[Eril-l] Accessibility and local digital archival materials

[Molly Beisler]

Have any other libraries successfully made the argument that digital archival materials shouldn't be held to the same accessibility standards as contemporary content? I know that this is only tangentially an e-resource topic, but we're having trouble finding other libraries that have dealt this issue, so we're trying to cast a wide net.

At the University of Nevada, Reno, all software purchased on campus is subject to accessibility review, and we are currently in discussions about whether digital objects in Islandora need to meet the same accessibility requirements as, say, the campus website and LMS. There's both the question of more recent born digital materials, like born-digital PDFs or Word documents, and digitized manuscript content that has never been transcribed, and where it's necessarily feasible to transcribe it. For videos and audio recordings, providing transcripts is a workable solution, but the documents are more challenging. We will be trying to make the argument that historical archival materials are quite different than resource such as PDFs of journal articles on course reserves, and that different standards should apply.

Does anyone have experience with handling accessibility issues like this for online archival content, or any documentation about it? Or does anyone have statements about accessibility and digitally accessible archival content that we might look at as a model that we could use?

Any examples, thoughts, or advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,
   Molly Beisler
   Interim Director of Technical Services and Head of Discovery Services
   University of Nevada, Reno Libraries

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