Katherine (ARL): Hey!
Katherine (ARL): Hello!
Hana Levay: Hello!
Katherine (ARL): Everyone's trickling in
Katherine (ARL): weird.
Katherine (ARL): Did anyone get a prompt for
Katherine (ARL): Did you need to enter a passcode? Sorry.
Katherine (ARL): Okay.
Katherine (ARL): one of our speakers
Katherine (ARL): is in a weird limbo.
Katherine (ARL): I think we're good. Okay.
Katherine (ARL): yay.
Katherine (ARL): like folks are tricking in from the waiting room, which is great. You should have gotten the notice that we're recording. I'll say more about that before we dive in.
Katherine (ARL): I think we'll get started on time, because we have a lot to cover
Katherine (ARL): me.
Katherine (ARL): alright. Welcome everyone. I'm just keeping an eye on the waiting room and
Katherine (ARL): all the various things
Katherine (ARL): comes a Canadian colleague, that's exciting.
Katherine (ARL): Alright, I think we'll get into it. I'll continue to.
Katherine (ARL): admit folks into the waiting room
Katherine (ARL): as we go.
Katherine (ARL): So yeah, thanks everyone for being here and of course, thanks to our speakers as well.
Katherine (ARL): I'm Katherine Klosek, Arl's director of information policy and Federal relations. I wanna note up top that you should have gotten the notification that we're recording this. This session. And we're also going to try to capture the transcript as well. Because we know that there have been there's probably gonna be questions and and whatnot in the chat.
Katherine (ARL): And I guess that's a a suggestion to add your questions to the chat as we as we kind of go along here. I just want to acknowledge that there have been a lot of conversations in the Research Library community. Around in the library community in general. Around title 2, and so just want to acknowledge. The American Library Association Library, Publishing Coalition Library Accessibility Alliance and Big 10 Academic Alliance. As just some of the organizations that have been focused on this
Katherine (ARL): and we've linked to some of their resources and webinars in in this sort of preview, Doc, that we put together, which I'm going to share in the chat right now.
Katherine (ARL): You can follow along in this document. I think we might update it after this conversation, and then we'll make sure that everyone has has access to it as well. And so yeah, I think,
Katherine (ARL): yeah, I think that. Sorry.
Katherine (ARL): I'm still admitting folks. Okay, yeah, I think. With that I'm going to kick it off. To Liz Lorang to please say a few words of welcome in her capacity. As vta liaison to the library accessibility Alliance. So, Liz, you have the floor.
Liz Lorang: Great. Well, good afternoon, everyone from Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm Liz Lorang, Dean of Libraries at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and I, as Catherine said. I also serve as the representative from the Big 10 Academic Alliance Library Directors Group to the Library Accessibility Alliance. I think it's important for me to say that I volunteered for that position
Liz Lorang: just recently and specifically, so that I can learn more about the laas work and accessibility efforts more broadly in both academic and research libraries. So I am not here today as an expert, but certainly as a fellow learner. But I've taken my task today to be really mood setting for the session.
Liz Lorang: and I won't talk long, but I do when I get to mood setting. Need you to stick with me for a couple of minutes, because the mood I sketch at the outset is not where we will end, I promise. But 1st I want to thank the Association of Research libraries, especially Catherine Klosick, for organizing this opportunity and for bringing together both breadth and depth of expertise, as we all look to uphold principles of accessibility in our organizations and respond to Ada title Ii. Requirements.
Liz Lorang: Now for a little bit of mood, setting
Liz Lorang: in a piece of speculative fiction that is part of her work staying with the trouble. Donna Haraway looks back on our present era of history from a time in the future, and describes it as quote the great dithering. So in the great dithering people were well aware of the major and existential threats to the planet and to living well. But they didn't bring themselves to action. They dithered about until the time for productive action had passed.
Liz Lorang: Unfortunately, we're probably, or perhaps even closer to a great dithering now than when Haraway wrote nearly a decade ago.
Liz Lorang: and a great dithering might occur, because no solution appears ideologically pure enough, or does not address every facet of a problem. A great dithering might also occur, because people feel overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the problem. A great dithering might also occur, because those with power to act decide that they're actually fine with the status quo because it's working for them
Liz Lorang: others and the future be damned. So Harroway's great dithering actually represented a convergence of these forces.
Liz Lorang: In my own experience we in academic research libraries can find ourselves hung up as a result of 2 of those forces. When a solution does not appear ideologically pure enough, or is not fully comprehensive enough, or when we focus on all that can and perhaps even should be done, and then we begin to feel a sense of overwhelm set in.
Liz Lorang: So in my organization, I've already sensed some of these responses around efforts to respond to title 2, and this is not a criticism by any means, of anyone in my library or in the profession. The work is hard, the work is real. We have a lot to do, but we do have an opportunity for collective self reflection and recalibration towards action.
Liz Lorang: Here's where the mood begins to shift. So wherever we're starting from as individuals or organizations and responding to title 2 or wherever we are in our journey. Today's session is designed to encourage us toward a mood of uplift, of possibility and of agency, and to understand and respond to title 2 as an opportunity to more fully lean into our values as information professionals.
Liz Lorang: and to make time and space for work that we already value, and sometimes have struggled to make time and space. For, amidst all of our other commitments and obligations.
Liz Lorang: atmosphere and mood are vital, and they also only go so far. So our experts today also will share questions, frameworks, and resources as well as paths for strategizing and prioritizing our efforts and to understand and appreciate the roles of both humans and technology in our responses to title 2.
Liz Lorang: So with this mood setting welcome and framing. It's my pleasure to turn the reins over to today's moderator, Blake Reid, who is an associate professor in the College of law at the University of Colorado. Professor Reid focuses on telecommunications, Internet copyright and disability law, and he brings expertise both from prior experience in legal practice as well as his experience in legal research and teaching.
Liz Lorang: Welcome everyone, Blake, over to you.
Blake Reid: Thanks so much, Liz. Can you hear me? Okay.
Blake Reid: all right, I see, nodding all around. I will go with that. Well, it is lovely to be here with you all today, and great to see so many old friends and and hopefully new ones. And one of the reasons that I agreed to moderate this session. Having spent a lot of time on the accessibility of technology and content in my
Blake Reid: careers, I can't think of a better group of folks to get together, to talk about the incredibly important challenges and opportunities that this moment presents to bring libraries to a more accessible place and make them a center of equity, as they always
Blake Reid: have been for for all patrons. So it is my role as moderator today to walk us through. So this is probably the most you're gonna hear from me for a little while. Our agenda. We're gonna start with an overview of the the regulations and then dive down into some of the kind of thorny specific
Blake Reid: questions that have have come up and hear from several experts on that we'll shift over to a conversation about the licensing of accessible content. And then this is where everyone else comes in. We will shift to a discussion with all of the speakers. So as we go along, please feel free to
Blake Reid: your questions. In the chat. We've got a fantastic crew of folks who are going to be monitoring the chat, including Jonathan Band, Arl's Copyright Council, Brandon Butler, the Executive Director of the Recreate Coalition, Rachel Sandberg, who's the Director of Scholarly Communication and Information policy at the University of California, at Berkeley, and Nancy Sims, the director of copyright and scholarly communication
Blake Reid: at the University of Minnesota libraries. They'll be monitoring the chat, as will I to the extent that you've got very specific questions, they will try and pick up on them to the extent you've got overarching questions. We'll try and bring them into the discussion as we go, and we'll have lots of opportunities at that point to discuss, and then we'll we'll close out with some next steps. All right, let's get into it.
Blake Reid: I'm pleased to hand it over to Nancy Horton, the associate director of the Mid Atlantic, Ada Center, and Nancy is going to give us an overview of the new title. Ii. Regulations Nancy, over to you.
Nancy Horton: Thank you so much. Thank you. Everyone for for having me here today. As Blake said, I am. My name is Nancy Horton. I'm with the Mid Atlantic Americans with Disabilities Act Center. And I'm gonna
Nancy Horton: just give a very brief kind of 10,000 foot view overview of the new of the new rule, and I'm I have a few slides to share.
Nancy Horton: So I'm going to attempt to do that.
Nancy Horton: I hope everyone is able to to see that.
Katherine (ARL): We can see them. It looks like it's not in present. Yep, you're good. Thanks, Nancy.
Nancy Horton: Okay?
Nancy Horton: again, I'm going to give just a brief overview. This is the name of the new rule, nondiscrimination on the basis of disability, accessibility of web information and services of state and local government entities.
Nancy Horton: Otherwise known as public entities in Ada Land.
