Library Accessibility Alliance
The Payan v. LACCD (2021) case demanded library database accessibility barriers be removed. In 2024, the revised Title II regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act drew more urgency to the issue of web accessibility in libraries. The Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) is a multi-consortial organization contributing funding and expertise to improving library e-resource accessibility. LAA offers support to library employees in negotiation and evaluation of vendors’ products through collective action and collaborative community.
Events
Past Events
Join us for an insightful discussion on Making Video Accessible: Best Practices and Innovations in Video Accessibility! This session will explore the evolving landscape of video accessibility in academic and research settings. Our panel will highlight practical strategies, tools, emerging technologies, and case studies centered on captioning, audio description, and policy development to ensure equitable access to digital video content for all users. This webinar, hosted by the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), will take place on Monday June 16th at 11 a.m. Eastern.
This session will be recorded, captioned, and shared on the LAA website. By default, we provide live captioning and ASL interpretation. Please let us know what additional accommodations we can provide. Advanced notice (June 9th, 2025) will help us to better fulfill requests.
- Join us for an insightful round table discussion on Accessibility Policy with Librarians and Representatives of the Publishing Industry. This webinar, hosted by the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), will take place on March 24 at 10 a.m. Eastern. Representatives from Elsevier, New Day Films, and EBSCO Ebooks will share their expertise on making works accessible for people with disabilities in alignment with the ADA Title II and the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
- Discover how the University of Michigan Press, certified accessible by the Benetech Global Certified Accessible Program in 2021, is tackling the challenge of making their back-list eBooks accessible. Learn about the latest accessibility requirements and how U-M Press and other publishers are addressing these through VPATs, automated remediation, AI image description generation, and more.
Accessibility is a critical issue for all library activities, but library publishing has a unique set of opportunities and challenges in this area, including web accessibility and production workflows. With ADA Title II regulations going into effect by the end of June, it is important for library publishers to understand what role they will play. The Library Publishing Coalition and the Library Accessibility Alliance will co-host a webinar on this topic on Tuesday, June 18, at 12 p.m. Eastern time.
- This session will introduce participants to the neurodiversity employment movement and its impact in other fields, such as IT. The presenters will also share results from an IMLS-funded initiative that highlights the voices of neurodivergent librarians and their journey of negotiating identity as they face barriers and enablers to their success. Neurodivergent librarians are an important part of the profession, so it is imperative that libraries adopt neuroinclusive practices in their workplaces. Come learn what to consider at your library!
This session reports on a project between universities in Canada and the United States. The purpose of the project was to investigate and prototype the possibilities that the Ex Libris library services platform allows to improve access to digital accessible books, in EPUB, PDF and DAISY formats.
In fall 2022, the E-Resources Management Working Group of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) published a guide to negotiating accessibility with vendors. The writers of the guide will share their key takeaways from the guide, strategies for advocating for accessibility with vendors, and their next steps for keeping this document relevant and useful to all libraries. Access the TRLN Guide to Negotiating Accessibility in E-Resource Licenses (PDF).
- This event is hosted by the Digital Accessibility in Academic Libraries (DAAL), a community of practice within the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL), and not by the Library Accessibility Alliance. Any questions or comments related to the event should be directed to CAPAL-DAAG co-facilitators Mark Weiler, mweiler@wlu.ca or Aneta Kwak, aneta.kwak@utoronto.ca.
In this session, we walk library professionals through the academic journey of blind scholars, identifying roadblocks along the way. We suggest tangible things library professionals can do to remove these roadblocks, so that blind scholars can achieve their full potential. This webinar will provide an opportunity to share how accessibility was foundational to the development of the Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries' new website, which launched in late 2022. The MSU team is committed to creating an accessible, inclusive, and responsive web presence for the MSU Libraries. They will share their design processes and tools used to develop an accessible and sustainable website. These processes involved constantly engaging with the members from Libraries’ Accessibility Working Group and the Libraries’ Accessibility Coordinator on a bi-weekly basis to demonstrate, receive feedback, and get guidance on the accessibility questions that came up during development.