Dspace and accessibility question

[catherin...@gmail.com]

I am participating in an evaluation process of IR options for UO Libraries. The group is charged with evaluating the attributes of various options, including Dspace7, in order to make recommendations for our future IR. We are currently hosting DSpace as our IR platform.

 

One criterion we are looking at is accessibility. My searching has not yielded information about the inclusion of a VPAT for 7. Thought I would check in with you in case you may know something about this? Another area of our interest is link resolver integration for DSpace7.

 

I am grateful for any information any member of the community may be able to share on either of these topics.

 

Kind regards,

Cathy

[Tim Donohue]

Hi Catherine,

Keep in mind that DSpace 7 is not yet released.  It's currently undergoing some basic accessibility improvements prior to the 7.0 release. Our DSpace Steering Group is also in discussions around performing a third-party accessibility audit/analysis, which could serve as a basic VPAT.

It's also worth noting that, as DSpace is a free, open-source platform built/maintained by a community of users, there is no formal "vendor / purchaser" relationship around the software.  That means that older versions of DSpace also did not have a centrally distributed VPAT, as there's no single "vendor" for DSpace.  However, we've always taken accessibility seriously & strived to align with current WCAG guidelines. Any accessibility issues discovered are treated as bugs and resolved in a bug fix release.

In any case, we do realize VPATs are a frequent request/need these days. So, that is why the Steering Group is looking to do that detailed accessibility analysis of DSpace 7, both to improve the current accessibility (where possible) and hopefully provide a VPAT-like report back to those who need it.

Sincerely,

Tim

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From: dspace-c...@googlegroups.com <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of catherin...@gmail.com <catherin...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2021 5:31 PM
To: DSpace Community <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [dspace-community] Dspace and accessibility question

 

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[catherin...@gmail.com]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your prompt and thoughtful response, and for wading through my lack of understanding regarding VPAT. It's helpful to know that WCAG guidelines are being considering at this stage. I will share this info and look forward to learning more as development continues.

Warm regards,

Cathy

Catherine Flynn-Purvis | Pronouns: she/her/hers

Scholar’s Bank Manager

Digital Scholarship Center

University of Oregon Libraries

541.346.1961

cfl...@uoregon.edu

scho...@uoregon.edu