The first event for me was a Tuesday afternoon workshop, Web Accessibility Basics and Beyond. As a person on the internet, I have picked up a little about accessibility and have seen Kevin working on site keyboard navigation; I enjoyed learning more formally about the tenets of accessibility and opportunities to make materials more accessible. Some key takeaways for me include:
- The free WAVE Web Accessibility Tool is a great first step in determining how accessible materials are
- PDFs are not as accessible as I would have thought, even if they have been OCRed – bad OCR and format tags are a screen reader’s enemy.
- Accessibility related to e-resources is important for similar reasons, since both the site and the resource itself can have accessibility issues.
I was also really inspired by the first day’s keynote speaker, Melanie Huggins of the Richland County Library System in Columbia, S.C. Melanie discussed how she and her whole system of public librarians and staff used design thinking to consider the library’s values and mission. Those in turn helped drive the library’s planning for spaces needed in each one of their existing and new branch libraries, and how the spaces could be used to provide for the community members’ needs and wants. Where the stacks were was less important than the acts of welcoming neighborhood kids, providing programming that helps people communicate across difference, or helping the city envision possibilities for development of waterfront parks for community use. I appreciated how it seems like Huggins has used her vision to support the creativity and vision of her employees, in order to then support and improve the communities that the branch and central libraries serve. Design thinking came up several times across this NCLA in sessions, and I’m learning more about its background and execution thanks to online resources recommended by an IT/archives Twitter friend.
Other highlights included the array of vendors and a gift basket raffle (I can never resist a charitable venture!), seeing so many ZSR colleagues around – many of whom presented multiple times across the conference – and a few fellow archivists, and being able to go home for lunch and a little quiet time both days that I was able to attend. Thanks especially to all the ZSR folks who were involved in the planning and presentations of a great NCLA annual!
4 Comments on ‘Stephanie at NCLA 2019’
It sounds like such a productive and fun conference! Thanks for this report, especially the tips on accessibility.
I too appreciate the accessibility tidbits. A believe I’ve heard that epub is better for accessibility when it comes to ebooks.
I’m so glad you had a great conference, Stephanie! I heard lots of good comments about that web accessibility pre-conference. And yes, Melanie Huggins was an incredible speaker!
It was fun having you at NCLA! I too noted the emphasis on design thinking across several sessions and plan to learn more. Might be fruitful to convene a group of ZSR folks who are interested in design thinking for an informal discussion group.