Nancy Horton: The mid Atlantic. Ada Center is one of 10 regional Ada centers located all around the country. So if you are in the United States, or one of its territories, or the District of Columbia. You have an Ada Center
Nancy Horton: that serves your your area.
Nancy Horton: This is some information I have to tell everybody to acknowledge that the Ada centers are funded by the National Institute on Disability, independent Living and Rehabilitation Research.
Nancy Horton: And that we're not nothing we're saying is legal advice.
Nancy Horton: So again, I'm going to give a brief overview of the new rule. We're going to talk about how it applies.
Nancy Horton: The compliance dates for the entities that are covered. Under this rule.
Nancy Horton: The technical standards that have now been established to measure compliance
Nancy Horton: and sort of put, try to put that into the framework of Title 2,
Nancy Horton: which has been around for nearly 35 years at this point, and so we'll touch on some of the the core concepts of of Title 2.
Nancy Horton: Where this new rule, you know, lives.
Nancy Horton: So 1st of all, the the
Nancy Horton: the basic rule, you know, title 2 of the Ada
Nancy Horton: applies to all programs, services, and activities of state and local governments.
Nancy Horton: So the new rule does a couple things. It adds a whole new subpart subpart H
Nancy Horton: to the regulation, which is at 28 Cfr. That's the code of Federal regulations.
Nancy Horton: Part 35.
Nancy Horton: To ensure access for people with disabilities to web content
Nancy Horton: and mobile apps that are made available either directly or through contracts, licenses, or other arrangements.
Nancy Horton: Because many public entities do hire contractors and so forth to conduct their programs on their behalf, or engage in activities or provide them with things like web content.
Nancy Horton: So 1st of all, compliance dates which are important for covered entities.
Nancy Horton: this time is is laid out in the rule
Nancy Horton: to give covered entities time to prepare
Nancy Horton: to implement the rule.
Nancy Horton: So for most entities, most state and local government agencies, it's going to go by the population of the entity. It might be a State, if it's, say, a State University
Nancy Horton: system or State department of something
Nancy Horton: or county or city.
Nancy Horton: those with total population. That's total population
Nancy Horton: of 50,000 or more. The compliance date is April 24, th of 2,026.
Nancy Horton: So it's 2 years
Nancy Horton: from the date of the rule, the date, the rule
Nancy Horton: was issued
Nancy Horton: for smaller entities. Up to 49,999 total population. They get they get a little more time.
Nancy Horton: They get about another another year, April 26, th I think they gave them us the Sunday off, or something there.
Nancy Horton: Of 2,027
Nancy Horton: will be the compliance date for those smaller
Nancy Horton: entities, and that is the compliance state as well for special district governments which are public entities. They're not counties or towns or independent school districts, but they're but they are public entities that are authorized under State law usually to provide a specific or a limited number of specific functions.
Nancy Horton: and and they have sufficient autonomy to sort of
Nancy Horton: qualify as a separate government entity.
Nancy Horton: And they? They don't have a
Nancy Horton: a population
Nancy Horton: calculation. These are sometimes things like
Nancy Horton: a water and sewer
Nancy Horton: authority, or or something of that nature.
Nancy Horton: So for other entities
Nancy Horton: on on the next slide. Here. This is the definition of how these other entities will figure out their compliance date. Total population is based on calculated estimates from the Us. Census bureau.
Nancy Horton: So if an entity has that kind of a population estimate.
Nancy Horton: they're going to go by the most recent decennial census
Nancy Horton: for independent school districts or instrumentalities of independent school districts. They're going to go by the most recent small area income and poverty estimates.
Nancy Horton: Now, if there are entities other than special district governments or independent school districts which we just
Nancy Horton: saw, where they where they fit
Nancy Horton: and they don't have a population
Nancy Horton: estimate, but they are an instrumentality or a commuter authority
Nancy Horton: of one or more state or local governments that do have a population estimate, then the those entities will go by that will go by that population estimate to figure out where their compliance date is. The earlier date, which is typically for the larger entities or the the later date for smaller entities.
Nancy Horton: So now that we know who we are and what we're looking at. What are we looking at in terms of what we need to
Nancy Horton: to comply with specifically this, this rule, this is something really important about this rule is that it adopts and establishes a technical standard
Nancy Horton: which is the web content accessibility. Guidelines often referred to as Wcag
Nancy Horton: 2.1. This is the 2,018
Nancy Horton: version level double A,
Nancy Horton: that is the technical standard that we'll be using is sort of the yardstick
Nancy Horton: to measure what accessibility really looks like in the online environment. This
Nancy Horton: the the Wcag is is the result. It's an international guideline is established under the web accessibility, initiative, or wai, which is part of the world, wide web consortium
Nancy Horton: or W. 3 C. And I've got a screenshot here of their website. This is an absolutely fabulous resource for just about anyone of any type of level of interest.
Nancy Horton: When it comes to web accessibility.
Nancy Horton: So web content of of these state and local government entities needs to comply
Nancy Horton: with this technical standard, unless
Nancy Horton: compliance would result in a fundamental alteration in the nature of a program service or activity
Nancy Horton: or create cause undue financial and administrative burdens.
Nancy Horton: And these are some very basic
Nancy Horton: limitations of Title 2 they've been entitled to
Nancy Horton: since day one. This isn't something new about this rule. These are limitations that have always been entitled to and are available for pretty much any
Nancy Horton: of title two's
Nancy Horton: requirements.
Nancy Horton: So on our next slide.
Nancy Horton: in addition to those sort of very basic limitations, we have some specific exceptions to the new rule. We have 5 specific exceptions. One is for archived web content.
Nancy Horton: And there's a 4 part definition of what that
Nancy Horton: means.
Nancy Horton: Down at the bottom of this slide I've placed
Nancy Horton: the definition of web content.
Nancy Horton: you know, again, just to make sure, in case there's anybody in the room who doesn't know what the web is.
Nancy Horton: I think we all pretty much know what web content is, but it's it's the stuff that's there. The information and
Nancy Horton: sensory experience that's intended to be communicated to us users out here in the world, including the code and the markup that's under the hood there that defines the structure and
Nancy Horton: presentation and interaction of the content. Some examples, text images, sounds, videos, controls, animations, conventional electronic documents.
Nancy Horton: So you know the stuff that's there.
Nancy Horton: So
Nancy Horton: any of this that meets this, all 4 parts of this 4 part definition would would come under this 1st exception. It's created before the date the public entities required to comply with this new rule.
Nancy Horton: or reproduces paper documents or the contents of other physical media created before the compliance date.
Nancy Horton: So that could be old photographs that you scanned or things of that nature.
Nancy Horton: It's retained exclusively for reference research or record record keeping.
Nancy Horton: It is not altered or updated after the date. It's archived
Nancy Horton: and it's organized and stored in a dedicated area that's clearly identified as an archive.
Nancy Horton: So exception number 2 is for pre-existing conventional electronic documents.
Nancy Horton: And again down below. I've put the definition of what that is, conventional electronic documents. And this is a definition that's not.
Nancy Horton: These are. This is not a list of examples.
Nancy Horton: This is it. This is what this is, all
Nancy Horton: that conventional electronic documents are. They're they're Pdfs, portable document formats or their documents. In a word, processor presentation or spreadsheet
Nancy Horton: format. You know your word documents. Powerpoint excel
Nancy Horton: things of that nature.
Nancy Horton: Pre existing documents like this fall under an exception, unless they are currently used to apply for gain access to or participate in a public entities.
Nancy Horton: services, programs, or activities.
Nancy Horton: Now, these are the last 3
Nancy Horton: of the 5 exceptions. I've put them all together. They're fairly straightforward.
Nancy Horton: The 3rd exception is content
Nancy Horton: posted by a 3rd party, unless it's posted due to a contractual licensing or or other arrangement with the public
Nancy Horton: entity. Again, this is this recognizes something that's been part of title 2 from from the beginning. If a state or local government agency, you know, hires a contractor
Nancy Horton: to build its website just like if they hire a contractor to build their building.
Nancy Horton: the public entity is still responsible for that. But they're not responsible
Nancy Horton: for the things that 3rd parties that they're not responsible for not affiliated with.
Nancy Horton: May post on their social media site, or something of that nature.
Nancy Horton: or a resource that they might link to that's outside of their own.
Nancy Horton: their own responsibility. Things of that nature also.
Nancy Horton: The 4th exception is individualized, conventional electronic documents that are about a specific individual, their property or their account.
Nancy Horton: and is password protected
Nancy Horton: or otherwise secured. So this might be an individual's
Nancy Horton: bill.
Nancy Horton: or something like that, where they only they would have
Nancy Horton: access to that.
