 Hi, my name is Kylie. I'm an accessibility analyst that knows and so I do a lot of digital testing of websites and mobile apps on different platforms or different vendors using different types of assistive technologies such as screen readers and Braille displays. I'm a native user of this type of assistive technology as I'm blind myself and rely on them to allow me to access the same information that you do via speech and Braille in some cases and so in this demo where we will be going over the process of accessing academic journals and articles and what that looks like, you'll get an idea from someone who has been doing digital testing in accessibility for many years but you'll also get it from the perspective of someone who relies on this technology day in and day out as a user. So a few notes before we start. The demo will be focusing on the process of accessing academic journals and articles so that means we'll be going through the login, conducting some searches, accessing the text and there's a lot going on here and I think sometimes there can be so much detail in terms of accessing different screen reader commands and that kind of stuff and it'll look very busy but encourage you to try to follow along this process and not focus so much on the different key commands and the screen reader interactions as much but if that's something that would be helpful for you to understand those interactions or to learn more about we've done a deep dive into screen reader specifics with how they interact using different platforms and different formats in prior years of the summit so certainly encourage you to check those out if you haven't already and so the other note is that I'll be using NVDA, non-visual desktop access as the screen reader of choice on Windows 11 using Firefox as my web browser of choice. So let's jump into the demo. The first thing we're going to do is log in on my library's website. So let's go ahead and log in. So a lot of my information's already filled in so I'm just going to click the login button. So here we are logged in and the next thing that we need to do is find the service that I'll be using which is academic one. So I'm just going to navigate through this page a little bit. So here as I'm already navigating to find this I'm noticing that there are some unlabeled buttons or poorly labeled buttons where it's using a character that NVDA isn't reading which is why when it says button it sounds like a question mark but again I would say from the perspective of a tester or an analyst that these would be poorly labeled buttons because they don't tell the user what the button does. So we're searching for services under e-library. So let's jump to the side of the main content with the level one heading which is great and the service that we're looking for as I mentioned is academic one. So actually let's jump by headings since headings offer an efficient way to navigate through the page and when they are coded properly and placed correctly they can be a good way to provide an overview of the page. So academic one file that's what we're looking for so let's select that. And so it looks like I have to login again so I'm just going to do that. Basic search. All right so here we are on the main page where we can conduct a basic search. So let's do that. I'm going to find the search field. Clickable main landmark. Clickable intersearch term combo box collapse to main landmark. And here I'm just going to type in Krav Maga. Search search search. Search assist for Krav Maga as provided 20 suggested terms. Krav Maga Krav Krav Maga Krav Maga Krav Maga. So it said that there were 20 suggestions. So I'm going to see if I can find these suggestions. I'm going to arrow down and see if I'll read. List search assist for Krav Maga. So I'm in this list. Errowing up and down left right arrows nothing. So this is clearly a bug if I Go out of this edit box And I go back in So I'm able to see my own text, but I'm still not able to access the List of suggestions. So let's go back out again Make some it visited may navigate with final next edit the enter search term come button submit enter center Dav Mac Dav magazine Dav magazine periodical Dav magazine periodical Dav Mac search assist for that Dav Mac blank search assist for us So worked for a second I think While I'm trying to shut up my screen reader because it's providing the website is making it Very verbose in reading a lot of things that I don't want to hear at the moment I Can usually press the control key to shut it up but in this case, it's moving my focus around and Causing some problems So let's retype Search assist for crab magas provided play list for that magazine grab is three of what rabbits for when Travis Roberts co-crochet go six of 20 And it looks like it's working because I'm gonna select one of these And I was able to submit a search for The search term and We're on the results page But let's actually go And run a search for a problem we got because there's an article that I'd like to use to Mention or talk about a few things but here we are on the search and One thing that's nice about how this page is laid out is I can jump to the main content with the level one heading Clickable main landmark clickable search results heading level one where it takes us to the search results and when I navigate to Different headings list with two items with two items academic journals heading level two list clickable with 20 items comparison of that percentage Valia double dagger O2 MLD and science from a search merman sports the crab maga how political siroi Carter the blood guard link heading level three integrated use of force training program link heading Level three Marcos women's self-defense class link heading level three I'm able to Jump to different articles because each heading is the name of an article and so I can go through this listen very quickly that way Life and working with physical philosophy introduction link heading level wondering about wonder Isabella Camora's basic instinct moving combattants Re-navigating introvert L a woman's nature that equals in sport pairs not pixels main influence of a comparison of tradition misuse of titles by filter your