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Hidden Inequities of Access: Document Accessibility in an Aggregated Database.

Despite ongoing efforts to improve database accessibility, aggregated database vendors concede that they do not have complete control over document accessibility. Instead, they point to the responsibility of journal publishers to deliver articles in an accessible format. This may increase the likeli...

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Published in:Information Technology & Libraries Vol. 43; no. 1; pp. 1 - 13
Main Authors: Hovious, Amanda, Congwen Wang
Format: research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: American Library Association Mar2024
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2024
      vid: 43
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      pub: American Library Association
      place: Chicago, Illinois
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        atl: Hidden Inequities of Access: Document Accessibility in an Aggregated Database.
      aug:
        au:
          Hovious, Amanda
          Congwen Wang
        affil: Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University
      sug:
        subj:
          Access to Information
          Reference Databases
          Serial Publications
          Librarianship
          Information Services
          Human
          Audit
          Random Sample
          Resource Databases
          World Wide Web
          Markup Languages
          HTML
          Descriptive Statistics
      ab: Despite ongoing efforts to improve database accessibility, aggregated database vendors concede that they do not have complete control over document accessibility. Instead, they point to the responsibility of journal publishers to deliver articles in an accessible format. This may increase the likelihood that users with disabilities will encounter articles that are not compatible with a screen reader. To better understand the extent of the problem, a document accessibility audit was conducted of randomly selected articles from EBSCO's Library & Information Source database. Full-text articles from 12 library science journals were evaluated against two measures of screen reader compatibility: HTML format (the optimal format for screen readers) and PDF accessibility conformance. Findings showed inconsistencies in HTML format availability for articles in the selected journals. Additionally, the entire sample of PDF articles failed to meet the minimum standard of PDF Universal Accessibility of containing a tagged structure. However, all PDF articles passed accessibility permissions tests, so could be made accessible retroactively by a third party.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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