10 Fundable Accessibility Upgrades For Your Library

Yesterday I gave a lightning talk at the Central New York Library Resources Council (CLRC) Annual Conference, which was held at Hamilton College. This annual event is a chance for library staff from a four-county region to come together to learn and network. The event started with a keynote panel discussion focused on resiliency, which was followed by seven lightning talks divided between the morning and afternoon on a wide variety of topics, and a short annual business meeting.

My talk on "10 Fundable Accessibility Upgrades For Your Library" was inspired by the one-day New York State Library conference entitled, "Room For Everyone: A Library Accessibility Day of Learning." I published a post on that in August. Every library is interested in making its building more accessible and they often need funding to make those changes. I wanted to provide ideas on projects they could do to make their facilities and services more accessible, include a few that are free or low cost to implement.

Below are my slides. Please share them with others who are interested in accessibility. 

An Accessibility Bummer: I created and viewed the slides on my laptop before going to the conference and did not see them projected until I presented. So I was saddened that blue URL links did not show up well on the screen. As PowerPoint often does, it provided a color template that was not indeed fully accessible. While I couldn't test out my slides on a projector in advance, if possible it is always good to do that. It can be amazing to see how Microsoft's suggested color combinations do not work.

Thoughts from "Room For Everyone: A Library Accessibility Day of Learning"

On July 9, the New York State Library held a one-day conference to start a year-long celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I had the pleasure of attending the event and facilitating a panel discussion on ""Building Services Where Everyone Belongs." The panelists were:

• Samir Benantar, NYS Education Department Language Access Coordinator 
• Blaise Bryant, the Communications Specialist for the NY Association on Independent Living 
• Anna DeRosa, Program Research Specialist & Grants Coordinator at the New York State Council on Developmental Disabilities
• Joan Naturale, National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Deaf Studies Archives liaison for students, staff, and faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology
• Christopher Woodfill, Executive Director of the New York State Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing Office

 The State Library has written a summary of the day and I want to capture here some additional thoughts, some of which came after the event had ended:

• Work with local agencies which support people who have disabilities in order to understand how to modify the library appropriate. Consider creating a group of advisors who can review designs, color choices, etc., and provide input.
• Wayfinding is important for everyone including people with limited vision. For example, instead of painting every wall the same color, paint an easy to see wall in each room a different color. Then you can tell people to go to the room with the red wall, for example. I know this means having more paints on hand for touch up, but the benefit will be worth it.
• For someone who is blind or has low vision, consider how to build wayfinding into the flooring. Use texture on the floor to show pathways as well as places with paths cross (and a person might want to turn). 
• Upgrade your meeting rooms with hearing loops which can connect to a person's hearing aid through Bluetooth technology.
• Create a calming sensory room that can be used by children and adults with autism, as well as others who are being overwhelmed by the environment. 
• In my mind, libraries should consider more broadly how to use construction grants or funding from other sources to improve accessibility.
• Work with professional translation services to have library materials (e.g., policies, program information) translated into the languages that are spoken most in your area.  Be sure to have the translations reviewed by someone who speaks the language to ensure that translation makes sense to them. Also have these materials translated into Braille.
• Working with an interpreter (or an online interpreter service) can require some practice. Work to give your staff that practice time. Perhaps hire an interpreter to come, give a demonstration, and then allow people use the interpreter for a few minutes. (Pace, pausing, and clarity are important.)
• Create clear walking paths and do not use those clear walking paths for sudden displays or events. 
• Help staff become comfortable with making mistakes when working with someone who has accessibility needs. Helping a patron/community member can be more important than doing it perfectly. 
• Understand how to connect patrons with talking and Braille books.
• If your library has toys for children, ensure that toys are included for children who have accessibility needs.
• If you have recently renovation your library and did not think about accessibility (e.g., wayfinding), consider how you can now add-in accessibility elements.
• Remember to think about color selection for those who are color blind. Use high contract color combinations. 
• Work to ensure that your library website is accessible and can be read by screen readers.

