This resource provides information on a variety of accessible formats that CELA makes books and other materials available. Librarians should use this resource to learn about different accessible formats and to inform collection building and resource provision.
The Inklusion Guide is designed to help organizers create accessible literature events for in-person, online, and hybrid settings. It contains accessibility best practices and checklists for audience members and event performers.
The Developing an Accessibility Plan Toolkit is designed to guide libraries in meeting the accessibility plan requirements outlined in the Accessible BC Act but is also useful for any library creating or updating its accessibility plan.
This resource offers advice and guidance for making events accessible and is designed to be used by event organizers, speakers, and participants. Library staff should use this resource when planning or participating in events.
Emojipedia provides emoji descriptions, information about the emoji, like how it is commonly used, and how the different emojis are portrayed on different platforms and devices (e.g., Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, etc.). The emoji descriptions are read aloud by screen readers, so library staff should use Emojipedia when adding emojis to their social media posts.
Displaying accessibility metadata is becoming increasingly important as more digital content is born accessible. The User Experience Guide for Displaying Accessibility Metadata 1.0 discusses the importance of accessibility metadata for persons with print disabilities and how to display this information for readers.
Group under the W3C Community Group, outlines and instructs how to display the accessibility metadata of EPUBs. Library staff should use this resource when displaying their metadata for patrons.
The Audiobook Recommendation for Publishers provides guidelines for creating accessible audiobooks. Audiobooks are considered to be accessible, but they are not inherently so. Library staff can use sections of this resource to evaluate the accessibility of audiobooks during procurement.
The Accessibility Features Checklist, created by Accessible Publishing, compiled the features needed to make accessible ebooks. The resource separates the accessibility features into four types of ebooks – general, non-fiction, children’s ebooks, and poetry.
The Accessible Canada Act is “An act to ensure a barrier-free Canada” (Consolidated Federal Laws of Canada, Accessible Canada Act 2019). The act’s purpose is to create an accessible Canada by 2040 by identifying, removing, and preventing accessibility barriers.
The Accessible British Columbia Act, assented on June 17, 2021, outlines accessibility requirements that organizations need to fulfill. This includes creating an accessibility committee, plan, and asking the public for feedback.
The Accessible Book Consortium (ABC), led by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), is dedicated to increasing the availability of accessible book formats (braille, eBooks, audiobooks, etc.) worldwide for people with print disabilities.
Accessibility Insights provides an open-source tool that uncovers accessibility issues in websites and apps. This resource is particularly useful for web developers and those in charge of your library website. Accessibility Insights is available for Android devices, as a browser extension, and for Windows.
The Book Riot article, Best Dyslexia-Friendly Books for Kids by Rachel Rosenburg, lists 12 awesome books for people with dyslexia. The books, written and formatted for children with dyslexia, are organized into categories like picture books, chapter books, and graphic novels.
The schema.org accessibility metadata helps readers find content with the accessible features they would like in a publication. The schema.org accessibility metadata can be added to the HTML using Resources Descriptive Framework (RDF), a semantic web standard, or EPUB 2, EPUB 3, and audiobooks to inform users of the accessible elements the content contains.
Created by the Daniel Boone Regional Library (DBRL) for the Read Harder event, the library compiled a list of recommended books by authors with disabilities. Representation matters, and highlighting books by persons with lived experiences can help provide that representation for persons with disabilities in the library.
The Library Accessibility Features web page by Lisa Kovak discusses the changed libraries can and should make to conform with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). The features discussed on this page include materials, programming, equipment and services, and how to contact the library.
The American Library Association encourages members and library staff to create materials that are accessible for both library patrons and co-workers. The accessibility resources they provide cover accessible documents (in Word and PDFs), adding alternative text in different technology platforms, and testing the accessibility of the resources.
Google provides help documentation to guide you through the steps needed to create documents using assistive technologies and how to make accessible documents.
If you are interested in learning more about screen magnification technologies, this resource is a terrific starting point. The AbilityNet factsheet describes what screen magnification software is and does.