The library’s Document Supply Service offers a range of services to staff and students at the university. If you need essential material for your research and it is not held by Swansea University libraries, then we can obtain a loan or copy from another library for you. The Document Supply Service can also digitise content such as a chapter from a textbook and make it available to students via their reading list.
Below, team member Sofie O’Shea details the process that she went through to improve the accessibility of the Document Supply Office’s public resources for the Interlibrary Loans Service and Library Scanning Service. This process was necessary to allow us to better cater for a wide range of user needs and to improve service inclusivity.
Sofie O’Shea
Before auditing our public resources, I first reviewed university best practice guidelines on improving accessibility. I attended Transcription Centre Manager Tina Webber’s excellent training session on ‘Creating accessible documents’ and made good use of Swansea Academy for Inclusivity and Learner Support’s (SAILS) guide to Making Resources Inclusive. These training resources were clear and helpful, providing simple yet effective advice.
Following recommendations, I enlarged text to a minimum of size 12 in a simple, clear font and reviewed colours used to ensure there was a good contrast between text and background. To improve readability, I simplified the layout of resources, minimised the number of tables on forms and aligned text to the left hand side of the page.
To improve the accessibility of the Document Supply Service and Library Scanning Service Library Guides, I worked alongside my colleague, James Broomhall, to check that webpage heading structures were logical and consistent and to add ALT tag descriptions to images. Hyperlinks were amended to display more meaningful content descriptions - for instance, showing the name of the document as opposed to stating ‘click here’. This is helpful for anyone using screen reading software.
When looking at content, large paragraphs of text were broken down into smaller sections and bullet points. This will improve browsability by allowing users to find essential information more quickly and easily. I also checked content for conciseness and replaced technical terms with plain language wherever possible.
Overall, it was surprising how simple it was to start making changes that will remove barriers to our service. Whilst it is recognised that it is not possible to implement one approach to meet all individuals’ needs, it is important to try to accommodate as many needs as we can. As shown above, inclusivity does not need to be challenging – in many instances, making small changes to the way we work is enough to start us on the path to a more inclusive and user-friendly environment.