March 29, 2023
Values in Practice: Holding Our Vendors Accountable for Accessibility
The UW Libraries has been assessing third-party subscription resources for accessibility for three years. These resources are the journal websites or database interfaces that researchers use to find information after being linked from the library catalog. It has been an enormous learning experience for all of us. We first had to become familiar with accessibility standards for the web and how to test products against those standards. At first, we wanted to determine which of our subscription products were inaccessible. We did this by running a simple keyboard navigation test which could quickly identify resources that were clearly not accessible. While this is not a comprehensive test, it does work well to quickly filter out the least accessible products. We’ve written more about this procedure in the blog posts Improving Accessibility During the Pandemic and Inside and Out: Working with Vendors to Improve Accessibility.
Once we identified the problematic resources, we began contacting their vendors to communicate our findings and work together to improve their products. We have had some wonderful results during this process, as outlined in the blog post Improving Web Accessibility: One Vendor at a Time. Several of the resources we had identified as inaccessible are now much more accessible due to this work.
We are now at a point in our process where we have identified inaccessible products, but the vendors of those products are not able to work with us to improve their products. In some cases, this is because the company is too small and they do not have the resources to make improvements. Other companies might be unconcerned about accessibility and do not consider it critical to their products. We plan to push back on these reluctant vendors to hold them accountable for accessibility improvements.
Starting on July 1, 2023, we will not allow automatic renewal of subscriptions of inaccessible products.
We have developed a procedure for moving forward with accountability. Starting on July 1, 2023, we will not allow automatic renewal of subscriptions of inaccessible products. We will instead research alternatives to see if there is another product that will meet our needs that is accessible. We will work with the subject librarian interested in renewing the product to see if there are alternate ways to increase the pressure on a vendor to become committed to accessibility, such as discussing the issue in wider social networks that are relevant to the vendor. Finally, if no alternative is available and the resource is essential, we will ask the subject librarian to declare that the resource must be renewed despite being inaccessible due to its uniqueness. Otherwise, our default position is that the resource will be canceled, elevating accessibility to a deal-breaker in our licensing requirements.
We are prioritizing our strategic goal of improving access to physical and digital resources through universal design and accessibility compliance not only by listing it as a goal, but by ensuring vendor accountability and elevating platforms and resources that align with our values.
If you have any questions about this work or any potential areas of improvement you’ve noticed in library resources you’ve used, please contact us at uwlib-a11y@uw.edu.