Nancy Horton: And the final exception is for pre-existing social media
Nancy Horton: posts. Again, pre-existing meaning
Nancy Horton: before the compliance date
Nancy Horton: that the the public entity is is subject to.
Nancy Horton: Now there is an additional allowance for conforming alternate
Nancy Horton: alternate ways to make web content
Nancy Horton: accessible. This is allowed only when it's not possible to make web content accessible, due to technical or legal limitations. So this would be where you would have a separate
Nancy Horton: web page or a separate
Nancy Horton: You know, content
Nancy Horton: to try to give that, give that information, make it available to people with disabilities, the content needs to be comparable to the inaccessible content that it's sort of duplicating
Nancy Horton: in terms of the information and the functions that are available to people to do
Nancy Horton: it needs to be kept up to date.
Nancy Horton: This this, like the the inaccessible version, and it needs to be easy to find needs to be easy for people to find it and and access it. So this is a sort of a narrow
Nancy Horton: allowance. It's a little bit different from
Nancy Horton: the the exceptions that we sort of just looked over
Nancy Horton: so. And this is just sort of this is a quote here from the Department of Justice's rulemaking. This is from the section of the regulation. They always provide guidance and background information on their rules, which is a lot of great information you can always find in these guidance and section by section analyses
Nancy Horton: in in Federal
Nancy Horton: rulemaking. And it's just a quote where
Nancy Horton: the Department of Justice wants to emphasize that
Nancy Horton: even if you've got web content or something that
Nancy Horton: is, is accepted from having to meet the standards because the department wants covered entities to focus on
Nancy Horton: new stuff
Nancy Horton: and important stuff stuff that's currently needed currently used
Nancy Horton: but even if something is accepted, then you still have those overarching obligations that we find in Title 2
Nancy Horton: to ensure equity
Nancy Horton: for people with disabilities and to respond to individuals on an individualized basis. So you may need to make
Nancy Horton: an electronic document that's eligible for an exception.
Nancy Horton: You may need to make that accessible or provide the information or the functionality in a in it on an individual basis if requested if needed.
Nancy Horton: So again, that's a very quick trot through through this new rule. There's a lot of nuance. There's a lot more to it, but I'm hoping that at least gets us all on the same
Nancy Horton: page. And again, just to remind folks the Ada National Network is nationwide.
Nancy Horton: I'm here in the mid Atlantic region.
Nancy Horton: But again, there are centers all over the country. You can reach your regional center.
Nancy Horton: 809-49-4232. This is a nationwide number that works based on the area code of the phone number that you call from that's going to connect you to the region that's associated with that
Nancy Horton: with that center.
Nancy Horton: So with that, I'm going to stop sharing and turn things back over so that folks can get into the into the discussion that that folks want to have today.
Blake Reid: Thanks so much, Nancy. That was a terrific overview, and I think we'll have those slides available for folks that want to review them later. It is now my pleasure to shift over to some of the thorny details of the regulations you just marched through, and in the spirit of the mood shift that happened at the beginning. I think we're gonna start
Blake Reid: with something that might be a little bit scary, but then we'll start to answer some questions and to scare us a little bit. But only a little bit is Hannah Lavey, who's a collection assessment librarian at the University of Washington. Hannah, I turn it over to you.
Hana Levay: Thanks. Blake.
Hana Levay: yeah, I do have some big questions that I've seen surfaced in various conversations about this topic recently. And I do have a general sense that we're all a little scared. You know, librarians are traditionally committed to providing access to information to everyone, including people with disabilities, and I like to think, as a profession, we've been forward thinking about addressing accessibility already.
Hana Levay: but the new ruling has definitely gotten us nervous.
Hana Levay: You know. We tend to rely on standards and systems for doing our work, and we don't really have
Hana Levay: examples yet of how to address the new ruling
Hana Levay: and examples that we found in the documentation around the ruling don't really match up to our
Hana Levay: actual libraries environment. So I wanted to list out a few scenarios
Hana Levay: that have come up in these conversations. As questions. So
Hana Levay: 3rd party, electronic resources is a big one. I do work with this myself, I try to figure out if our resources are accessible.
Hana Levay: And we have no control over these or 3rd parties. So how do we influence them to make their products accessible.
Hana Levay: Some of us have hundreds of subscriptions.
Hana Levay: So it's a challenge, just 1st of all, to find out which ones are not accessible.
Hana Levay: At University of Washington. We do this usability based keyboard navigation test to kind of filter out
Hana Levay: the worst offenders. And then we look at their vpats or acrs.
Hana Levay: But it's still not a full picture. B. Pets are often
Hana Levay: unreliable, or maybe just the vendors don't know what they're doing, even sometimes when they're filling them out. So
Hana Levay: that's a big question, how do we? How do we find those inaccessible products? And then how do we address the vendors with license language? Indemnification clauses?
Hana Levay: And then we have extra challenges. If they're foreign vendors who might not be familiar with our laws.
Hana Levay: We might have products. We don't have a direct license. So we don't really have any
Hana Levay: power in those conversations.
Hana Levay: And then sometimes we have these products that are unique and have no alternatives that are accessible. So
Hana Levay: we don't really have the option to cancel those resources, because that would be you know, fundamental alteration of our essential services, as they say in the
Hana Levay: accessibility language.
Hana Levay: So that's a big one.
Hana Levay: Another issue we have is for institutional repositories, where we have documents stored on our local library sites. And while we have a lot more control over these
Hana Levay: there's a lot of content in there years and years of documents
Hana Levay: does this fall under the archive web content exception? There's a lot of steps in that exception.
Hana Levay: How do we know which of those documents we need to remediate?
Hana Levay: And then, as it even if it does fall under the exception how do we know which items are gonna be used in order to remediate those 1st before
Hana Levay: before they get used. That's probably impossible. But
Hana Levay: that is our question. And then another big one I've seen around is our digital archives? For example, an oral history collection. Content. DM,
Hana Levay: does this fall under the digital archive exemption? What about new items added to the collection that's already there?
Hana Levay: There's just so many little details about these exceptions. And
Hana Levay: how we address that. What about if we're applying for a grant for a digital collection of sound recordings? Would we
Hana Levay: need to work
Hana Levay: into that? Grant requests additional money for making that collection accessible.
Hana Levay: So those are some of the major areas I've seen surface from from other conversations.
Hana Levay: And I'd like to address our discomfort in not having clarity on what to do.
Hana Levay: And so we just need to come up together with plans and procedures and timelines for remediation.
Hana Levay: Oh, and what are the consequences? If we haven't achieved 100% compliance on April 27, th 2,026. Will it be enough just to have remediation plans in place
Hana Levay: show that we're doing our due diligence
Hana Levay: so to wrap it up. How do we stay focused on our common professional goal?
Hana Levay: We're providing access to information
Hana Levay: rather than getting bogged down and terrified by the frustrating and
Hana Levay: frightening realm of compliance and liability.
Hana Levay: So hopefully, I've scared y'all.
Blake Reid: All right. Womp womp. Thank you, Hannah, you you've done the job normally performed by lawyers scaring people. But now we we have the great pleasure to to try and untangle some of these questions about 3rd party electronic resources, institutional repositories, digital archives.
Blake Reid: non compliance, managing 3rd parties and so forth. And we are going to start with Nancy Sims, who is, as mentioned, the director of Copyright Scholarly Comms at the University of Minnesota libraries, who's gonna share a little bit with us about how her library is preparing to answer, interpret, and implement. Excuse me some of these exact regulations, Nancy, over to you.
Nancy Sims: Thanks. Oddly enough, I'm gonna be a lawyer who's gonna try to
Nancy Sims: to decrease the fear. This is this is just a strange role reversal. So the 1st thing I have to say is is something that which is I. I'm not an in depth expert on Ada compliance, and certainly not with electronic documents. We are lucky enough to have, some people in our library who are much more, have have much more expertise on that, including Amy Dreher, who's where our web accessibility lead.
Nancy Sims: and we have a task force under our director of equity and inclusion and accessibility. Patricia Isaac.
Nancy Sims: Patricia has convened a task force. Amy is one of the people on it. We have representation there from our E resources, teams from our It teams from our digital collections teams from just like everybody who this is gonna touch on in the entire library. Is represented on the task force.
Nancy Sims: and we've had a few meetings, and one of the things we've already started doing is making a list of what might qualify for the archived web content, exception, and talking about things like Eresources, where we don't think they will qualify subscription eresources.
Nancy Sims: that's about as much detail as I can go into in terms of what we are functionally doing, because that's about as far as we have gotten, which is about as far as everybody else has gotten to.