results heading level two I can filter my results list clickable with five items button collapse publication date button collapse subjects button collapse document type so let's Do a filter button button collapse but expanded custom date range clickable limit results by publication date edit as auto complete Clickable limit results by publication date edit as auto complete from edit as auto complete Clickable limit edit as auto complete So one thing that I've noticed here is if I'm navigating through this, it's not reading the search fields properly clickable limit results by publication date edit as auto complete It's not saying from or to unless I Use my hot keys to jump from field to field. No next edit from edit as auto edit as auto complete So that makes it a little bit tricky Clickable limit results by publication date custom date range button expanded publication date collapsed button collapsed subjects, so Let's Take a look at subject list with 51 item search subject in the United States link self-defense first link martial arts to link police training to Link self-defense to link women to link a dot b dot a model rule. So one and so these look like standard links So I should be able to click on the link self-defense to link police training basic search crab mug and so we filtered for the subject which is police training And again, we can navigate to the different fields here or to the different results here Clickable may list with the list clickable with two items integrated use of force training program link heading level three Authors Colin Brian our arms major and Gordon eight hours comparison of traditional physical intervention techniques filter your results at level two Let's click up. So I think this is the second one is what we want comparison so clickable main landmark clickable comparison of Let's Navigate to this page via headings. So I was able to jump to the level one heading which is the start of the main content of this page We can get our citation metadata document controls heading level two document Document controls which applies to the text of the article on this page main content heading level two and here we have What's called the main content which is the start of the article so a little bit misleading with the way the heading is called but It's still a useful heading to get us to the start of the article If I error down from here, I can access the text in the section clickable abstract one background a set of relevant police economic parameters PEP assessment and prevention of occupational risks involved in police physical interventions by through the set of PSOT And I can access this text with my screen reader and if I have a broad display connected I can also access the text here But one thing that is a challenge is lack of access to the different subsections You may have noticed when it landed on abstract that it just read us text and say that it was a heading If I continue further down motion software register happened for the four-pond of oligarch for operation of the new OTS Erring down quite rapidly total mother risk of interditional offers faster for me over someone introduction Here it says one introduction But again, it's just reading it as text. That's not saying that it's a heading So I can't easily get to section one section two section three and This way because it's all just text and if I Try to go to the next heading source citation heading levels. It jumps me all the way to source Citation like a heading level three source citation So not very helpful there. So having headings In the text itself when you're displaying it as a web page is absolutely essential for navigation Another thing that is a problem with the way the text is displayed now Even though we do have access to the text is page numbers in this text. It doesn't show page numbers if you're trying to cite something this could be very tricky and Incredibly frustrating. So an alternative would be to access something with the PDF but the PDF isn't always very accessible and even when it is the Way the assistive technology and the different platforms all interact with it can be quite varied and Not a very pleasant experience So that's why PDFs can be a tricky and unwanted format where users Such a screen reader users will in some cases try to avoid using PDFs or they will Convert it into a more accessible format. So let's go back basic search crap and find one other article That will be helpful for us to demonstrate Fill three results heading level to basic search let's Go back filter your results at it list clickable with 20 items misuse of titles by former comparison of traditional physical main influence affecting Professional affairs not pixels link heading equals in sport the sports initiative in Israel to promote more inclusive sport A woman's nature of navigating introvertel basic instinct moving combat of straight is a bell rock amora trouble wondering about wonder woman Sue introduction link heading level three Wonder is a bell rock basic instinct moving combat. So let's select this article basic instinct basic instinct Clickable next heading heading level two citation metadata document control main content heading level two. So here We're able to access the text again clickable from the Spartans to the Japanese samurai to the link soldiers of the American revolution combat of Straightening the cell produce more capable But if we download the PDF print button download button basic instinct moving combat of one dot PDF Mozilla Firefox page one region clickable Show all downloads but listen basic instinct moving out of regions zoom combo box collapse automatic zoom page one region clickable out of region page two region clickable We see that There's multiple pages But there's no text blank This is page one page two But that text that we've heard when it was displayed on that web page. It's not here at all And the problem with this of course is that this isn't very helpful and if I do an OCR On this to just to get an idea of whether this is an image of text or not Content is not a region out of region page three content is not out of the blank out of the content is out of the region page three region clickable