 Hello, and thank you for watching. My name is Michael and I'm an accessibility analyst at Nels. I was born with something called AXIN-FELD-RIGER syndrome, which gave me a 50% chance of developing glaucoma at a fairly young age. And as I'm sure you can guess due to the fact that I'm speaking to you now, I did. On top of this, I also have fragmented irises, which means I am incredibly light sensitive. And lastly, due to the wear and tear brought on from multiple surgeries, my corneas now have the nasty habit of retaining fluid, giving me cataract-like symptoms that vary depending on the day. Now, this is all to say that my accessibility needs vary day to day. Sometimes I can comfortably use zoom and inverted colors, whereas others I'm forced to rely on voiceover screen readers or text-to-speech programs. This is where accessibility metadata is so important. It allows me as a consumer to make informed purchases on products. It allows me to know whether or not I'll be able to use anything on a good day, if I'm able to use it on a bad day, or at all, for that matter. Today, we'll just be looking at navigating through library websites and applications. So my wallet's not exactly coming into the picture here. And as a resident of Ottawa, I think it's only natural that we start with the Ottawa Public Library website. Now, I've searched Stephen Frye, which gave us access to filters. I've gone ahead and removed all the physical books available at the library, giving us only the e-books present. And we're met with the title... ...a synopsis and the formats available, but nothing else. No accessibility metadata is present. So in a situation like this, I'm far more tempted to take out multiple books at once, maybe four or five, just in case the first one I choose doesn't have the accessibility features that I need for that given day. After all, I'm just borrowing from the library, so it's not costing me anything. But this mentality can cost the library some money. Depending on how this license was agreed upon with the library, a fee can be charged just for the mere act of opening up the book. Now, accessibility metadata, had it been present, the only reason I'd be no longer reading a title is due to lack of enjoyment, not simply opening up a title, realizing that, okay, this doesn't meet my needs, so I'm not going to go any farther than the table of contents or the first chapter. Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the other affiliated websites with the Ottawa Public Library. Toolbar, Back, Button, Skip to Main Navigation, Link, Webpage Loaded, Main Navigation, Button, Main Navigation, Home, Visited, Link, Browse, Collapse, Link, Recent Activity, Link, List Start, and Books. Books, Visited, Link, List Start, Skip to Main Content, In Page Link, View All Books, Heading Level 2, Link, and we scroll down a little bit. Page 2 of 7, Page 3 of 7, Getting Started with Hoopla Digital, Link. We're met with Hoopla Overdrive and Tumble Books. Websites that specialize in e-books and audio books. Let's go ahead and open one of them up. Hoopla, Heading Level 2, Getting Started with Hoopla Digital, Link. Overdrive X and Audio Books, Heading Level 2, Visited, Link, Overdrive X and Audio Books, Heading Level 2, Visited, Link, Browse Between the World and Me, Button. And we can see once we open up Overdrive, all of these books are nicely categorized in various collections for our viewing pleasure. Whether or not we want to look at Canadian award winners or, given that it's February, any books from prominent African-American authors. Between the World and Me, Between the World and Me, E-book, Link, Image. Let's go ahead and take a look at one of these books. And let's see if there's any accessibility metadata present. Which, regrettably, there is not. Now on a website like this where the e-books and audio books are so close together, I may be tempted to simply take an audio book instead of grabbing five e-books at once. After all, the shepherd in my wallpaper does require about five kilometers of walking a day, and regrettably for me, he happens to love Canadian winters. So the only thing keeping me from focusing on my frozen fingers is a well-crafted story taking me out of the frozen desolate wasteland of Canada. Unlike the previous two websites, NELS specializes in accessibility metadata. Right away, off the homepage, we can see we're given access to a variety of collections. But let's take a look at the entire catalog as a whole. From here, we can see right away we have a plethora of filters to choose from. Most importantly, the ones that catch my eye, of course, are the accessibility features present, as well as the available formats. So let's go ahead and narrow things down a little bit for us. Now with those features being added... Right away, the list has shrunk a little bit. And we can see the available accessibility features present within each title without having to go into the actual titles page. We should get that information directly from the list. This takes a weight off of my shoulders knowing that I can choose a title specifically that will meet my accessibility needs on a good or bad day for my eyes. After all, reading is a leisurely fun activity, which you don't want to add any undue stress or anxiety unless it's brought about by the actual story itself, not from having to read the book itself. We've taken a look at a few different websites. Let's go ahead and take a look at one of the library applications. Libby's doing something very interesting at the moment. The Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association in tandem with Overdrive are currently experimenting in ways of communicating accessibility metadata to the user. And if we scroll down just a little bit, you'll see what I mean. So right here we're met with all of the features present within this title, letting me know that I'll be able to read this book if it kind of caught my fancy. From what I understand, this daunting task is being done one at a time manually as a one-at-a-time process. And while these features aren't yet present in the entire library catalog, nor are they filterable or searchable, just knowing that these are there and present in some of the titles takes a bleed off my shoulders and know that it is incredibly appreciated. Now, we also have the option of taking a look at the shelf itself within Libby. And you can see all of my titles themselves present. And as I stated earlier, I do tend to take a couple of books at a time just to find out whether or not they'll meet my accessibility needs. Currently, I'm reading The Adventures of the Dead by Michael Cretan. And when we open up the title, we can see it does have the read-aloud feature. So I know that regardless of the day, at the swipe of a couple fingers, I can read this title. So large was it. These features make a world of difference for someone in my position where my vision fluctuates depending on the day. It allows me to safely know that I don't have to fully rely on audiobooks. If I want to read, I can read actual e-books, whether or not I'm using the read-aloud feature that is present within some of the titles or if I'm relying on extra-large fonts. Now, this next bit may come as a bit of a curveball. But given how close we are to where the Jays play, I think the occasional curveball is allowable now and then. Video games are becoming a more and more popular resource being bored from libraries. And currently, great strides and accessibility are being made, whether it's navigational assistance or button remapping. The smallest of things are making a world of difference. Accessibility metadata still also needs to be communicated. And on the two largest digital store fronts for Xbox and PlayStation, this is being communicated only numerically how many accessible features are present within a game, not what they are. This forces the user to actually hunt these things down, going to the actual websites for the games themselves. I'll show you what I mean in a moment. Dot, Safari. Double-tap to open. Now, vertical scroll bar, nine pages, one for... Hogwarts Legacy Accessibility Features, A11y, heading level one. This is the website for the game Hogwarts Legacy, which came out in February of 2023. Surprisingly, on the Xbox and PlayStation storefront, this game is listed as having no accessibility features. And yet, if we scroll down just a little, we can see that the accessibility features are not only broken up into which category and aid they provide, but we can see that there are quite a few of them present. This means that the users not only have to hunt down this information, but sometimes titles are listed as not even being present of having accessibility features, only to find out after the fact that there are in fact features available and the user could in fact play this game. Now, I bring this up because if the library is thinking about adding accessibility metadata for the books, well, video games should also be thought of of having the accessibility metadata added. After all, woe to the parent who brings their child home a game only to find out that, oh no, they're unable to play it for specific reasons. To quote the actor-comedian Billy Connolly, when I was an unhappy little boy, going to the library changed my life. It maybe even saved it. As amazing as that sounds, literature can do that. Books are your ticket to the entire world. They're your free ticket to the entire Earth. Libraries have the wonderful obligation and opportunity to foster imagination and a love of reading. We don't want this to be a gated community. Thank you very much for listening and I hope you have a wonderful day.