“Let’s Talk About Koha Accessibility for Library Staff!”
Opening slide from Stephanie Leary's presentation at the 2024 Koha-US Annual Conference on August 15, 2025 in Round Rock, TX.

“Let’s Talk About Koha Accessibility for Library Staff!”

Equinox Open Library Initiative Equinox Open Library Initiative

Equinox Open Library Initiative

Empower your library with open source technologies.

发布日期: 2024年8月15日
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Presenter: Stephanie Leary, Front End Developer at Equinox

Conference: 2024 Koha-US Conference

What is accessibility?

Alt text: Accessibility is making web interfaces work with assistive technologies, avoiding design patterns that cause distress or confusion, ensuring everyone can accomplish tasks despite physical or mental health challenges.

We often think of accessibility as life long but it can be temporary. It can be caused by things like a broken arm or you can be a new parent.

The inclusion of cognitive in this list is exciting because it means that these differences will also begin to see accommodations in designs in so far as visual noise, mobile support, and memory just to name a few.

Alt Text: Cognitive Accessibility: attention (your focus is not interrupted unexpectedly), visual noise (borders and high contrast elements kept to a minimum), color (emergency alert colors), mobile support, memory.
Alt Text: Types of Disabilities: Visual (blindness, low vision, color blindness), Hearing, Mobility (paralysis, tremors, neuropathy), cognitive (ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia & Dyscalculia, Memory & Learning Issues, Sensory Processing, Seizure, Vestibular.

Disabilities affect 1 out of 4 adults in the United States including our patrons, library volunteers and staff.

Alt Text: Top Accessibility Issues: Form fields (labels with IDs; error messages linked via ARIA), buttons, headings and structure (landmarks allow skimming & skipping), tab order, unique link names ("read more" what?), alt text for images.

Suggestions Moving Forward

Treat accessibility issues as bugs, not features. These need fixed by default.

Designate a reporting pathway that doesn't use a bug-tracking software because bug-tracking software can't be used by a screen reader which means you won't hear about the accessibility issues users are trying to report.

Alt Text: 5-minute testing: Browser with keyboard tabbing tuned on, browser tools (Chrome Lighthouse or Firefox Accessibility Inspector, Extensions (WAVE or Axe DevTools, SkipTo Landmarks & Headings, High Contrast Toggle)

Why should we care? It's the law, and there are deadlines many of which are falling in 2027.


Alt Text: US now: ADA Title II Update, April 2024: Updated DOJ Rule Clarifying ADA Title II and Web Accessibility. Timeline depends on institution/constituency size: 0-49,999 persons (April 26, 2027), special district gov (April 26, 2027).

Tips for the Koha Community

  • Color Contrasting - needs to be a focus
  • Headings and Landmarks (Headings skip from 1 to 3): we develop things for modularization but that messes up our heading levels.
  • Tables and Action Links
  • Data Tables and Form Labels
  • Report issues so we can identify them
  • Don't try to do it all ourselves!

Resources


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