Content out of the region out of the region page four region clickable blank content out of the region page three out of the region page four region clickable Out of the region content is now the region out of the region Out of the region zoom basic instinct button zoom in zoom page one region clickable content is not visible I can't even do that But if I page one region Let me try one more thing content is now the region zoom combo base basic instinct moving record stop share introduction our screen share a Crab market PDF automatic seconds xc. Oh, oh my start from the Spartan Samurai to the soldiers of the American Revolution combat of spring Yeah, so it does look like This is an image of text because when I did OCR and was getting some imperfect results because OCR can can Make the text more accessible, but it can also offer errors I was seeing text So this is an image of text which again, it's not very helpful One other thing that I want to show you is the pagination So we get filtered results and we've completely skipped over the pagination so having a heading there that says pagination Would be helpful, but I know from this page that if I go up from here The pagination controls are here So I can go to page two And again I can navigate through the results search results head list with two items with two items academic journals heading Let list clickable with 14 items comparing girls and boys live the effects of a martial arts based intervention on secondary school students self-efficacy a randomized controlled trial link heading level three So I like there's one more article that I want to show clickable mainland and as I mentioned citation metadata document main content editing when we look at the Text under the main content. It really is just text and there's no markup Which again as I mentioned impacts structure and navigation But it also impacts access to images in this case If I search for table the table for evaluating Intervent study design the table indoor space with you to prevent group how afternoon the table one Group based discussion of a quasi psychoeducational nature frequently occurs at the beginning of martial arts training sessions the program was registered site But the table two overall martial arts training improved the idea just to meet self-efficacy Two equals zero find the table three total self-efficacy to and again here. I'm searching for Table estimate exhibit a table showing baseline number of our original aside for each group interval right for an recommended slash and Table a1 table a1 regression model for sec academic self-efficacy academic self-efficacy model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4b 95 percent psi B 95 percent psi B 95 percent psi B 95 percent psi constant 2.41 star 2.28 2.5 42 so you can hear it reading the table here, but because It's not properly formatted as a table with semantic markup It's just reading every line and Each line is read out where the data is all displayed as Text and then white space and text and white space and so I can't navigate row by row column by column cell by cell Very easily at all And so this makes it very difficult to impossible to try to extract the information from the table And while I don't think this paper has Images here Because if I just search for a graphic content info landmark quarter navigation landmark logo graphic It jumps me directly to the gaol logo, which is outside the text. So Again, this is just displaying everything as text. So If there are any images I'm not easily able to find them I've noticed too that in a lot of journal articles that images are generally inaccessible because they are missing image descriptions and Some papers I might be able to read the captions, but the captions only provide a context for the image it's not a replacement for image descriptions mainly It's there to supplement what someone already sees, but if I'm not able to see what's in the image and I only get the caption, but I'm only getting partial access So having that textual image description really helps to bridge that gap But there are images that are incredibly complex and difficult to describe fully and so In addition to an image description some companies and some books will have Tactile versions of it where they will use raised line drawings and tactile shading to Show the image itself Some Content can also use Sonification Which is the conversion of a graph or chart into sound using different tones and pitches after different parameters To show that spatial layout in audio. So There's different ways of conveying spatial information in images, but text is the basic one and for Articles that have images that are more complicated for example in biology or in kinesiology having tactile graphics or 3d models or Significations of things is in some cases even more meaningful when you pair that with the text description So thinking beyond just alt text can be really helpful here The next thing I'm gonna do is an advanced search basic search basic search basic search Crab crab mug a damn act submit button So that I went back to the home page main landmark clickable advanced search visit and I'm gonna select the advanced search link advanced search So here we have a bunch of edit fields clickable better landmark main landmark clickable enter search term one edit required Main landmark and for search term one edit required land. So I'm gonna select Search assist for martial arts has provided 20 suggested terms search assist for martial arts has provided 20 suggested terms So again, we have our suggestions and We've already kind of gone over Kind of the challenges with that. So we won't do that again, but These are the same types of controls that were used in the basic search Select index one combo box select operator to combo box. So select index one combo box keyword collapse We're gonna keep this as keywords like operator to combo box and collapsed. So Operator is going to be and enter search terms collapsed and I'm gonna select type in Krav Maga again Search assist for crack select index to cut select operator three com Enter search term selected extra arrow search button and you can of course add more rows and We can run the