Nancy Sims: So I'm going to shift gears in the next couple of minutes here, and just say that one thing we're looking at, and certainly one thing that the arl documentation does is, you know, looking at what our subscription licenses do in these places, our subscription licenses usually say that things have to be accessible already.
Nancy Sims: Because this has been a requirement to some degree under various parts of the Ada. For quite a while. Whether our vendors are fully up on Us. Accessibility requirements is one thing, and whether they are meeting technical standards is another thing, because the technical standards have not typically been specifically
Nancy Sims: written down in in many of the Regs before.
Nancy Sims: the negotiations with our vendors. May require things like saying, if you don't provide the level of service you promised. We are not going to pay you because you are not holding up your end of the deal. I mean, I can't actually imagine a library doing that, because libraries typically never
Nancy Sims: say they won't pay their contractors even when our contractors are not holding up their ends of the deal. But that is actually a thing people do in business. If you have a contract.
Nancy Sims: you don't have to follow your end of the deal. If the other party is not following their end of the deal.
Nancy Sims: I don't see that being likely, just because it's not a typical practice in our field, but it is something to think about, you know, in the very back pocket of if this is essential, and they're of a able to make it accessible. But they're not holding up their end of the deal. We do have some heavy handed enforcement mechanisms less heavy handed would be saying, we might not be able to renew with you. If you can't meet the
Nancy Sims: these standards or coming back to the table and saying, You know, we have alternatives to your product that do meet some accessibility requirements. Sometimes, unfortunately, we're not going to have alternatives. A lot of our vendors are the only source of things. So we this is something where we're going to have to apply our negotiation skills. I'm really, really lucky that I also have skilled resources staff, including our lead there. Sunshine Carter, who is tremendous at negotiation and negotiation is not something every library is super comfortable with.
Nancy Sims: So the last thing I want to talk about is shifting gears again away from the contract and subscriptions to this compliance? How do we comply with this? Where do we? Where do we follow the rule? How do we follow the rules? What do we do to avoid all risk?
Nancy Sims: That seems to be what a lot of library folks are saying is, what do we do to avoid all risk? Oh, if we do that, it might be risky.
Nancy Sims: I would encourage you to try to take risk
Nancy Sims: out of your calculations or not out, but to try to not to make that your focus regulations always have when they're when they're new and newly written. There are always places where it's not exactly clear what you have to do to comply with them?
Nancy Sims: We in libraries actually do have the experience needed to make reasonable guesses about how to comply with these regulations. Sometimes we might need to confer with our legal counsel or with Ada Ada experts.
Nancy Sims: But we are the ones with the expertise about our programs and how achievable certain things are, and what would be a fundamental alteration, and whether we can do something that is an alternative. If there would be a fundamental alteration. What else can we do to make things accessible? We have expertise, and in some cases we are the best positioned people to try to make guesses at how to address the gaps or not gaps even, but just fill in the edges of these
Nancy Sims: regulations. So risk
Nancy Sims: makes us feel nervous, makes us feel afraid to interpret at all. But we have expertise. We have communities, we can work together to develop reasonable, functional, functional, and implementable interpretations of the regulations in the spaces that we have questions.
Nancy Sims: So that's about it for me, for now.
Blake Reid: Thanks so much, Nancy. That is a terrific point to jump over to Claire Stanley, who is the director of advocacy and government affairs at the American Council of the Blind. Claire, I want to turn it over to you. And I know you're gonna focus on some of the big questions that Hannah raised
Blake Reid: about the many exceptions that Nancy marched through at the beginning. Claire, over to you.
Claire Stanley: Great. Thank you so much, Blake. Like, Blake said. My name's Claire Stanley. I'm the director of Advocacy and Governmental affairs for the American Council of the Blind. So I just wanted to talk briefly about. 1st of all, the reaction from the blind community as well as the disability community at large. And then how we kind of foresee some of this stuff playing forward in the next few years, and how we'd like to work with librarians, because we know it's not an easy fix.
Claire Stanley: but starting 1st and foremost, the blind and low vision community. And again, the disability community at large. We were really excited to see this happen. The promulgations of these regulations were 1st suggested during the Obama administration. It never happened
Claire Stanley: and it took us, I think, something like 13 years for it to finally happen. So we're excited. And we know, you know I'm trying to. As I listen to you guys have a somewhat sympathetic ear, cause I know it's not going to be easy, but I can tell you I hate to say us and them or our side. But from our side we're ecstatic because it's something that has been something we've long waited for, and access to a lot of resources is still really limiting.
Claire Stanley: We are, however, a little frustrated, with some of the exceptions, again trying to have a sympathetic ear. I know you guys have a big weight on your shoulders. But a lot of the exceptions really, again, limit a lot of the things we have access to, and I'll give an example
Claire Stanley: and just a little bit we were excited that there they initially started, with 7 exceptions, and 2 of them were removed during the rulemaking process. Many of us in the disability community responded to the notice of proposed rulemaking, which is the process to come out with the regulations. I mean, we like to think that our advocacy and writing those comments eliminated those 2 exceptions. So we were excited to see that. But we're still concerned that
Claire Stanley: so many of the exceptions will make it more difficult for us to get access to the things that we need.
Claire Stanley: So
Claire Stanley: yeah, sorry. Another go through my notes. I again just a quick example before I move on things like the archived access our archive materials and not having access to those until somebody makes an express request for them, and then it has to be remediated.
Claire Stanley: I've heard stories, so the American Council of the blind is a membership organization, and we have members from across the country who are blind or low vision. I've heard stories of people who are working on Phd dissertations who need access to those truly archived long ago resources? And they're not available in an accessible format often. And so it makes it really hard for them to do the research that they need to write their dissertation. And there's lots of stories like
Claire Stanley: like that. So again, I know you guys are a lot of you librarians are saying. Oh, we have ways to do that. But just trying to give the the perspective we're coming from.
Claire Stanley: Quickly to go through what we foresee. We, the disability community, foresee, as far as implementation of the regulations and how they'll impact our community.
Claire Stanley: Only legal interpretation will say how this plays out, you know, hopefully, in an ideal world everything will be done properly. But again, hearing from your community, it is a big lift. I get that. And it's gonna be really hard to implement. So if challenges are brought which not to be a cynic, but challenges will be brought legally. How will the courts interpret these regulations? Historically? The
Claire Stanley: the court systems have not always seen kindly to disability rights law interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities act.
Claire Stanley: knock on wood, fingers crossed. That won't be the case, but only time will tell. The Supreme Court has not been our friend, and especially with what the court looks like right now. So hopefully, that won't happen. We're all going to play well in the sandbox. Everybody's gonna comply with these new regulations. But we're just kind of curious to see what will happen. But the last thing I want to say in this section is and Nancy Horton did a great job talking about this. There is a provision under the Ada that talks about undue burdens
Claire Stanley: the in. Generally speaking, the one thing we do have on our side is that courts have generally been pretty. They've held a high bar, for when complainants say that there's an undue burden to make something accessible, or to comply with the Ada. So we do have that on our side. So again, not trying to to sound lofty, but you know we do feel that at least in that respect we will be able to to see this carried on, and then the last quick session I section I wanted to talk about is
Claire Stanley: a librarian obligations to talking to you guys, but how we can work together from those of us who are blind who are excited about these new regulations. So it'll benefit our community. But how we can work together. Because again, I hope you guys don't hear us saying, yes, we won. You guys have to do this for us. We really do think we can work together. But again, this is something really important to our community.
Claire Stanley: so again, going based off of some stuff, Nancy Horton said. Who's an expert in this law, despite any of the exceptions under title 2, like Nancy said, libraries still have to provide these materials upon request, so if they fall under exception, you still have to provide them or provide us these materials.
Claire Stanley: So I kind of wanted to just use this last last section to say, Okay, so say it falls under exception, we still need those materials. Yes, it makes us a little more frustrated because we have to request it, but know that you still have to remediate the materials, and so kind of a question I wanted to pose. Is, is it easier to remediate in the situation where I, for instance, come and knock on your door and say, I need these materials.
Claire Stanley: or is it easier to do it ahead of time? Now I know you guys are librarians, and you know this world far better than I. So you're probably saying, Claire, you're being way, too, Pollyannish. It's so much more difficult to remediate. Or if we try to ask our, you know, publishers to license. You know these contracts to make accessible materials. See, I don't even speak your language. You're probably saying you're too Pollyannish to say, you know, make sure they do it ahead of time.
Claire Stanley: But again, I just want to put that optimistic idea out there that it's a lot easier to do it ahead of time versus going back and trying to remediate
Claire Stanley: again. Just talking about Title 2. This falls under effective communication under title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So just know that again, even if it falls under exception, we're still going to request the materials. And is it easier to do it once we request it? Or is it easier to do it beforehand?
