JISC

Ensuring that all students receive the highest level of service is a vital part of the mission of libraries and learning resource centres. Not only a question of legal compliance, it is, more importantly, a matter of equality and fairness.

Academic libraries are at the forefront of ensuring that students and staff with disabilities and/or learning difficulties are not disadvantaged. For many years they have helped to provide a range of assistive technologies to support their users, but it is becoming increasingly appropriate to mainstream issues of accessibility so that all students and staff are able to to take advantage of appropriate technologies and obtain access to alternative formats on an equal basis.

Librarians are working to ensure effective policies and procedures are in place to support legal compliance and to promote cultural changeLibrarians are working with other departments in their institution, such as student support services and legal departments, ensuring that effective policies and procedures are in place to support legal compliance and to promote cultural change.

But, in spite of significant achievements, few would consider that all challenges have been overcome. Colleges and universities still need to ensure that their processes promote effective support of students with impairments and other needs. Explicit policies in such areas as obtaining alternative formats for textbooks are not always developed or implemented; training of staff is not always mainstreamed, and the commitment of senior management is not always guaranteed. The availability of assistive technologies can be patchy and learners are not always aware of what is available or how to use it.

JISC TechDis has for many years been at the forefront of supporting cultural change in this area. Its most recent work, collaborating closely with publishers to integrate issues of accessibility into the publishing workflow, is a far-reaching initiative to promote such change and to support the work of libraries and publishers around the country. Other organisations, such as CLAUD, a network for HE librarians, are also involved in such developments, working to improving access for disabled students and staff.

The following are a selection of links to these and other resources:

Resources
	Accessibility for Publishers JISC TechDis Advice on Accessibility JISC TechDis Making the most of PDFs JISC TechDis Accessibility Essentials 4 Making electronic documents more readable JISC TechDis Accessibility Essentials 1 Free and open source assistive technologies JISC TechDis Publishers Look Up JISC TechDis Obtaining textbooks in alternative formats JISC TechDis The Publishers Association
	Supporting users with disabilities – challenges and opportunities Mainstreaming accessibility: getting it right the first time Equality for all: a new initiative gets publishers on board
	Inform article Equal access for all