Introduction

Universal access has greater than expected benefits

A student with hearing loss can obviously benefit from closed captioned video. So can a person who has issue differentiating spoken words from background noise. Yet many library videos are made with non-professional equipment and streamed over slower cell networks. In these instances, the sound quality of the video itself can suffer. Captioning walks in for the win!

Students are using the legal system to fight for equal access

On the flip side, dozens of colleges and universities across the United States are facing legal action over inaccessible technology and online resources. Having accessible content from the point of creation can save extensive time and effort spent on accessibility remediation (and potentially save legal costs as well).

We're Librarians!

Providing universal access certainly makes sense from these perspectives, yet more importantly it helps us fulfill our mission in its purest sense. Instead of signing U.S. Department of Justice consent decrees, we can be at the front lines fighting for our patrons and students access to everything. We're librarians! Access is our middle name.

Fear not, the basics are easy

While making advanced web accessibility may require development experience, making the basic content we all create accessible can be accomplished by us all.