libraries and disability support teams have had the frustration of wasted time and effort in scanning books that others had already scanned… but that licences prevented them from sharing. Now that copyright laws have changed (see previous blog post) it […]
The Law got better for disabled learners The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Disability) Regulations 2014 legislation enshrined a right for HEI’s to share accessible “intermediate copies” of textbooks with one another. However, the lack of definition of “intermediate copy” meant that, in practice, hardly any sharing was taking place for fear of falling foul […]