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Blog on Web Accessibility in Research Libraries Launched by ARL

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image CC-BY by Terry Madeley

ARL’s Accessibility and Universal Design Working Group is pleased to announce a new blog devoted to facilitating Web Accessibility in Research Libraries. The blog is an enhancement of ARL’s Web Accessibility Toolkit, which aims to:

  • Promote the principles of accessibility, universal design, and digital inclusion.
  • Help research libraries achieve digital accessibility.
  • Connect research libraries with the tools, people, and examples they need to provide accessible digital content.

The inaugural blog post, “Publishing Accessibly—Open Access and Your Library as a ‘Publisher’,” by ARL visiting program officer Katya Pereyaslavska, explores areas of opportunity for libraries to participate in open access publishing, with a focus on what libraries can do differently from other publishers. Pereyaslavska concludes that “developing successful business cases for the establishment of library publishing processes will enable libraries to reclaim rightful ownership of information, assuming a leadership role in information creation and dissemination and working towards the de-‘magazinification’ of the web and towards building more sustainable digital learning resources.”

Ed Van Gemert, chair of the ARL Accessibility and Universal Design Working Group and vice provost for libraries and university librarian at University of Wisconsin–Madison, said, “The working group is delighted to offer this new feature of the ARL Web Accessibility Toolkit. We hope the blog will stimulate discussion of accessibility issues in the research library community and we encourage individuals to share their ideas and knowledge by contributing posts to the blog.”

Future blog topics might include:

  • Accessibility audits
  • Online learning
  • Special projects of interest

If you are interested in contributing a blog post, send e-mail to accessibility@arl.org.

Subscribe to the RSS feed for ARL’s Web Accessibility in Research Libraries blog.


The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.

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