We understand that Web accessibility is one of our missions to better serve our Soka community. Our website consists of two major parts: the library home page and LibGuide site that manages the links to external resources including academic periodical databases and eBooks. The library home page was validated by a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) validator, meaning that its compliance with the standards was confirmed. On the LibGuide site, issues regarding Web accessibility have been taken care of by our vendor Springshare.
Organizations like the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) (a joint initiative by the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and the Association for Research Libraries (ASERL)) have taken on accessibility testing of major eResources such as journal and film databases. The LAA has contracts with two accessibility consulting companies (Deque and Usability/Accessibility Research & Consulting, or UARC, from Michigan State University) for them to perform high-level, meaning not entirely comprehensive, accessibility evaluations based on WCAG 2.1 AA. Two vendors are assessed per month and the published evaluation results are shared publicly on the LAA platform.
While Soka University of America is not part of the BTAA, we are subscribed to some of the vendors evaluated in this process. If you are interested in learning more about the published findings, please follow the link to the Testing Results page.
As we continue to improve our equitable web accessibility, we hope our Soka community will join us in learning and implementing standards, services, and tools. Please see the following resources for organizations and toolkits:
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Part of the The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which develops international standards for the Web, WAI develops standards and support materials to help you understand and implement accessibility.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview: The WCAG documents explain how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities with a goal of providing a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.
How People with Disabilities Use the Web: Tools and Techniques: This page introduces some of the techniques and tools that people with disabilities use to interact with the web — web browser settings, text-to-speech, voice recognition, and many more.
American Library Association's Web Accessibility Guidelines
This guide provides an overview of ALA's policies regarding accessible eResources.
OpenDyslexic is a free to use typeface designed against some common symptoms of dyslexia. The site also has linked to other free, downloadable resources such as keyboards for mobile devices.
Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace
This Style Guide provides principles that can help ensure that written material considers the difficulties experienced by some dyslexic people and allows for the use of text to speech to facilitate ease of reading.
Ikeda Library • 1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656 • 949-480-4205 • library@soka.edu • © 2021 Soka University of America
