front cover of Digital Accessibility Handbook for Libraries
Digital Accessibility Handbook for Libraries
Carli Spina and Rebecca Albrecht Oling
American Library Association, 2025
A complicated topic encompassing many disparate facets, digital accessibility in libraries is in constant flux as new technologies emerge and design standards continue to evolve. This makes it challenging for library workers to ensure that their libraries meet legal requirements while also fostering inclusion for all their community members. Incorporating advice from a range of outside accessibility experts and practitioners, this guide is here to help. It delves into practical steps you can take to ensure that your library’s online presence is welcoming to everyone and that all your digital offerings avoid barriers that can exclude users with disabilities. No matter your level of experience or type of library, from this book you will
  • come to understand what is meant by disability and why libraries have obligations to support disabled users;
  • learn about a wide range of software and hardware for creating inclusive spaces and services regardless of your budget limitations or staffing levels;
  • get comfortable with the overarching principles of online accessibility and how they specifically apply to library websites, digital media and files, digital communications, and emerging technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence (AI);
  • discover how libraries can verify the accessibility of the tools they develop or subscribe to, including best practices for working with vendors to optimize the accessibility of their library products;
  • be invited to reflect upon the future of digital accessibility, particularly concerning education and hiring to ensure that accessibility remains central to the work done at all libraries.
Both Spina and Oling have worked within SUNY - The State University of New York to hone skills and thinking in this area, resulting in the Library Procurement Accessibility Toolkit, an ongoing project. They currently co-chair a subcommittee reviewing the SUNY libraries' implementation of the Electronic Information Accessibility Policy.
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front cover of Interface Frictions
Interface Frictions
How Digital Debility Reshapes Our Bodies
Neta Alexander
Duke University Press, 2025
In Interface Frictions, Neta Alexander explores how ubiquitous design features in digital platforms reshape, condition, and break our bodies. She shows that while features such as refresh, playback speed, autoplay, and night mode are convenient, they can lead to “digital debility”—the slow and often invisible ways that technologies may harm human bodies. These features all assume an able-bodied user and at the same time push users to ignore their bodily limitations like the need for rest, nourishment, or movement. Building on the lived experiences of people with disabilities, Alexander explores alternative design solutions that arise from a multisensorial approach to communication. She demonstrates what can be gained from centering the nonaverage user, such as blind people who pioneered ways to control the playback speed of media, and Netflix subscribers with invisible disabilities like PTSD who successfully pushed the company to redesign its previews autoplay feature. Drawing on artworks, video games, and creative hacking by users with disabilities, Alexander challenges our understanding of media consumption, the attention economy, and the digital interface.
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