Claire Stanley: And it probably has to do with when the information is published, we totally get that. If it's an archive document from 50 years ago, it's a lot more difficult. But let's look now to 2024, and going forward that when documents are made right now, let's make them accessible from the get go so that we don't have these problems moving forward again. I don't work in publishing. I don't work with these contracts, so maybe I'm being too simplistic. But I just want those ideas to ring on our head as we work on it.
Claire Stanley: And again, just want to talk about how important this is as I close that I know. For you guys, it's a really overwhelming idea to make materials acceptable. But please understand, from our perspective this opens a world of access that we have been advocating for for so long, because it really does impact millions of America.
Claire Stanley: Thank you.
Blake Reid: Thanks so much, Claire, and I really appreciate those notes, and wanted to tie in something that someone just said in the Chat Dee Kramer says, low vision and blind librarians are very excited about the changes, and so I hope the spirit that you've advocated, for there Claire is going to also find some roots among
Blake Reid: among librarians themselves as well. Your last comments on looking to new materials and and sort of born accessible materials leads us to the last sort of quadrant of our prepared remarks. And for that I'm going to head over to Sam Tarami, who's a licensing librarian at the University University of California.
Blake Reid: Berkeley and Sam. You're on the agenda twice, but I want to just collapse this and turn it over to you to kick into our conversation about how these regulations intersect with license eresources, and how you handle negotiations with publishers. We've heard some allusions to that already. So, looking forward to your thoughts. Sam, over to you.
Samantha Teremi: Thanks, Blake. So I wanted to just start off. I'm experiencing some spotty campus wi-fi. So please bear with me
Samantha Teremi: and I wanted to start by getting into the nitty gritty of why we think that this regulation applies to licensed E resources, and what our interpretation is.
Samantha Teremi: So, as mentioned a little bit by Nancy Horton. Earlier, the Doj has implemented new technical requirements that requires that web content be made available by State entities, whether directly or through 3rd parties, via licensing or re agreements
Samantha Teremi: and that these be provided to people with disabilities according to the guidelines set forth in Wcag 2.1 at level Aa. Unfortunately, within the regulation web content is not explicitly defined. So we're unable to say for certain whether web content only includes that which is made publicly available online, or rather, if it also pertains to eresources that are made available to authorize users and exist behind authentication walls
Samantha Teremi: with a cautious approach. We've interpreted the Doj's use of web content to apply to eresources, in part because of the statements in Appendix D. That explain why the changes were made
Samantha Teremi: specifically in the notice of proposed rulemaking. The language initially read that a public entity makes available to members of the public or uses to offer services, programs, or activities to members of the public.
Samantha Teremi: However, in the final rule, the Doj dropped to the phrase members of the public, and instead, references web content and mobile apps that a public entity provides or makes available.
Samantha Teremi: since the broader language use of makes available is used in comparison to makes available to members of the public. We believe this applies to licensed eresources, even those meant for authorized users behind authentication walls.
Samantha Teremi: Furthermore, the notice of proposed rulemaking proposed an exception for password, protected course, content. But the Doj dropped that exception in response to pushback during the comment period, which could be another indication that web content is meant to include openly available content and content that requires user authentication.
Samantha Teremi: And so Catherine has some slides that she's going to put up for me. But I want to get into our negotiation strategy specifically at Berkeley for acquiring born accessible materials. As Claire was mentioning and moving away from doing modifications after the fact.
Samantha Teremi: So regardless of whether you believe this ruling applies to your licensed erases or not.
Samantha Teremi: you can still utilize license agreements in order to achieve the same accessibility outcomes.
Samantha Teremi: In fact, the Doj has expressly stated that the anticipated result of this new ruling will be more accessible. Licensed content. This, too, is Uc. Berkeley's approach to licensing our strategy is publicly reflected within our digital accessibility statement on the Library's website, which allows us to be transparent about the licensing process and the kinds of things that we negotiate. For.
Samantha Teremi: for example, typically, most libraries will ask for a vpat during licensing to determine the resources level of compliance, and then, if necessary, the library or the campus's disability office will make modifications based on the needs of its users. At their request
Samantha Teremi: at Berkeley we've been going a step further by placing the onus on vendors and publishers to make sure their resources are accessible when we receive them.
Samantha Teremi: which is otherwise known as born accessible materials. This eliminates the work of having to make reasonable modifications after the fact, or seek an exception on the basis of undue burden.
Samantha Teremi: It also helps us to avoid a liability on the campus's end, as we've established that it's the vendor's responsibility, 1st and foremost, to provide us with accessible materials, and that we're not purchasing non accessible materials if we can help it.
Samantha Teremi: So how do we go about this
Samantha Teremi: unsurprisingly, and like many other universities, we 1st ask for a current Vpat to ensure that we are always aware of any accessibility limitations and are prepared to meet the needs of our authorized users with disabilities.
Samantha Teremi: We then implement new language in our contract that asks for a warranty or representation that the vendor is compliant with California, State, and Federal accessibility laws, as well as the web content and access guidelines formerly at level 2. But we've started negotiating for 2.1 in accordance with the new regulation, and if Catherine could switch the slide. There is some sample language that I can show you.
Samantha Teremi: So this is typically what we use. It asks for California, Federal and Wcag compliance. And then, additionally, we ask for representation that the vendor will make reasonable efforts to solve any accessibility issues that arise, so that the responsibility to resolve complaints, falls to the publisher instead of the library's technical staff, or the campus's office of disability, access, and compliance.
Samantha Teremi: and then moving to the next section of the contract that we edit.
Samantha Teremi: We go down to the warranty disclaimer section of the contract where you'll typically find language that says something along the lines of the vendor, disclaims all warranties and provides the licensed materials. As is
Samantha Teremi: so we've started adding language that prohibits the vendor from disclaiming the accessibility warranty that they just provided us by adding, except with respect to express warranties in front of those statements, so, except with respect to express warranties, they can disclaim anything else, but they cannot disclaim the warranty. They just provided that their material is wcag compliant.
Samantha Teremi: And then we move on to the indemnification section.
Samantha Teremi: So. Similarly, we apply the same type of language. The contract will usually say the vendor shall not be held liable for any damages
Samantha Teremi: which we amend to be, except with respect to any express warranties.
Samantha Teremi: Vendors shall not be held liable for any damages
Samantha Teremi: by adding this. If the University gets sued based on accessibility claims. Then there are already contractual terms established that would have the vendor indemnify us and would shift that legal responsibility onto the vendor. This also helps the university with potential Pr issues that would arise from an accessibility lawsuit. As we can point to our efforts to work with vendors that have specifically promised to provide accessible materials when we entered the agreement.
Samantha Teremi: Additionally, it's worth mentioning that you could also negotiate for the publisher. Failing to provide accessible material to be considered a material breach of the contract.
Samantha Teremi: Uc. Berkeley does not currently do this, but we are in the process of working with our general counsel to establish language for this that we could incorporate into our contracts and boost our overall accessibility strategy.
Samantha Teremi: So, lastly, to talk about the outcomes we've been doing this for about 2 years now, and have found that the vast majority of vendors have been very accepting of our new contract language with very little negotiation involved.
Samantha Teremi: Occasionally smaller vendors won't accept certain parts of the accessibility warranty, like agreeing to California State law. If their business resides in a different State, or even our Federal law if they reside in a different country, but we'll narrow down their concern and adapt our language accordingly, to ensure that we get an accessibility warranty that's agreeable for both parties and as close to the original language as possible.
Samantha Teremi: We typically can agree on Wcag compliance as that's a standard that's somewhat universal and not dependent on any statute or legislation.
Samantha Teremi: Another negotiation hurdle we encounter is vendors wanting to say that they will endeavor or make best efforts to comply with the Ada. In these situations we like to remind them that they are obligated to comply with Federal laws, whether they warrant to or not, and will simply remove mention of Federal law from our clause and stick with just Wcag.
Samantha Teremi: But I think it is important that we reiterate to publishers and vendors that this is something that they are expected to comply with
Samantha Teremi: thankfully. We have not yet encountered the need to walk away from a negotiation due to being unable to secure a representation of compliance with accessibility standards
Samantha Teremi: in full transparency. Were this issue to come up in the near future, it's unlikely that we'd be able to walk away from a negotiation entirely, solely due to an accessibility concern, as it would not be a widely supported outcome within our specific library. However, our University is currently in the process of changing the guidelines around this, which will require us to pursue a waiver. If we cannot reach acceptable accessibility terms, or would face undue burden.
