Evaluating e‐book platforms: Lessons from the e‐book accessibility audit

Abstract

E-books are a potential assistive technology, offering significant advantages over print books, and accessible materials are now a financial and legal necessity within UK academia. It is often difficult to find supplier information on accessibility, for example, whether files have been tagged for reading order or whether the interface has been tested with assistive technologies. Equally, library staff may lack confidence in identifying accessibility features, making it hard to promote them to students or demand them from suppliers. This article reports on a crowdsourced ebook audit of 44 e-book platforms that was undertaken by 33 UK universities during 2016. The research scored different platforms for a range of accessibility issues, and the resulting open data set is presented in a manner that can be interrogated by libraries looking for specific features. A key finding was that the platform can dramatically affect the accessibility of a publisher's content, making it important for publishers to work with suitable vendors to disseminate their publications.

Defining, evaluating, and achieving accessible library resources

“…Babu and Xie (2017) and Xie et al (2015) provide concrete ideas about how to enhance metadata for digitized and born-digital objects to enhance their accessibility. Dobson and McNaught (2017) and McNaught et al (2018) offer a promising model for crowdsourcing accessibility data about academic e-book platforms, leading to a tool that could help libraries decide which providers to work with; help students decide which platform might be the best for their particular situation and context; and help suppliers support accessibility features on their platforms. Investigating information-seeking behavior among individuals with functional differences is a promising avenue for gaining a deeper understanding of how to design complex interfaces that are actually usable for everyone (Hunsucker, 2013).…”

“…While there remains a heavy focus on library websites in the accessibility literature, other types of online resources have come into question as well, including research databases (Blechner, 2015); online exhibits and collections of digitized and born-digital materials (Walker and Keenan, 2015; Xie et al , 2015; Sorrell et al , 2017; Babu and Xie, 2017); instructional objects (Oud, 2011; Wakimoto and Soules, 2011; Wray, 2013; Clossen, 2014; Clossen and Proces, 2017); archival finding aids (Southwell and Slater, 2012, 2013); e-books and e-readers (Maatta and Bonnici, 2014; Mune and Agee, 2016; Dobson and McNaught, 2017; Kahler, 2017; McNaught et al , 2018); digital talking books (Lundh and Johnson, 2015); live instruction sessions (Pionke, 2017a); and the widely-used Springshare platform LibGuides (Pionke and Manson, 2018). While many of these studies are good starting points and will serve as useful references for library practitioners concerned with approaching specific technologies from an accessibility perspective, it is impossible in some cases not to notice a persistent lack of direct engagement with users with diverse abilities.…”

‘Dreaming in colour’: disabled higher education students’ perspectives on improving design practices that would enable them to benefit from their use of technologies

“…Despite these potential benefits, there is a significant amount of evidence to indicate that technology can also have a negative influence on the study experiences of disabled students. A commonly reported technology-related barrier to positive experiences is the technical inaccessibility of learning platforms (Brandt 2011;Policy Connect 2018), online courses including MOOCs (Roberts et al 2011;Iniesto et al 2016;Sanchez-Gordon and Luján-Mora 2018), websites (Kimmons 2017;Seale 2014;Alahmadi and Drew 2017), text-books (McNaught et al 2018;Fichten et al 2020), lecture material such as pdfs and PowerPoint slides (Fichten et al 2009) and social media (Asuncion et al 2012). Other reported barriers reported include: difficulties obtaining technologies (Reed et al 2006); unanticipated time demands required learning how to use assistive technologies (Hanafin et al 2007); technology use being contested or valued differently by lecturers (Claiborne et al 2011); being recommended technology based on disability labels rather than need (Stodden and Conway 2003) and lack of availability of adapted computers in campus-based computer laboratories (Fichten et al (2010a(Fichten et al ( , 2010b.…”