Thursday, July 21, 2005

LSTA Grant Application Process

If you are interested in learning more about LSTA grants (one of their purposes is to increase information access for persons who have difficulty gaining it), you might want to visit the Pennsylvania State Library's web page.

To access the LSTA 2006 Application Guidelines, go to the PA PowerPort at http://www.state.pa.us and type 'LSTA' into the PA Keyword search box. Scroll down to "Application Guidelines" to get information on grants for Assistive Technology or Information Access, two types of grant that may be of interest.

Deadline for 2006 grants is Friday, September 9, 2005.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Good links

I took a class earlier this summer on web design. Towards the end of the class my professor talked about accessibility in web pages. I've listed some of the links he suggested.

Screen Reader Simulation http://www.webaim.org/simulations/screenreader
A Flash simulation of using a screen reader

WebABLE http://www.webable.com/
Authoritative site for disability-related websites and legal issues

UsableNet http://www.usablenet.com/
Free demos of software for creating accessible sites

Vischeck http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/
Information about color blindness, including a color blindness check for your website

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

ACRL offers a Webcast "Designing Web Sites for Academic Libraries"

Remember our discussion of web page design and Bobby? Here's a chance to learn more!

ACRL is offering a new webcast on web design for libraries, with an emphasis on usability and accessibility. Two 1.5-hour sessions are being offered on Monday, July 25 and Friday, July 29. See http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlproftools/webdesign.htm for additional information and how to register. If you're interested, though, hurry! Each session is limited to 30 people.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Summary of Written Responses to Accommodative Services

The last in a series of Web pages published after the SSHELCO conference, here is the "Summary of Written Responses to Accommodative Services to Libraries Questionnaire," compiled by Linda Neyer. This page contains the responses of the eleven PASSHE libraries that responded to a list of ten questions sent them prior to the conference. The questions were developed and designed by Darla Bressler, David Magolis, Linda Neyer, and Katie Yelinek to provide some background and direction for our discussion. The questions were initially sent to all fourteen PASSHE library directors, who in most cases forwarded them to the person responsible for accommodative services in their library. The eleven libraries' responses are listed following each question.

Accommodative Services Resources

Here is "Accommodative Services Resources," the second of three web pages published as an outgrowth of our accommodative services discussion. Darla Bressler, Bloomsburg University's Reference Librarian and Education Subject Specialist, compiled a handout distributed at the conference with references to recent articles on accommodative library services (2000-2005) and a list of links to useful web pages (including ALA's "Accessibility Basics for Librarians").

The "Suggested Readings" are an excellent place to start if you want more background on accommodative library services, particularly concerning ADA compliance of web pages and databases, and the links will provide lots of useful information to help your library become more user-friendly to patrons with disabilities.

Outline of Roundtable Discussion

David Magolis, Bloomsburg University's Webmaster, has published three web pages summarizing information from the Accommodative Library Services Roundtable Discussion at the 2005 Pennsyvlania SSHELCO meeting. The first of the three pages, "Outline of Roundtable Discussion," was prepared by Katie Yelinek, Bloomsburg University's Government Documents Librarian and is available here.

We hope that the members of our discussion group will like this format. We thought blogging would be a convenient way of keeping in touch with each other post-conference. No bookmarking or having to hunt for e-mails, you can just add our RSS feed to your blog reader, and you'll be notified any time someone posts.

We will be sending everyone in the discussion group an e-mail invitation shortly to become a member of the blog; this will enable everyone to post, sort of like starting a new thread on a listserv as opposed to making a comment on someone else's post. The invitation e-mail will include instructions on how to create a Blogger account if you don't already have one.

We hope that members of the discussion group will use this blog as an venue to share information and ideas helpful to us all in serving library users with disabilities.

Thank you!
Linda Neyer (on behalf of David Magolis, Katie Yelinek, and Darla Bressler)