Samantha Teremi: We don't know the details of this process yet, but we do know that it will shed light on it will shed light to library stakeholders on the importance of acquiring accessible materials, and set the tone on the principles the University is willing to uphold
Samantha Teremi: overall. It's been very encouraging to see such willingness and cooperation from vendors to provide born accessible materials, and we're excited to continue tweaking our strategy in order to secure the best possible accessibility outcomes for our users, and hopefully create a positive shift within the library and publishing spheres.
Samantha Teremi: And with that I'm happy to turn it back over to Blake.
Blake Reid: Awesome, Sam. Thanks so much. And I want to come back to some of these licensing questions in our discussion. But it's time to shift over to our discussion. So if folks have additional questions, please drop them in the chat, and I will try and pick them up. But we've had a few already, so I want to pick up with one that John Berger
Blake Reid: raised about private universities. And, Nancy, I'm hoping I could pull you back into the conversation here. Obviously, title 2 doesn't apply directly to private entities who are generally governed by the Rehabilitation Act. If they accept Federal funds. Obviously these regulations are under title 2, and not under the Rehab Act.
Blake Reid: Nancy, I'm wondering for your thoughts, and sorry I should have specified. We have 2 Nancy's. I was thinking of Nancy Horton. But, Nancy Sims, please feel free to weigh in as well. What are your thoughts about? How the courts, about how the Department of Justice and and Claire Stanley. You may have some thoughts about this, as well might import some of the substance of these new title. 2 Regs when they're applying the Rehab act in the context of private universities.
Nancy Horton: Well, this is Nancy Horton.
Nancy Horton: I mean a couple of things. Yeah. Title 2 doesn't apply to private entities. Title 3 applies to a lot of private entities.
Nancy Horton: you know, as some of you may be aware, when the Doj 1st started their rulemaking around this topic.
Nancy Horton: they planned, as they have done in the past, to make
Nancy Horton: to 2 2 rules, one for title, 2 and one for title 3. Simultaneously.
Nancy Horton: They they backed away from that in recent years, for a number of reasons, and one of which was they thought, well, let's let's start with title 2,
Nancy Horton: and let's learn
Nancy Horton: how that goes.
Nancy Horton: but, as many of you may be aware, you know, the Department of Justice. You know, took the position
Nancy Horton: that
Nancy Horton: both title 2 and title. 3 reach
Nancy Horton: online services and activities and
Nancy Horton: things
Nancy Horton: in 1996,
Nancy Horton: you know, long, long time ago and have
Nancy Horton: done, you know, work and enforcement work and entered all kinds of settlement agreements. There have been all kinds of court cases for many, many years, and in recent years
Nancy Horton: Doj has entered lots and lots of settlement agreements, and with both public and private
Nancy Horton: entities. But a lot of
Nancy Horton: public entities under title 2
Nancy Horton: using Wcack
Nancy Horton: as as a technical you know, standard to to measure compliance. And so there were a couple of reasons why they did the rule the way they did and why they chose the Wcag, and the version
Nancy Horton: that they chose, because people had have had a lot of time to be familiar
Nancy Horton: with with these concepts. Now, because section because title. 2 of the Ada is really modeled very closely on section 504.
Nancy Horton: I often refer to them, as
Nancy Horton: you know, twin twin sons of different congresses.
Nancy Horton: you know, they're they're just very, very similar, and a lot of other Federal agencies. For example, Department of Education.
Nancy Horton: HUD,
Nancy Horton: have entered settlement agreements and resolution.
Nancy Horton: agreements and things of that nature on on this, on these issues, access to web content, and so forth
Nancy Horton: for a long time. So I think it's not unreasonable to expect
Nancy Horton: that section 5, 0. 4 would be viewed
Nancy Horton: in in a very similar light
Nancy Horton: to Title 2.
Nancy Horton: And when it comes to title 3. I think that's again. We'll we'll get there.
Nancy Horton: We'll get there. That may be down the road a piece, and the details might be different, based on a number of factors.
Nancy Horton: both related to the distinctions between the 2 titles, and maybe what we learn
Nancy Horton: with the implementation of this rule
Nancy Horton: under title 2. But again, the Department of Justice
Nancy Horton: already considers title 3. To reach
Nancy Horton: the websites and mobile apps of
Nancy Horton: covered entities. Title three's coverage is narrower. It's more specific
Nancy Horton: and title two's, which is broad. It just covers everything state and local governments do, and courts have been a little more
Nancy Horton: accepting of that sort of broad application
Nancy Horton: of title 2
Nancy Horton: than what we've seen
Nancy Horton: around. Title 3. So I think private institutions.
Nancy Horton: I think if they're covered by 5 0, 4,
Nancy Horton: you know, it'd be wise to maybe just sort of use this rule as guide as a guideline
Nancy Horton: and and follow it because you're going to.
Nancy Horton: It's going to put you in a good position.
Nancy Horton: come what may.
Blake Reid: Yeah, Nancy, I I was. I was hoping that was gonna be your thought that this, the whatever the sort of uncertainty about the application of title 3 of the Ada, and the specific contours of section 5, 0. 4, which no doubt does apply to a lot of private entities. The a good way to resolve that uncertainty is to look to the the title. 2 regs. So I think that's a
Blake Reid: that's a helpful answer, and John hope that gets at your conversation. I want to shift gears and invite in Rachel Sandberg, who has been sharing some thoughts in the chat, and having an exchange with Nancy. That, I think, is, would be a helpful one for us to bring up live, which is
Blake Reid: in this approach to to to how we manage risk, or what's the what's the sort of motivation to guide us through all of the uncertainty that we have discussed today, Rachel, you and Nancy. We're having an exchange about this in the chat, so turn over to you, and then, Nancy, give you a chance to respond.
Rachael Samberg: Sure. Nancy and I know each other well, and we're not really on opposite sides of things here. But what I wanted to flag just because remarks had to be so brief. Was just to clarify that.
Rachael Samberg: I I take very well Nancy's point that rather than scare everyone about this new regulation. Let's give people concrete ways to show them how we can comply with it. And that is an empowering thing to do. And therefore if we focus on that and focus less on on risk, then we're we're not intimidated from moving forward
Rachael Samberg: and at least in the context of Eresources. I think all of that's very true. You heard from Samantha that we have ways that we're moving forward to empower the library to get accessible content that complies through our license agreements. However, if we don't also bring in the notion of
Rachael Samberg: very serious risk of noncompliance. Then it is increasingly difficult to get buy in for pursuing these and and taking a strong position in our license agreement. So you heard from Samantha, who was very diplomatic about saying, Oh, I don't think we could walk away, and I would say you would see dead bodies
Rachael Samberg: in our library if we walked away on the basis of accessibility, and we can bridge that intellectual gap with the rest of campus and the rest of the librarians who are acquiring content for campus to show them information like, Hey, did you look at? The the Doj's actual explanation and the rule that showed that
Rachael Samberg: remediation costs for higher education institutions are 5.5 billion dollars a year. So you know, we have to back it up with very credible information about what the scope of risk actually is, if we don't get accessible content in order to support the ways that we are empowered to move forward. And that was the only point I wanted to make.
Blake Reid: Nancy, your response.
Nancy Sims: Yeah, as as Rachel says, we really do fundamentally agree here, I think it's going to be incredibly key to help other stakeholders on campus realize what compliance actually means to be able to say. There are true compliance burdens here especially if the other stakeholders on campus really aren't realizing that yet we are. We are lucky at the University of Minnesota, in that the general counsel's office is already on top of this, and is already looking at compliance across the university.
Nancy Sims: And I also really really appreciate Sam's presentation of the the techniques for license licensed e-resource negotiation. And you know, enforcing that kind of stuff. One of the things that changes my
Nancy Sims: angle here just a little bit is that I've been in several conversations with people from my library and from other institutions trying to figure out things about. So we we have large stockpiles of digitized collections.
Nancy Sims: We they're already up there. Many of them are not accessible.
Nancy Sims: many of them.
Nancy Sims: One example I threw in the chat is oral history recordings of obscure historical dialects of speech from immigrant communities. Certainly I actually think we should be remediating all of those. In fact, I am enough of a stickler for accessibility that when I was 1st told to make videos for my job for educating people on campus, about copyright. I said, how are we going to do captions? And they said, We don't have funds to do caption. And so then I said, We're not doing videos, then
Nancy Sims: we aren't I? I was. That was a fundamental for me. So yes, we have needed to be doing this for a while. But when we are looking at our piles of digitized content.
