Thinking Beyond the Basics of Accessibility
We spend a lot of time discussing the basics of disability access: image alt text, headings, semantic markup, etc. I have made a career of teaching and advocating about library accessibility. We need these conversations because we admittedly fail at basic accessibility too much and too often. Addressing meeting WCAG 2.X guidelines is only the first step to accessible libraries. Those specifications are only the absolute minimum of access that we can being to offer. What happens when we think beyond and ask about the accessibility of actual library and learning tasks we want everyone to engage in? Consider collaboration. What happens when people of different abilities work and communicate over shared documents? What barriers and hurdles arise and how can we potentially address them to the benefit of patrons of all (dis)abilities? These and other questions can motivate us to see accessibility not as mere standards but grand opportunities for promoting and advancing literacy, learning, and understanding.
