The Pennsylvania State University Libraries Open Publishing program publishes open access journals in partnership with editors and authors across Penn State and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as part of our library publishing services. Making the content that we publish freely available and accessible to all is a core value and part of how we measure success. Historically, making content open has centered around the use of Creative Commons licenses and ensuring content is available through a Diamond OA model, where neither authors nor readers pay for access. The Open Publishing program extends the focus of openness to document and web accessibility, ensuring readers can access the material regardless of their ability.<br/> <br/>In 2020, we began providing accessibility training for editors of new journals supported by our program. The pilot program includes training to make journal articles accessible in Word, PDF, InDesign, and HTML formats. The feedback from these trainings and a needs assessment survey we sent to all our editors in early 2020 were used to create and customize an “Accessibility Handout for Editors” document. All the feedback and information are also being collected and organized for use in an accessibility training module we hope to have ready for internal use in the next 1-2 years.<br/> <br/>In this presentation, attendees will learn the importance of accessibility in academic publishing, the steps used to create the accessibility handout, how we customized our accessibility trainings for new editors, and the plans for a future accessibility training module for our editors.

Advancing accessibility education in open access library publishing

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.