Nancy Sims: something like an obscure historical dialect, oral recording, or even which we also have in the University of Minnesota Library's digital collections, scanned copies of hymnals in obscure dialects. Again, from Swedish immigrant communities, or things like that, making those fully accessible certainly should be done
Nancy Sims: might be a little lower priority than making the things that are currently being used in courses, the things that are currently being subscribed, the newly digitized things, all of this should be accessible. What do we
Nancy Sims: make accessible? First, st the more heavily used things, the more important things, and the things that will cost less, because something like an obscure historical dialect of a language is the sort of thing that could sit in some kind of a undue burden in terms of compliance. Can we hire an expert who actually speaks that language? We might not be able to find anybody, for example.
Nancy Sims: So.
Blake Reid: That's that's terrific, Nancy. Thanks. I want to pick up on a point that you just raised, and invite either you or Rachel, or Sam or Hannah to jump in on this topic of collaboration across the institution. Obviously, some of these are problems are kind of problems and strategies that it folks have been developing
Blake Reid: in the procurement of information technology. Obviously, Nancy, you mentioned the need to collaborate with university counsel. I'm just wondering if folks have
Blake Reid: tips on how they have successfully leveraged relationships.
Blake Reid: either in a really productive way. It sounds like Nancy you had with with university counsel, maybe borrowing best practices from from folks that have been leading on on it issues or going the other way. If you've got recalcitrant university counsel or it. Folks that are that are sort of running behind. And and you're leading at the institution. How have you handled that kind of cross campus, dynamic jump ball for the for for anyone who has thoughts on that.
Rachael Samberg: We love our council, and we're very proactive with them, and it helps that we're up to speed on everything going on. So when we approach council.
Rachael Samberg: it's doing it with a reading of here's what we think
Rachael Samberg: this means. Here's what we think we're able to do.
Rachael Samberg: What do you think, and getting councils buy-in. It has been essential. And it's been essential to like vet
Rachael Samberg: practical
Rachael Samberg: ways forward, too. I mean, you don't have to think that Council is going to say No, or you have to do this. Council understands risk
Rachael Samberg: and and nothing is going to be perfect. It it everything is is a question of like, what is our exposure? If we can't do this? So I I think, taking that, you know respecting that Council has that kind of pragmatic approach. Should make it less intimidating to move forward. I think another thing to do is to build relationships with your disability and accessibility offices of of various ilk. So when we made our
Rachael Samberg: statement for how our electronic resources and our electronic collections comply with federal law. We partnered with them in creating that statement to get buy in so that it doesn't create some kind of hostile relationship where of of fear and mistrust that we're doing things in the library that somehow, you know, don't serve the interests of of the university. So establishing those relationships has been instrumental for how we've moved
Rachael Samberg: forward.
Blake Reid: Thanks, Rachel, pausing just a moment to see if anyone else wants to chime in on that front.
Blake Reid: Looking around, seeing now eager volunteers, I just say as well. Here at Cu one of the approaches that that our folks have had is having a sort of centralized accessibility Governance Council that brings together representatives from the Faculty Assembly, from the libraries, from it, from university council to sort of regularly dig into these these kind of shared policy
Blake Reid: questions. So that's super helpful. I guess. One other collaboration point that that comes to mind. And, Rachel, you may have thoughts on this or others as well, are there any sort of collaborations across universities? Obviously people are negotiating with the same publishers over the the same issues? Maybe there are some antitrust
Blake Reid: questions to to worry about there. But I know that's a conversation that's come up on the It procurement side of the fence. How does that look from your vantage point, setting working across universities.
Rachael Samberg: I think if you ask our council they might have a slightly different take from my my take on this. But mine is we're. We have been very vocal about strategy.
Rachael Samberg: and I don't see strategy as an antitrust issue. Because we're not trying to control price by colluding with other institutions. We're giving language to show institutions how to comply with the law while also getting certain outcomes. I think if you you know there are some
Rachael Samberg: kind of consortial discussions that might get
Rachael Samberg: closer to having an antitrust problem, but at least in the ways that we've been educating and and moving forward. I don't think that that's an issue. But I what I will say is that, and I just put a note in in the chat.
Rachael Samberg: If you are in a public institution with multiple campuses, don't assume for a second that any of those other campuses have the same strategy, or even know what your strategy is, and you know in the Uc. We have campus counsel and every other. Uc campus also has campus counsel, and they're not even talking to each other. And it's not, for, like, you know, lack of desire. It's just
Rachael Samberg: the the scope, the breadth, everything is so big and everyone is so busy. So you do have a very important role as an individual. If you understand these issues, and you're working to, you know, towards a better outcome in your library. I think it's really important within your system, or within your consortia, to to actually provide that education and to to do the outreach, because
Rachael Samberg: every campus has different levels of familiarity and expertise.
Blake Reid: Thanks, Rachel. I wanted to pick up a comment from Amy Dreyer in the chat. He says that the Library Accessibility Alliance has been sending letters to vendors. Maybe to take some of that that sort of communication out of the out of the universities, and and have it come from from A, from a national organization might be another sort of strategy. To think about.
Blake Reid: There's also for folks that that have not been taking are are paying attention to the chat, a good set of questions from Julie Rudder, and about some specific examples. I will refer folks to the chat on on that one so that we don't surface them here. I guess in our last few minutes. And
Blake Reid: I'm looking over at Catherine just to make sure, Catherine, I wanted to bring Claire back in for a couple of closing thoughts from the community before I I turn it over to you to to wind us out. Are we doing okay on time?
Katherine (ARL): We're good. Thank you.
Blake Reid: Claire wanted to come to you for a couple of questions. One is, we heard from Sam about the possibilities of aiming beyond the regulation. So, for example, asking for vendors for things like compliance with Wcag 2.1, or being a little bit more forward, looking, being a little bit more thoughtful. I imagine there are also some
Blake Reid: things that might not be specifically covered by the Regs. But that might be problematic. So, thinking about the web overlay, and AI conversation that has unfolded in other contexts. I'm wondering if also, if there are some
Blake Reid: particular practices, some particular approaches that you would encourage folks to avoid. So things folks can can do to go above and beyond things folks might avoid as they are approaching these regs that might not be be so specifically spelled out.
Claire Stanley: Oh, that's a great question.
Claire Stanley: yeah, I mean there, there's always the the concept, right? That you know. You can adhere to the letter of the law. But you know, thinking more broadly about why? Why we asked for these regulations. And of course you. You have set regulations because it tells you what to do. But the bigger concept is that we want to have access to the materials. Again, giving the example of a student working on their dissertation, who needed access to all kinds of materials and couldn't access
Claire Stanley: with them. And so you don't have the breadth and the depth of resources to really sink your teeth into the research and and really be able to access all those kinds of things. So just trying to think creatively about ways to get the resources out there, even if you can't meet. And I don't know if this is slightly side tapping your question, Blake, but
Claire Stanley: thinking about how you can provide the resources, even if you can't give everything right then and there that complies with the regulations. One thing that kept crossing my mind as we were talking was okay. So maybe you can't make all documents, 100% accessible right here right now because we get it. That's that's a a huge, you know, burden to bear. But knowing your students knowing your audience, maybe you know you have the
Claire Stanley: Phd candidate who's studying h. Ancient Chinese history or something like that. Maybe you'd be especially active in that community, not to say that you shouldn't work on other things. Of course, if we could wave our magic wand, we would have everything. But knowing your audience so that you can really sink your teeth into what's gonna help your students, your professors, your whatever right then and there, so that you can really make a difference in what
Claire Stanley: people need at that given time.
Claire Stanley: Just the the ability to interact with the websites, of course, which is the given under the the new regulations for the website. But I think we've been talking very broadly about actually, the the archived content. So the documents that people are are accessing. But if you can't use the website itself, the search system to get to the documents will then, having accessible documents, is
Claire Stanley: per pointless. Because if I can't get to them, then what's the point? So making sure that those kinds of things are accessible. Like, you talked about. AI, that's a really big new thing. In the disability advocacy space. We keep pointing out the pros and cons of AI. It could make a world of difference, because it could open up a lot of doors. But like a lot of things. If you don't think about accessibility from the get, go, we're going to be left behind.
Claire Stanley: So using it as a tool, not as something to leave us behind, so to speak, the blind community sees that in a lot of different contexts. So I I hope that answers your question, Blake, but just thinking more broadly about how things are applied and the resources that you're providing.
