Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Keynote address: Involving the customer in library planning and decision making
- 3 Denmark's Electronic Research Library: evaluation of services through user surveys and usability tests
- 4 Beyond the guidelines: assessment of the usability and accessibility of distributed services from the users’ perspective
- 5 Online services versus online chaos: evaluating online services in a Greek academic library
- 6 The Hellenic Academic Libraries Consortium (HEAL-Link) and its effect on library services in Greece: the case of Aristotle University library system
- 7 Information seeking in large-scale resource discovery environments: users and union catalogues
- 8 A ‘joined-up’ electronic journal service: user attitudes and behaviour
- 9 Climbing the ladders and sidestepping the snakes: achieving accessibility through a co-ordinated and strategic approach
- 10 The impact of library and information services on health professionals’ ability to locate information for patient care
- 11 We know we are making a difference but can we prove it? Impact measurement in a higher education library
- 12 Proving our worth? Measuring the impact of the public library service in the UK
- 13 Outcomes and impacts, dollars and sense: are libraries measuring up?
- 14 Longitude II: assessing the value and impact of library services over time
- 15 The use of electronic journals in academic libraries in Castilla y León
- 16 The integration of library activities in the academic world: a practitioner's view
- 17 Monitoring PULMAN's Oeiras Manifesto Action Plan
- 18 Enabling the library in university systems: trial and evaluation in the use of library services away from the library
- 19 Towards an integrated theory of digital library success from the users’ perspective
- 20 The role of digital libraries in helping students attend to source information
- 21 A DiVA for every audience: lessons learned from the evaluation of an online digital video library
- 22 Usability evaluation of Ebrary and OverDrive e-book online systems
- 23 Tearing down the walls: demand for e-books in an academic library
- Index
4 - Beyond the guidelines: assessment of the usability and accessibility of distributed services from the users’ perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Keynote address: Involving the customer in library planning and decision making
- 3 Denmark's Electronic Research Library: evaluation of services through user surveys and usability tests
- 4 Beyond the guidelines: assessment of the usability and accessibility of distributed services from the users’ perspective
- 5 Online services versus online chaos: evaluating online services in a Greek academic library
- 6 The Hellenic Academic Libraries Consortium (HEAL-Link) and its effect on library services in Greece: the case of Aristotle University library system
- 7 Information seeking in large-scale resource discovery environments: users and union catalogues
- 8 A ‘joined-up’ electronic journal service: user attitudes and behaviour
- 9 Climbing the ladders and sidestepping the snakes: achieving accessibility through a co-ordinated and strategic approach
- 10 The impact of library and information services on health professionals’ ability to locate information for patient care
- 11 We know we are making a difference but can we prove it? Impact measurement in a higher education library
- 12 Proving our worth? Measuring the impact of the public library service in the UK
- 13 Outcomes and impacts, dollars and sense: are libraries measuring up?
- 14 Longitude II: assessing the value and impact of library services over time
- 15 The use of electronic journals in academic libraries in Castilla y León
- 16 The integration of library activities in the academic world: a practitioner's view
- 17 Monitoring PULMAN's Oeiras Manifesto Action Plan
- 18 Enabling the library in university systems: trial and evaluation in the use of library services away from the library
- 19 Towards an integrated theory of digital library success from the users’ perspective
- 20 The role of digital libraries in helping students attend to source information
- 21 A DiVA for every audience: lessons learned from the evaluation of an online digital video library
- 22 Usability evaluation of Ebrary and OverDrive e-book online systems
- 23 Tearing down the walls: demand for e-books in an academic library
- Index
Summary
The concept of ‘universal design’ is not a new one. Organizations and individuals have become much more aware that the provision of accessible electronic information makes not only good ethical sense but also good economic sense. The issue has been driven further forward as a result of current and emerging disability legislation (for example the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK), which requires organizations and service providers to ensure equal access for all (or at least to take reasonable steps towards this).
Advice on assessing of the usability and accessibility of services is widely available. In the field of web accessibility, probably the best-known organization is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), whose Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides a comprehensive set of guidelines and checkpoints to help ensure that websites embrace the concept of ‘design for all’. These are available in a number of categories, covering guidelines for the accessibility of Authoring Tools (ATAG), User Agents (UAAG), and probably the most well-known: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG. It should be noted that at the time of writing version 1.0 of the WCAG was still in use, and therefore has informed the findings reported here.
The WCAG Checkpoints are divided into a number of priority and conformance levels to help people assess the accessibility of their websites:
• Priority 1: A web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use web documents.
• Priority 2: A web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing web documents.
• Priority 3: A web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to web documents. (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/) Priority levels are further defined by a level of conformance:
• ‘A’: all Priority 1 checkpoints are satisfied
• ‘A-A’: all Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints are satisfied
• ‘A-A-A’: all Priority 1, 2, and 3 checkpoints are satisfied. (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Libraries Without Walls 6Evaluating the Distributed Delivery of Library Services, pp. 25 - 34Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2006