Establishing accessibility for e‐journals: a suggested approach

Abstract

Libraries in the USA are required by law to make library programs and services accessible to people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (1998) mandate that the responsibility for accessibility extends to the electronic environment. Increasingly, librarians who purchase electronic journals are becoming aware of the urgent need to consider accessibility issues, but many are uncertain about how to actually determine whether a product is accessible, and what to do if it is not. This study examines 11 major electronic research journal services for basic accessibility. Findings reflect that awareness of accessibility issues is low among electronic research journal service providers, with some notable exceptions. A strategy for increasing awareness of accessibility issues among e-journal providers is offered.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) accessibility practice of four journal publishers

“…Coonin (2002) examined 11 major electronic research journal services and found a low level of awareness about basic accessibility. However, this study did not focus on the PDF versions of published articles.…”

Accessibility of graphics in STEM research articles: Analysis and proposals for improvement

“…In current practice, the alternate text and actual text attributes (and also the alt attribute in the img element of HyperText Markup Language [HTML] documents) are absent or incorrectly applied in academic publications belonging to STEM domains (Splendiani & Ribera, ; Splendiani, Ribera, & Centelles, ; Splendiani, Ribera, Garcia, & Termens, ). The literature points to images lacking a descriptive text alternative as one of the most common accessibility barriers in research journals (Coonin, ), digitized documents in academic libraries (Southwell & Slater, ), and websites (Petrie, Harrison, & Dev, ). Three main circumstances could explain the lack of application of accessible text alternatives to images in scientific publications: Images in STEM academic publications are commonly semantically dense and convey professional/technical information (Burford, Briggs, & Eakins, ).…”

Servicios bibliotecarios: la perspectiva de los estudiantes con discapacidad y el personal bibliotecario a través de seis universidades madrileñas

“…En relación con la accesibilidad en sus distintas modalidades (Térmens, 2008;Christiensen, 2001;Forrest, 2005;Gutiérrez, 2001;Hassan, 2004), como las revistas electrónicas (Coonin, 2002), páginas web (Coombs, 2000;O'neill, 1998), la edifi cación del edifi cio, eliminación de barreras arquitectónicas (Church, 2002;Maldonado,1998); en bibliotecas parlamentarias (Kedem, 2001), acerca de las tecnologías de la información como el telebook, para facilitar al usuario el acceso al catálogo a través de teléfono con una operación rápi-da, y sencilla . Además de los benefi cios de la biblioteca virtual para las personas con discapacidad (Suárez, 1998;Huidobro, 2001;Gutiérrez, 2001;Romero, 1998), internet y su calidad a través de la usabilidad y accesibilidad (Blandford, 2003;Méndez, 2001).…”