9:00 - 10:30 AM
Earth Sciences & Map Library Seminar Room
Present: B Dupuis; D Jan; B Miller; H Muhr; L Ngo (Facilitator); S Powell; M Sholinbeck (Recorder); E Smith (Chair); S Teplitzky; J Dorner (Guest)
Minutes
Announcements
ES: July 4 Sciences Council meeting cancelled due to holiday; if anything urgent comes up, we can call a meeting later in July.
DJ: Mentioned Web of Knowledge/Google Scholar cross-linking and integration. Info: wokinfo.com/googlescholar/
Confirmation of Sciences Council committee representatives - E. Smith
Collection Services Council (LHS representative, 2-year term): Michael Sholinbeck
Cataloging & Metadata Council (2-year term): Heiko Muhr
Conference reports I:
ACRL (S. Powell, S. Teplitzky)
Sessions reported on include Reconceptualizing the Conference Experience: Employing Grassroots Efforts in Conference Planning to Promote Inclusivity and Accessibility; Recoding the Academic Librarian: Our Developing Role as Data Detectives; Challenging the Good Fit narrative; as well as their own posters. Info: www.ala.org/acrl/conferences/acrl2019/papers
ALA Midwinter (E. Smith)
ES presented on Responsible conduct of research. (ALA logon required to access)
CCLI (B. Miller)
Sessions on exhibits and critical source evaluation. Info: www.cclibinstruction.org/2019-conference/ Next year's CCLI: May 29.
D4D (L. Ngo)
Conference centered on user experience, design thinking, design in physical and online spaces. Sessions and workshops on conducting UX research, tools and techniques for scalable survey analysis, etc. LN has a logon available to view any of the recorded sessions. Info: designingfordigital.com/2019-conference/
Ally accessibility tool for bCourses - J. Dorner
Presentation on the Ally tool - see attachment text at the end of these minutes. Ally exists both to raise awareness of accessibility issues among faculty and others who post in bCourses, as well as to allow students to download files into alternative file formats.
Function Council & Committee Representative reports. We heard reports from:
Cataloging & Metadata Council (CMC) - H. Muhr
Public Services Council (PSC) - S. Powell
Expertise Group reports. We heard reports from:
Data Initiatives - B. Miller
Scholarly Communication - D. Jan, S. Teplitzky
Teaching & Learning - M. Sholinbeck
Library Assessment Advisory Group (LAAG) - B. Miller
Around the table
Next meeting: August 1, 2019, 9:00 - 10:30 AM
Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library Conference Room
ALLY
For bCourses
ALLY is a tool within bCourses that has 2 purposes: to offer instructors feedback on the accessibility of their online course content, along with advice on how to remediate it; and to provide students with downloadable alternative formats.
What content does ALLY check?
ALLY will look at the accessibility of images throughout the bCourse site, but otherwise it only examines the files uploaded into the FILES folder. It can check these formats:
How does ALLY work?
After uploading a file, ALLY's indicator shows how accessible the files is. (These indicators are not visible to students.)
Clicking on the indicator will bring up a dialog that walks you through any problems. Some problems can be resolved through the dialog, but many require changes be made to a local copy, which can then replace the bad file.
Common changes instructors are prompted to make include:
Alternative Formats
Students see a menu to the left or right of each document that allows them to select an alternative format.
Depending on the original file, options for alternative formats that can be downloaded include:
Resources
Adobe Acrobat Make Accessible Wizard Tutorial bcourses.berkeley.edu/courses/1477060/pages/make-accessible
Leverage Adobe Acrobat's Make Accessible Feature bcourses.berkeley.edu/courses/1477060/pages/leverage-make-accessible
WebAIM Articles webaim.org/articles/