There is much more to consider. While it can be overwhelming, every change - even small ones - can help your library be more welcoming to its community. 

The State Library is hosting a series of webinars to continue this conversation and education. The summary blog post contains a list of currently scheduled webinars at the bottom. 

 

 

 

Hello 2025! -- Looking back & looking ahead

2024 went by quickly and now we are at the start of another year. Happy New Year!  I haven't posted in a while and thought that I would provide a quick update.

Yesterday was Public Domain Day and you have likely seen news stories about it. The Morning Brew has a brief story which includes the possibility of horror movies being made with public domain works.  I hadn't considered that, but I can definitely imagine it and I expect it has already happened somewhere (perhaps memes or TicTic videos). 

By the way, Wikipedia has an interesting list of what passed into the public domain in the U.S. and in other countries. Of course, the Internet Archive (and others) have lists. Among the works now in the public domain is "Singing in the Rain" which was used in the disturbing film, "A Clockwork Orange" in 1971.

Many people are talking about the copyright and artificial intelligence (AI).  The U.S. Copyright Office is analyzing the issues around AI, but I wonder if that is moving too slowly given how AI is now all around us. Researchers at RAND have written the report, "Artificial Intelligence Impacts on Copyright Law" which I have found to be useful. 

I should say that I am not a huge user of AI, although it is being built into things that I use daily. Most times those AI "pop-ups" are annoying because I know what I am trying to do and AI is slowing me down. I have used AI intentionally to help me rewrite awkward text, but I don't do that frequently. I mostly use AI to generate images for me like the one above. In other words, I'm not an AI convert. However, I know that there are libraries experiment with AI to see how it can be of use, and that some people are true AI converts. 

I must say that I find ads for business products that use AI to be humorous because they have to state  that the products are hallucination-free. Did we ever think we would need to say that about a product we're using?

The  litigation Hachette v. Internet Archive concluded with the Second Circuit Court ruling against the Internet Archive, and the Archive deciding not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. There is much that has been said and could be said about this court case. 

BTW Brewster Kahle and Kyle Courtney were interviewed by Chris Hayes during the summer (The End of Libraries as We Know Them?), which is about more than the litigation and worth listening to.  I always appreciate Kyle's perspective on libraries, copyright, and access to materials.

I need to mention the continued effort to ban materials in libraries and the push-back that is occurring on that.  For information on what has occurred, I suggest that you read EveryLibrary's report, "Wins, Warnings, and Ongoing Legislative Fights for Libraries in 2024."

While we have products being built or trained on digitized content, we will have organizations that need materials put into digital form, for example old church records. Yes, digitization is still needed. Depending on where you or your organization are in your digitization journey, consider reaching out to smaller institutions in your community and asking if they have information that needs to be preserved or if it would benefit them to have it available digitally.  Birth, death, baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, membership, or land records are all things that may still be in paper form.

My focus in 2024 continued to be on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, (DEIAB) and anti-racism with Widerstand Consulting. 2024 had its challenges because of all the things happening around us (like politics). The question we are all asking is, "What will 2025 bring?"  I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that those doing DEIAB and social justice work need to be ready for whatever it is.  Personally, I believe that allies need bystander training and I hope communities will offer it.  There are many resources online about bystander training. These are a few videos that I have found useful:

• The 5 Ds of Bystander Intervention
• Bystander Campaign Video – Train Scenario
• How to safely intervene, report hate crimes
• That Girl At The Bar | #HowWillWeRespond | Women Safety | Bystander Intervention | Short Film | 2017
• C.A.R.E. | The 4 Steps of Bystander Intervention for Workplace Harassment

One of the things I have been doing regularly is writing articles for Widerstand's monthly newsletter which is free and available to all. I'm also posting frequently to Widerstand's LinkedIn page. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and following us on LinkedIn.

Well...that's my update! If we cross paths in 2025, please stop and say "hello!"