Library 2.0: What We’re Doing About Accessibility at BiblioCommons

There’s a lot more to digital accessibility than technical compliance with standards. It’s a mindset, where you become aware of people’s unique abilities and changing needs.

Here at BiblioCommons, we’ve dedicated this blog series to shine a light on the importance of accessibility and advise on how you can put it into practice at your library. Next, we’re going to talk about what we’re doing as a library software provider to make every product simple, effective, and compliant with accessibility standards.

The web was built for everyone, right from the get-go, literally in the first sentence the internet hosted. It was designed to be a free and open platform for all to use. In a post-pandemic world, many of our day-to-day experiences have suddenly shifted to the online space. The need to make the web an accessible place for all is more important now than ever!

"Over 1 billion people are estimated to experience disability. This corresponds to about 15% of the world's population."

Source: World Health Organization

We Have a Responsibility to People with Disabilities

At BiblioCommons, we’ve made a commitment to give everyone equal access to digital libraries and the entire experience—from accessing collections and resources, blog content, staff book choices, and exciting programming information.

No one should feel frustrated by navigation or broken links. And our focus on accessible design truly improves the experience for everyone. We understand many libraries don’t have a dedicated IT person or website manager, so tasks often become a team effort. That’s where our accessible and user-friendly product suite can help.

As we’ve outlined in detail in blog 2 of the Library 2.0 Accessibility Series, accessibility legislation, standards, and principles exist for a reason. But it’s up to software creators like us, and you and your library team to really make accessibility a priority.

Because the online experience, just as stepping through the door of physical library branches, should be welcoming for all users.

We’re Building a Culture of Accessibility

Accessibility is never an afterthought, but a pillar of what we do!

How are we doing this alongside public libraries?

With our product suite, we:

• Strive to create digital services that are welcoming and inclusive to people with a wide range of abilities, including meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 level AA compliance
• Offer accessible online services including online library card registration, patron management of holds, including books, physical items, and downloads of digital resources like music videos audiobooks, or eBooks.
• Offer “Smart search” and easy filtering options to help people searching for items find what they are looking for, even if they don’t know the exact details.
• Offer core services in multiple languages, as supported by the library.
• Create opportunities for patrons to share direct feedback with us as a vendor, as well as the library, plus rate and review collection items.

For our customers, we:

• Provide consultation at implementation to ensure compliance and training as your library gets up and running.
• Provide ongoing meetups, support, and customer service to help you tackle issues, and grow and improve your accessibility practice over time.
• Offer ongoing training and documentation to help libraries improve accessibility and inclusion in their digital services, including how to customize and use key accessibility features like Alt Text, Fonts, Link Text, and Navigation.

With our team, we:

• Invest in accessibility compliance (by conducting testing, training, and implementing industry best practices tailored for digital libraries.)
• Train BiblioCommons designers, developers, and product managers, to follow accessibility best practices from the ground up in all our products.
• Guarantee that our quality assurance engineers rigorously test for accessibility by running color contrast, keyboard accessibility, high contrast, and screen reader tests.
• Foster a great relationship with Level Access, an advocacy consulting group that reviews our products’ performance for all users.

In addition, we are currently planning an in-depth accessibility study with NNELS (National Network for Equitable Library Service), a Canadian national non-profit organization that creates books in accessible formats for people with print disabilities who use public libraries, and advocates for an equitable reading landscape. NNELS is a government-funded organization focused on making library materials accessible.

We strive to create digital services that are welcoming, easy to use, and inclusive. Our products regularly undergo updates to make them more accessible. For example, we made accessibility improvements for people using screen readers that are navigating BiblioEmail preferences. When the initially closed sections are expanded, the focus on the page goes to the first input control so the user can select something immediately.

Authoring Tools That Don’t Need Technical Know-How

We want to make it possible for your library to produce accessible web content that delivers a great digital experience—regardless of your team’s technical knowledge.

Our job is to equip you with authoring tools that have accessibility built right in. So, we make it simple to create keyboard-friendly web pages, publish screen-reader-friendly text, or add alt text to images, and more. (No idea what “Alt text” is? We covered how to write helpful Alt text in a previous blog article that included tips for website compliance.)

Our team also provides homepage design reviews, helpful tips for improving accessibility, and a full library of templates in BiblioWeb, the website builder tool. We’re on a mission to enable non-developers to build and manage library websites that exceed expectations.

Plus, we have the Partner Portal to keep you up to date on new developments, techniques, and best practices. We want libraries to achieve accessible, universal web access. Read about our full service here. That’s why we’re here.

Next in our series, we’ll look at the nuances and context of your website content. The goal is to make the text and images that bring your website to life as inclusive and inviting as they can be for all your visitors.