search Keyword martial arts and keyword And if I look at the results clickable main landmark clickable showing search results setting level one list with two items list with two Items academic journals that list clickable with one item working with combat athletes link edit filter your results setting And we have one result here one thing that You may have noticed is that there is no accessibility metadata filter That can be really important here, especially because we've seen some inconsistent access to information and So being able to search based on accessibility metadata would be useful to filter out some of the things that aren't accessible or to at least provide a way for people to decide Whether the content is suitable for their needs or not Not a lot of websites so far expose accessibility metadata for their records when they display them on their website or have a way to search for them but There is certainly a lot of discussion about it and there are a few websites that are doing it One of them is the Nels repository. So I just want to quickly switch over to that And show you what that could look like so here we have In multiple formats and so when I Look at each format I can see the accessibility features here heading level to link any list with two items link login to access dog 14.3 md. So for the word document, we have accessibility list with three items customizable display customizable display where people can Control how the text is displayed they can adjust the font and line spacing and all that wonderful stuff described images described images so images of all text and Extended descriptions heading navigation and I can navigate this book by headings out of list certified accessible by National Network for Equitable Library Service We also see the certification publisher DC link login to access above accessibility Link login to access above free 13.99 md. And we also have an E pump version. So here we get all the Accessibility features from the word document, but we also get table contents navigation Accessibility list with four items customizable display described images heading navigation table of contents navigation this is clearly laid out and again, it gives the user an idea of What they can expect when they grab the book and while The formats here are ebooks This also applies to audiobooks too, especially And Books that have for true navigation such as Daisy format. So next let's look at how we can filter for accessibility metadata Here we have a big list of search results. So let's look at the filter Accessible heading level two. All right, so filters heading level two or filters. We have certified accessible heading level two Certified accessible List with one item checkbox not checked clickable Yes, 50 to 34 out of list heading level two filter by accessibility But we can also filter by specific accessibility features list with five items checkbox not checked clickable described images so we can filter by Accessible images checkbox not checked clickable described math 11 described math checkbox clickable customizable display Display checkbox not checked clickable print page numbers 1548 print page numbers and so on so There's a lot of flexibility here keyword So next let's switch gears very slightly and talk about accessibility of textbooks basic instinct moving introduction to tourism and hospitality in BC So I want to highlight what BC campus has done because What they're doing is really great with accessibility This is a textbook That they have here main landmark book title introduction to tourism and content setting level two I can easily go to the contents with headings and But I will navigation land with 24 items visited link accessibility statement I'm Able to see the different sections link about the campus open education link students out to access and use this textbook And already I was able to run into the accessibility statement section and when I click on this accessibility statement I'm taken to the accessibility statement right away. I'm not going to go over the entire section here or read the entire thing, but I want to highlight a few things they do talk about how they've worked with students with disabilities to ensure that the text is usable and they're able to verify that because of the cooperation and the collaboration that they have in that way the statement also mentions navigation and how students are able to access the different sections and The types of testing that's been done So I can get pretty detailed and they also have a feedback mechanism as well. It's a Pretty good accessibility statement in comparison. I want to look at the accessibility page for academic one file So let's go to the bottom of the page and Let's just go from there with the items accessibility visit link platform access and here we have a page on platform accessibility again I'm not going to go over the entire section, but I want to highlight that they do Note that some of the PDFs are inaccessible. They do note that certain features like highlighting Endnotes aren't accessible yet, but they don't really give a timeline on when that's gonna be accessible and they also missed mentioning some of the challenges with page numbers and other things like that which They would only know if they worked with Experts with lived experience using this type of business of technology and who needs to access these services So I think there's missed opportunities there. So it's not a terrible accessibility page, but it's certainly Lacking some vital information and so it's always important to Not just take their word for it when you see a Website that has an accessibility statement or a policy but to do due diligence and do some research and Try to verify their claims. So we've covered a lot here with Accessing journal articles doing searches looking at Structure or lack thereof with navigation. We talked about images Page numbers talked briefly about textbooks and accessibility statements or policies So we've covered a lot. So if you've finished watching this to the end Congratulations. Thanks for watching this video and exploring this process of academic journal access with me So that's it. Thanks for watching