Presented by Jenny Hoops and Margaret McLaughlin. As web accessibility initiatives increase across institutions, it is important not only to reframe and rethink policies, but also to develop sustainable and tenable methods for enforcing accessibility efforts. For institutional repositories, it is imperative to determine the extent to which both the repository manager and the user are responsible for depositing accessible content. This presentation allows us to share our accessibility framework and help repository and content managers craft sustainable, long-term goals for accessible content in institutional repositories, while also providing openly available resources for short-term benefit.

1. Web Accessibility in the
Institutional Repository: Crafting
User-Centered Submission Policies
Margaret McLaughlin and Jenny Hoops

2. Background

3. Accessibility Initiative @ Indiana University
● Upper level administrative
decision, campus-wide
● Asked to audit our department
(Scholarly Communication),
and report findings to our
Libraries UX team
● No extra resources or funding
were provided

4. Accessibility and Institutional Repositories
● Many IRs were not made
with accessibility in mind
● Levels of accessibility in
IRs vary widely across
institutions
● Different approaches to
making IRs more accessible

5. Accessibility Auditing

6. Accessibility Audit
Websites audited:
● Public informational website
● Internal wiki pages
● Journal publishing platform
● Two open access repositories
● Blog, WordPress site
● LibGuides created by our
department
Tools used:
● WAVE
● FAE
● Google Lighthouse

7. Department Audit Results
Short-term issues:
● Alt-text
● Empty links
● Forms and labels
● Structuring webpages and
metadata
● Coloring and shading
Long-term issues:
● University-level
website/branding issues
● A large majority of
content in the repository

8. IUScholarWorks Overview
● Open access
institutional
repository
● Created around
2007
● Runs on DSpace
software
● No initial
accessibility policies

9. Tackling the Broader Issues and the IR
● Peer assessment
● What does our dedication to
“open access” entail?
● What can we control as a
department, or need to request
as an institutional change?
● What sustainable changes can
we make with current
resources?

10. IR Accessibility Policy Spectrum

11. Plan of Action

12. IUScholarWorks: Submission Process
Three-step process for all authors to submit
individual files to IUScholarWorks:
● Check your rights: Read our copyright
and licensing page.
● Contact IUSW: Email iusw@indiana.edu
for authorization to deposit in the
collection fo your choice.
● Submit your work: Follow the
submission guide.

13. Updating the Submission Guide
GOAL: To develop new submission guidelines that emphasize the
importance of depositing accessible documents.
● Recommendation > Requirement
○ Did not want to discourage anybody from
submitting or overwhelm submitters
● Provide quick guidelines on making the
most commonly submitted file types
accessible
● Encourages user to consider
accessibility before final upload

14. Creating “Quick Fixes”
● Researched other IRs and general
university accessibility guidelines
○ University of Washington’s IT
Accessibility Checklist & Tutorial
● Identified best practices
○ Use headings/structural tags
○ Add alternative text
○ Exporting from word to PDF to preserve
accessibility
○ Other tips
■ Document language, hyperlinks, lists
● Incorporated into submission guide

15. New Submission Guide
● Accessibility guidelines placed between Step 2
(Describe) and Step 3 (Upload)
● Made the new document accessible
○ Help encourage users to submit who weren’t able to before
● Original Submission Guide vs Updated Submission
Guide

16. Looking Forward

17. Results
● Six months since new submission guide was made public
● New user-deposited PDF and Word documents have showed much
higher accessibility rates
○ 38% increase in accessible files according to a random sample from both time
periods
● Plan to do more thorough, formal assessment at the end of the year, including
our other repositories

18. Revisiting the IR Accessibility Spectrum

19. Future Developments
● Accessibility guidelines for
other file formats
○ New open data repository
○ Deposits for other repository are
done by staff/faculty
● More sustainable
○ With recent resource limitations,
this is essential to consider
● Approaching our repository
back content
○ Hiring student workers, train to
make most popular PDFs
accessible
○ Work with Library Technologies
to develop accessibility checker
for new repository

20. Questions?

21. Contact Us
iusw@indiana.edu
Resource List:
https://bit.ly/iunasig
● Template for an Accessibility
Audit using free, openly available
software
● Original IUScholarWorks
submission guide
● Updated IUScholarWorks
submission guide with
accessibility guidelines
● The extracted “Quick Fixes”
accessibility guidelines