The ReadingLists@UCL team continues to work closely with Library and central UCL Accessibility teams to harmonise our services for students and staff. We have now drawn together and formalised our offering.

In addition to our ReadingLists@UCL Guide ‘Supporting Print Disabled Students’ aimed at teaching staff, we have recently offered a permanent ‘Moodle Healthcheck’.  Previously limited to summer projects, we now support teaching staff year round to review a Moodle course – sometimes inherited and in need of a review – to identify which course readings are not accessible, and help address this.

This spring we joined with an Arts and Humanities faculty project, along with Learning Technologists and other librarians, and helped reviewed six Moodle modules.  The Learning Technologists led on accessible documents (handbooks, PowerPoints etc.) and we identified course readings that were inaccessible.  We either added a compliant version of the reading to an online reading list, or helped OCR and update the document to make it more accessible within Moodle.  On reading lists we link to UCL subscribed resources where possible, to ensure readings are also copyright compliant.

The Exam Papers service and course readings digitised under the CLA licence, all adhere to a baseline standard of accessibility so they are screen readable as standard.

Image of new reading list view. Click to enlarge.

The new list view for ReadingLists@UCL will be rolled out to UCL on 30th July 2019.

The new list view has been developed to improve performance, including on mobile devices. More importantly, it meets web accessibility standards making it inclusive for all UCL users.  Updating the look will ensure that online reading lists are fully compliant with the 2018 UK Accessibility regulations. Talis (the company which powers the ReadingLists@UCL software) has a Web Accessibility Statement which gives further details, inlcluding information on compatibility with screen readers and additional help on using accessibility tools with ReadingLists@UCL.

Some list editors have been using the new list veiw in Beta for the past few months: the ‘classic’ view will now be replaced.  There is a walkthrough video of the new look for student users – and anyone else curious to take a look.

Notices were sent to subject librarians, the Departmental Administrator’s forum, and Digital Education, to cascade to reading lists users.  If you have any questions about the new look please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the ReadingLists@UCL team.

Looking ahead…

The next developments will be a new Moodle integration in summer 2019, in conjunction with the Moodle team.  An update to the list editing view has been developed but won’t be rolled out to UCL until summer 2020: list editors who like the look of this are welcome to start using the Beta editing view from August 2019, just get in touch to arrange this.

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day!  Here are a few thoughts on how the TLS have considered accessibility in our everyday library services.

Text Blurry? Lighted Magnifier By Cobalt123

All course readings digitised by the TLS are run through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to ensure they are accessible to those using screen readers.

Copyright regulations have changed over the years and our Copyright blog has been following these improvements.

Through ReadingLists@UCL we regularly link to e-books and electronic articles; these are subscribed resources provided by the library.  Many have good searchability and portability, or features such as read-aloud; however DRM added by the publisher can render them less accessible.  There has been some wonderful library-led research looking into just how accessible these platforms are.  This project undertook an e-book audit in 2016 and its work is being continued by Aspire 2018.

Some initiatives encourage publishers to engage in making their platforms easier to access, such as ‘Praise a publisher – critique a publisher’ in which the library community gave comment and feedback on the publishers who were the most speedy and helpful in providing accessible copies of texts – and any who didn’t quite come up to the mark.

While we occasionally still email publishers to request an accessible copy of text on behalf of a student, more often their requirements are more immediately met with the RNIB Bookshare service.  This has grown rapidly in recent years and now some publishers deposit accessible vesions automatically on pubication.  Any UCL students who need access the RNIB Bookshare please register with UCL Disability Support  who will enable your access.  They will also be able to introduce you other relevant support, such as the SENIT suite of specialist IT equipemnt and software.

The UCL Library Disability support is also really welcoming: do ask them for key ways they can assist you or someone you know.

• For more information and inspiration, follow the Twitter hashtag #GAAD
• Want to participate?  Raise your own awareness by going without your computer mouse for an hour, or using screen-reader software and turning off your screen.  After this experience you might like to go back and make sure your webpages are accessible!  Find more ideas on the Global Accessibility Awareness Day website.
• Try this training event on e-books and disabled readers. Aimed at publishers and aggregators it covers what to look for in accessibility statements.
• TLS mainly provides IT-based services however accessibility and inclusive design should touch all areas.  Current Insta-crush is Sinéad Burke who, amongst other talents, is a charismatic advocate for inclusive design.  Follow her to find out more!