Standards – DigitalKoans

"The State of Scientific PDF Accessibility in Repositories: A Survey in Switzerland"

This survey analyzes the quality of the portable document format (PDF) documents in online repositories in Switzerland, examining their accessibility for people with visual impairments. Two minimal accessibility features were analysed: the PDFs had to have tags and a hierarchical heading structure. The survey also includes interviews with the managers or heads of multiple Swiss universities’ repositories . . . An analysis of interviewee responses indicates an overall lack of awareness of PDF accessibility, and shows that online repositories currently have no concrete plans to address the issue. This paper concludes by presenting a set of recommendations for online repositories to improve the accessibility of their PDF documents.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1581

Less Than 50% Have Web Usability PSGs: "Web Usability Practice at ARL Academic Libraries "

Expanding on previous research, the authors applied quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate Web usability policies, standards, and guidelines (PSGs); resources; and usability testing, including mobile testing and usability laboratories, at the academic members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Survey results indicated that less than 50 percent of the libraries have Web usability PSGs. The perceived importance of usability testing has a significantly positive correlation with the testing performed, ARL ranking, mobile website testing, and availability of usability laboratories. Limited resources hindered initiatives aimed at improving usability.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901567

"30 Years Ago, One Decision Altered the Course of Our Connected World"

CERN owned Berners-Lee’s invention, and the lab had the option to license out the World Wide Web for profit. But Berners-Lee believed that keeping the web as open as possible would help it grow. . . .

Berners-Lee eventually convinced CERN to release the World Wide Web into the public domain without any patents or fees. He has since attributed the runaway success of the web to that single decision.

https://bit.ly/41VrXN6

"Guest Post – Advancing Accessibility in Scholarly Publishing: Fostering Empathy"

This three-part series aims to discuss the topic of advancing accessibility within scholarly communication with the focus on digital accessibility. The contributors, members of the SSP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Committee, draw attention to the challenges related to addressing accessibility in publishing and communication workflows. They provide examples of exclusion resulting from lack of accessibility of digital content, list key points for getting buy-in from key stakeholders to implement and grow accessibility programs, and offer recommendations for inclusive practices.

bit.ly/3SGHflc

"NISO Publishes New Recommended Practice for Video and Audio Metadata"

NISO’s new Video and Audio Metadata Recommended Practice will help address these challenges, by providing a vocabulary that enables connectivity between existing standards covering key metadata elements: administrative (e.g., dates, versions, and identifiers); semantic (e.g., subject classifications and keywords); technical (e.g., media type, encoding, and bitrate); rights (e.g., rights owner, licensor, and embargo information); and accessibility (e.g., accessibility features and access).

bit.ly/3ImojVp

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"W3C Re-Launched as a Public-Interest Non-profit Organization"

The World Wide Web Consortium began the year 2023 by forming a new public-interest non-profit organization. The new entity preserves our member-driven approach, existing worldwide outreach and cooperation while allowing for additional partners around the world beyond Europe and Asia. The new organization also preserves the core process and mission of the Consortium to shepherd the web, by developing open web standards as a single global organization with contributions from W3C Members, staff, and the international community.

bit.ly/3wJg8f3

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"Community Consensus on Core Open Science Practices to Monitor in Biomedicine"

The state of open science needs to be monitored to track changes over time and identify areas to create interventions to drive improvements. In order to monitor open science practices, they first need to be well defined and operationalized. To reach consensus on what open science practices to monitor at biomedical research institutions, we conducted a modified 3-round Delphi study. Participants were research administrators, researchers, specialists in dedicated open science roles, and librarians. In rounds 1 and 2, participants completed an online survey evaluating a set of potential open science practices, and for round 3, we hosted two half-day virtual meetings to discuss and vote on items that had not reached consensus. Ultimately, participants reached consensus on 19 open science practices. This core set of open science practices will form the foundation for institutional dashboards and may also be of value for the development of policy, education, and interventions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001949

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"A Framework for Improving the Accessibility of Research Papers on arXiv.org"

The research content hosted by arXiv is not fully accessible to everyone due to disabilities and other barriers. This matters because a significant proportion of people have reading and visual disabilities, it is important to our community that arXiv is as open as possible, and if science is to advance, we need wide and diverse participation. In addition, we have mandates to become accessible, and accessible content benefits everyone. In this paper, we will describe the accessibility problems with research, review current mitigations (and explain why they aren’t sufficient), and share the results of our user research with scientists and accessibility experts. Finally, we will present arXiv’s proposed next step towards more open science: offering HTML alongside existing PDF and TeX formats. An accessible HTML version of this paper is also available at https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessibility_research_report.html

https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.07286

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TRLN Guide to Negotiating Accessibility in E-Resource Licenses

This resource is meant to serve as a reference tool for library staff involved in licensing and e-resources management as they advocate for strong accessibility assurances in their formal contracts with service and content providers. Each component of TRLN’s preferred accessibility language has been broken down into various components and discussed. The components include: a reference to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a reference to Section 508, a reference to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the provision of a VPAT, the institution’s right to modify content to make it accessible for end users, and the provider’s responsibility to respond to and remedy accessibility-related complaints and issues

http://bit.ly/trln-a11y-eresource-license

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"Open Access Journals Lack Image Accessibility Considerations in Author Guidelines"

Using image accessibility and alt text as a lens, our objective was to evaluate how open access journals incorporate disability accessibility as part of open access publishing. Using a random sample of 300 English language open access journals, we assessed author guidelines to understand image requirements for submissions and open access statements to understand how journals conceive of openness and accessibility. We found that most open access journals do not include disability accessibility elements in their guidelines to authors when submitting images as part of their scholarship. While over half the journals had required parameters for image submission, none of them required alt text. And while the majority of journals included the word 'access' or 'accessibility' in their open access statements, almost none included disability or inclusion related terms.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/zsjqw

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"Reducing Barriers to Open Science by Standardizing Practices and Realigning Incentives"

In this policy position paper, we outline current open science practices and key bottlenecks in their broader adoption. We propose that national science agencies create a digital infrastructure framework that would standardize open science principles and make them actionable. We also suggest ways of redefining research success to align better with open science, and to incentivize a system where sharing various research outputs is beneficial to researchers.

https://doi.org/10.38126/JSPG210201

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"Digital Books Wear Out Faster than Physical Books"

Mega-publishers are saying electronic books do not wear out, but this is not true at all. The Internet Archive processes and reprocesses the books it has digitized as new optical character recognition technologies come around, as new text understanding technologies open new analysis, as formats change from djvu to daisy to epub1 to epub2 to epub3 to pdf-a and on and on. This takes thousands of computer-months and programmer-years to do this work. This is what libraries have signed up for—our long-term custodial roles.

Also, the digital media they reside on changes, too—from Digital Linear Tape to PATA hard drives to SATA hard drives to SSDs. If we do not actively tend our digital books they become unreadable very quickly.

Then there is cataloging and metadata. If we do not keep up with the ever-changing expectations of digital learners, then our books will not be found. This is ongoing and expensive.

https://cutt.ly/VMTDGdL

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"Accessibility and Disability Services for Libraries: A Survey of Large, Research-Intensive Institutions"

"This article summarizes the results of a survey of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutions in October 2020 related to what services the library provides, whether they have changed due to campus or state requirements, which positions within libraries provide support, and what the impetus was for offering services. The authors also discuss implications for scalable support of disability and accessibility services at university libraries."

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/866298

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