Community Update on DSpace Accessibility Work
Maureen P. Walsh
Hello DSpace Community,
Through the generosity of our DSpace Community, the DSpace Development Fund raised $41,000 in its latest campaign to address accessibility compliance issues in DSpace. Additionally, two institutions have made in-kind contributions of accessibility audits in support of this work.
The DSpace Program is committed to ensuring that the DSpace Institutional Repository application software will meet or exceed the 2024 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II accessibility requirements. DSpace and its partners have multiple activities underway to ensure that DSpace facilitates institutional compliance. Lyrasis, the DSpace Program’s Organizational Home, is working with the Program to publish an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) via the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). A first draft of this report is almost finished, and we will share the draft with the DSpace Community for feedback prior to expected publication this fall. We expect the ACR to confirm that DSpace already offers full or partial support for many aspects of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Levels A and AA.
Thanks to the funding provided by DSpace members and other supporters via the DSpace Development Fund campaign, work has already begun on closing the gaps in complete WCAG 2.2, Level AA compliance. This work, resourced partially through development contracts with Atmire and 4Science, two of DSpace’s Certified Registered Service Providers, can be tracked by following the “Accessibility” label in the DSpace Angular GitHub Repository.
We welcome additional collaboration and contributions from the DSpace Community on this work, which will be folded into the next major DSpace release (9.0) and backported to prior versions (8.x and 7.x).
To offer additional support, or for any questions, please contact us at dsp...@lyrasis.org.
Thank you,
Maureen Walsh, on behalf of the DSpace Program
Chair, DSpace Leadership and Steering Groups