Blake Reid: Yeah, I I think. One thing that's come up in some of these other conversations is being aware of snake oil in remediation and and sort of chasing these deadlines. There are a lot of vendors that are pro sort of promising the world with AI. And I I think the encouragement for folks to keep accessibility, substance in as the primary goal, and to
Blake Reid: carefully those tools, Claire, one more thing before we leave it, that I wanted to dive in. You talked about getting to know your community on campus, getting to know your patrons with disabilities that are relying on the library. Obviously those relationships can be be a little bit challenging to form, particularly when new students are coming in and
Blake Reid: trying to figure out which way is up and may not. There may not just be obvious communication links. What strategies do you recommend for libraries to to build those links to disabled students? Disabled faculty? Are there
Blake Reid: student organizations, faculty organizations, lots of universities that are good, good points of contact. What other thoughts do you have for folks to connect and and try and forge those relationships.
Claire Stanley: Absolutely I think that's a great point and a great question. There are so many different ways you can commute. Connect. Excuse me with the disability community. A lot of universities have disability advocacy clubs for both undergrads and also at law schools.
Claire Stanley: There are a lot of associations like who I work with the American Council of the Blind. We have a student affiliate, called acb students and they have state chapters so reaching out to those different entities. I wouldn't be surprised, for instance, if the National Association of the Deaf also has a student affiliate so reaching out to those existing entities to say, Hey, you know
Claire Stanley: the University of California? I was actually a a student, undergrad and grad school at the University of California system. So it's fun to hear from you guys. Reaching out to the California Council of the Blind and saying, You know, the Uc. System wants to talk with blind students. How can we get you guys involved? They would love that because it's it's a great way to bring bring the conversation together again, and not so much of an adversarial like
Claire Stanley: you will comply with the law, but more of a like, how can we work together to make sure that everything is working the way it should. So yeah, working with either entities on campus or other external organizations. Cause there's a lot of them. I guarantee. If you guys ever need recommendations reach out to me, and I can give you so many different links.
Claire Stanley: Obviously, you have confidentiality. You know, rules as far as who's receiving services?
Claire Stanley: Through disability services centers on campus. But, for instance, I think it would be even great, you know, if you could just send out a blast email to everybody through the Disability services center and say, Hey, if you are trying to learn more about these new title, 2 Regs and want to learn about what makes you know resources accessible. Legal counsel might not like this idea, but just thinking out loud, just having ways to say, Hey, we want to engage with you.
Claire Stanley: If you're a student, and you want to put your heads together and work together. I think students would really appreciate that again, there are, unfortunately, some litigious people, but I'd say the other 98% of us if we were approached and invited to sit at the table and brainstorm. We'd greatly appreciate it.
Blake Reid: Thanks, Claire. That's awesome. And I I'm glad you mentioned the National Association of the Deaf. I think we have
Blake Reid: focus the the conversation here today, primarily on blind students, but obviously both both deaf and hard of hearing students. And then also, folks with cognitive intellectual and learning disabilities are really important part of of the community that needs to be served under these Regs
Blake Reid: as as well as folks with physical and mobility disabilities. And I think also. Another thing that's come up in these conversations is remembering, too, that we're we might be primarily focused on students, but that there are different tranches of students. We also have faculty and staff who rely on on libraries. So thinking about what that broader matrix looks like super important.
Blake Reid: Rachel, I want to go over to you, and then we're just about out of time. So I'll give you the last word on our discussion, and then I'm going to turn it over to John and Catherine to close us out.
Rachael Samberg: Sorry to to eat up this last second. I but just to add, on the understanding of audiences here, yes, it's students, and yes, it's faculty, and it's staff. But we're public institutions. And to Nancy's point, earlier, we digitize our special collections and put them available online for the world.
Rachael Samberg: So it is just as important that all of our public facing materials meet meet these standards, and you know, I'm sure many of you know that. When Berkeley had put up old course content, you know, from decades ago that didn't have captions, there was a doj enforcement order that
Rachael Samberg: You know that that we we're complying with. So it becomes a question of prioritization and what your available resources are, and maybe you are prioritizing the the work with students. But it. It doesn't mean that you are going to escape the court of Public opinion. For the materials that you have online that are public facing, and that don't comply.
Blake Reid: There's a great note to end on before I give it to Katherine and John to close us out. I just want to highlight Brandon Butler and John Band, who have been patiently hanging out in the audience, and delightfully. No one has asked any questions about copyright law. So hopefully we can assume that there are. Copyright law is a pretty optimistic situation that we have
Blake Reid: lots of great exceptions and limitations that we can rely on in these issues. But no, if you have questions about the copyright angles that Arl has a great network of folks who are well versed on those questions as well, and with that I will hand it back to Catherine, and then also John Berger, who has been mentioned by name a couple of times.
Blake Reid: but as the Executive Director of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries are Acerl and one of the founders of the Library Accessibility Alliance, Katherine John, over to you to close us out.
Katherine (ARL): Thanks, Blake, thanks to all the speakers and participants. This this is this is not the end of this conversation. I hope if there's 1 takeaway. It's that right? We're in this together, and there's there's lots that we can do. And I really appreciate it. John, do you want to say, I have some next steps. I'm actually maybe going to invite Amy Dreyer if you wanna chime in as well. But, John, do you want to say like one word about the Library Accessibility Alliance as as a co-founder just for folks who might not know.
John Burger, ASERL: One word, probably more than one. But for the folks who don't know the Library Accessibility Alliance. Here is the website.
John Burger, ASERL: the Big 10 has been doing accessibility compliance on electronic resources for 7 or 8 years. Now Acerl joined them in 2,019. And then together we created the Library Accessibility Alliance, and have since brought in several more consortia. Many of you on this call belong to one or more of those consortia.
John Burger, ASERL: So the idea being that you know, what can we do together as a group? So we don't all have to do it over and over and over again, individually, at our local institutions.
John Burger, ASERL: And we've been pretty successful at that. And we're doing a lot of awareness raising and training.
John Burger, ASERL: People with the specialized expertise like Amy have, are few and far between, and people are just learning on the job. This is a relatively new topic of concern for people who have been in libraries for a long period of time. It's not been a topic taught in library schools. So what can we do to address that gap? And has been mentioned in here?
John Burger, ASERL: We have been already started doing outreach to vendors
John Burger, ASERL: to say, you know, in case you didn't know there is this law or regulation, and you know, what are you gonna do about it?
John Burger, ASERL: the the licensing language from from Berkeley is wonderful.
John Burger, ASERL: the library Accessibility Alliance recommends licensing language. That the Berkeley language is not currently in the language that we recommend, and that's something I think we need to redress. So I will stop there. Technically, I'm not on the steering committee. I'm I cycled off a couple of weeks ago, but my chair is still warm from my 5 years serving in that chair. But but Amy is the chair, and Liz Lorang just came on. So if Amy wants to to add anything that I missed, I certainly welcome her comments.
Katherine (ARL): I think I think that Liz had to drop. Yeah, Amy, please feel free. I'll I'll since I I'll note that Amy and I. So I knew John. But I met Amy through attending all these webinars and things, and one thing that Amy and I have talked about are kind of this idea of contributing some of the the big questions that Anna raised at the beginning of our discussion here. I'm kind of contributing them to a running list that Ala has been collecting, I think, and there I think they plan to create kind of a frequently asked questions answer based.
Katherine (ARL): And so I think the idea there is to collaborate with experts like Nancy Horton. Who's on our call? Maybe some Doj experts as well. To kind of I don't know, like we do our own interpretation, and then sort of see, you know, if if it if it jives with with the intent of the regulations. So that's 1 thing. That we've talked about as like an explicit sort of next step. And I also want to note so I have grabbed the chat, and we'll sort of see if we can anonymize those questions and contribute them.
Katherine (ARL): And, Nora, I don't mean to leave you hanging. I will try to to connect you with Nancy, to get an answer to your specific question. Another opportunity for further collaboration with library accessibility, alliance, and others is engaging with the publishing community. We've heard a lot about that today from Samantha, from Claire, from others. And so there's conversations around. What can we do with library publishers, with commercial vendors, you know, on, on accessible publishing.
Katherine (ARL): And then we'll also continue. I'll speak for Arl we'll definitely continue to advocate for born accessible publishing, just as we have, you know, in our in our comments. On the title to Nbrm. So I don't know, Amy. We've left you like 30 seconds. So if you want to say anything, okay, here we go. She's amy has noted that. Yes, that La is working with the Library Publishing coalition to address publishing accessibility as well. So there's a lot happening in this space.
Katherine (ARL): And there's definitely going to be more to come. So I that's it for me. Just gratitude to all of you, and we'll we'll reach out with our updated resource and keep keep you posted on next steps, and thank you for all your work in this space. I really appreciate it. Thanks, thank you, Blake, too.
Katherine (ARL): That was great.
Katherine (ARL): I think you're muted.
Blake Reid: Thanks. I was just going to hang on for 2 seconds.