Full 508 Accessibility
EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has teamed with accessibility experts to make it easier to search EBSCOhost® and NoveList products using screen readers and keyboard controls. Working with the EBSCO Accessibility Interest Group, led by the Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility (iCITA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (http://cita.uiuc.edu), EBSCO was able to determine that Text Only interfaces, the industry standard for Web accessibility (referred to as 508 compliance in the United States), were no longer enough.
The EBSCOhost Text Only interface met the standards for 508 compliance, as outlined within the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards. However, the Text Only interface still incorporated various elements that presented roadblocks to functional usability for impaired researchers using screen readers. By working with the EBSCO Accessibility Interest Group, changes have been made, making the full features of EBSCOhost available to all users, including those with various physical and visual disabilities.
An after video dramatically shows how much difference the improvements have made in their EBSCOhost search experiences. Ron Burns, Director of Software Product Management at EBSCO, says that being able to see first-hand how users of screen readers struggled to navigate through searches and results prompted EBSCO to make the changes. "The difference between being simply compliant and creating fruitful search experiences for impaired users is quite dramatic. For example, seeing how screen readers got caught up on tables helped us to see that the coding was a barrier to efficient searching."
The changes made for impaired users have provided significant benefits for all users. Improving navigability for screen readers and keyboard controls dramatically decreased the page sizes which, in turn, improved the overall delivery speed of EBSCOhost for users with low bandwidth connections.
If Full 508 Accessibility is of interest, the following items may be of interest as well:
U.S. & Canada