When planning this CALL Bulletin issue, the committee discussed “community” as a potential theme, one that resonates with many aspects of our work in law libraries as well as our participation together as CALL. If you spend time on web accessibility, “community” might seem like a synonym for “audience,” and to a certain extent, it should be: after all, we want to make our online presence accessible so that our users can benefit. But “community” is not just the “why” for accessibility; it’s also part of the “how.” We can best improve web accessibility by making the most of our communities, both communities of practice and the communities our law libraries serve.
Communities of practice
The term “communities of practice” emerged from education scholarship, popularized by a 1998 book of that title by Etienne Wenger. The concept has come to mean a group of people with a shared interest and expertise who interact and learn from each other. This could be a formal organization focused on a particular topic and organized to share ideas and information, but it could also be an informal group that spends time together and discusses shared experiences and insights. These communities can be in-person and synchronous gatherings or virtual and asynchronous message exchanges or anything in-between. But they’ll all be “places” where people can learn together by participating actively or passively gleaning insights from others.
For law librarians who are interested in accessibility, there are some existing communities of practice that may be worth engaging with. One of the most notable is the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA), which tests vendor products, provides resources, and offers educational events. Though originally founded a decade ago by the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the group has expand to include several other library consortia and now provides many of their resources and offerings freely, regardless of institutional membership. They have contracted for independent accessibility evaluations for over a hundred vendor-provided resources, including some from Hein, Lexis, and Westlaw, which can be used by vendors and libraries alike to determine next steps for improvement. They also provide a Library Accessibility Toolkit and regularly host webinars on accessibility-related topics (recordings are often available). If you sign up for the LAA newsletter, you’ll also receive updates on new evaluations and upcoming events, as they are announced.
While there might not currently be a significant law library-focused community of practice for accessibility, there are overlapping groups. For those at government libraries, the Section 508 IT Accessibility Community seems likely to be a good way to share information. Federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial government employees and contractors are eligible to join by using a .gov or .mil email address. Some of the AALL special interest sections (SISs) occasionally share and discuss information on related topics, such as the Legal Innovation & Technology SIS or the Library Systems & Resources Discovery SIS. Sometimes, AALL eLearning trainings focus on accessibility topics, and they are generally recorded for asynchronous access. For that matter, many library organizations have begun to provide training and discussions on web accessibility in light of the recent ADA rule update: for Chicago area libraries, Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS) provides a number of accessibility-focused offerings, both upcoming and recorded.
Learning From Your Community
But formal education opportunities and focused communities of practice are not the only way that web accessibility involves community. Few of our libraries stand completely alone: most are part of larger organizations, and all our libraries are embedded in particular places and serve particular groups of people. By engaging with library users and colleagues beyond the law library, we can ensure our efforts to improve accessibility are making a positive difference.
As mentioned at the start, thinking about community as the reason for accessibility is a good place to start. Once we know what our users need, we can better make or seeking improvements. You may already know individuals or groups of users who have specific accessibility needs, but unless your library serves only a very small group, there are likely users with requirements you’re not aware of. That’s one reason adhering to standards like WCAG is a good idea: the standards are designed to create a base level of access for people with a variety of disabilities and using various assistive technologies. But even after meeting minimum standards, it’s often possible to make further improvements, and to make the best use of the time and resources available, it makes sense to prioritize improvements that will benefit the library’s specific community.
Just asking library users what they need is a good start. This can be something as hands-off as a prominently placed suggestion box in the library or a comment form linked from the library’s homepage. But if time and staffing permits, a user survey can be a great way to get insights. Again, this can be fairly simple, such as a brief webform with a few easily answered questions sent out or shared with library users. Or it could be something as elaborate as a UX study with participants navigating your website or selected resources and providing real-time feedback on their experiences. For ongoing insight, the library can host focus groups or user advisory groups at intervals. Any way that library users can share their thoughts can be valuable, though for web accessibility purposes, targeted outreach to community members with disabilities would be especially valuable. For academic libraries, partnering with campus disability resource centers can be particularly helpful; for other types of libraries, partnering with external affinity groups or service organizations may provide similar insights.
When planning and enacting web accessibility improvements (as with most aspects of library tasks), community can be at once a motivator for change, a spotlight on what needs to be done, and a support for the work. I’d love for CALL to be part of that beneficial community! Please consider reaching out if you have any comments or ideas to share. Guest writers are welcome, or I’d be glad to include comments and ideas in the future.