Library & Information Technology Services Blog
News, Updates, and Information about LITS Resources and Services
Announcements/Updates to the BMC community
LITS will be performing emergency maintenance on Moodle at 8 PM on Tuesday, March 22, 2022. The upgrade will address security vulnerabilities. The upgrade should last less than 10 minutes, and people who are already logged in should experience minimal disruption during that time.
Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.
Just as people who use screen readers can skim pages by navigating via headings, so too can they navigate through a document just by links. This picture shows someone using the router feature in VoiceOver (a screen reader). On this webpage the user has used the router to isolate all the links, so then they can use their up and down arrows to go through the list of links to see which link they would like to navigate to.
If links have vague titles like “click here” or “link” then the screen reader user does not know what the link means, because they cannot see the link in context. Similarly, if links are non-descriptive, long URLs that can be confusing to listen to also.
To sidestep these issues, create descriptive links. For example, instead of https://www.brynmawr.edu/ create a hyperlink that says Bryn Mawr College Homepage.
To create a hyperlink, write the descriptive name for the hyperlink. Then right click on it, click link, and copy and paste the URL in the appropriate box.
Check out this page for more guidance on creating hyperlinks.
To get this week’s clue, complete the activity listed under Week 6 in the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page.
When a person who uses a screen reader approaches a list, the screen reader will announce that there is a list and will announce what kind of list it is- a bulleted or numbered list. For this reason, it’s important to use the in-built bulleted list and numbered list formatting options in Word to make lists. If you try to manually make lists by using hyphens for bullets or by writing your own numbers, the screen reader will not recognize the list and instead will read everything out like a paragraph, which can be confusing for a listener.
Bulleted lists should be used when the order of the items is not important. For example, if you were listing items on a shopping list, these items would be listed using bullets.
Numbered lists are for when items must be in a specific order. For example, steps to follow on a recipe card would be listed using numbered list.
Read this article for how to make a bulleted or numbered list in Microsoft Word.
Go to the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page and complete the Week 5 challenge to get this week’s clue.
Routine system maintenance will occur tomorrow (Thursday) from 6:00 p.m. until midnight. For more information on LITS System Maintenance: http://www.brynmawr.edu/lits/system-maintenance-policy. Please contact the Help Desk with questions, help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440, or lits.brynmawr.edu.
The Interlibrary Loan/EZBorrow office will be closed the week of Spring Break (Monday, March 7-Friday, March 11). We will continue sending requests for EZBorrow and regular ILL items to other libraries throughout this time, and if we receive articles from other libraries during the break, these will be forwarded to you via the ILLiad system as usual.
Books and other physical items received from other libraries will not be available for pickup until Monday, March 14.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at bmcill@brynmawr or (610) 526-5278 before Friday, March 4 or library@brynmawr.edu.
For people who cannot see pictures well and rely on screen readers to navigate on the computer, it’s important to program the pictures in such a way that the screen reader can explain the content of the pictures aloud.
In order to make images accessible to screen reader users, you must add alternative text descriptions, commonly known as “alt text.” Alt text should be a concise description of the relevant information in the image. Try not to make alt text longer than two sentences. The shorter the better.
To create alt text, follow these instructions.
For decorative images that don’t have significant meaning in relation to the document, don’t write a description. Instead, click the checkbox that says “mark as decorative.” This way, when the screen reader encounters this image, it will skip over it, preventing “verbal clutter” for the listener to weed through.
Here are some extra tips on writing quality alt text.
Head over to the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page to complete the Week 4 challenge and get this week’s clue!
Update, 3/1: Our vendor reports that all issues should now be resolved and that phone connections should be back to normal. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to the Help Desk with any further issues or questions.
Some community members have reported having trouble while making and receiving calls to their College phones. While all calls appear to be going through, some people report experiencing clicking noises or choppy or garbled phone connections. LITS is actively working with our telephone vendors on the issue, but there is currently no ETA for a fix. Thank you for your patience while we work through this issue.
Please reach out to the Help Desk with any questions: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.
Routine system maintenance will occur tomorrow (Thursday) from 6:00 p.m. until midnight.
Some community members’ Microsoft 365 accounts now default to “add online meeting to all meetings”. During this week’s maintenance, we will be turning this setting OFF for all accounts. If you would like to turn it back on for your own account, you can do so by going to:
For more information on LITS System Maintenance: http://www.brynmawr.edu/lits/system-maintenance-policy. Please contact the Help Desk with questions, help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440, or lits.brynmawr.edu.
People who might have trouble reading print often use text-to-speech programs or screen readers.
A text-to-speech program is any program, app, or extension that reads text aloud. These programs only read text and will not read out buttons, navigation instructions, or alt text for pictures. Many people use text-to-speech programs including people with low vision, dyslexia, learning differences, and concussions/TBI. Additionally, there are many people without particular accessibility needs who enjoy using text-to-speech to be more productive and streamline their workflow. On the other hand, screen readers are programs that read out every element on screen and give navigation instructions, with the assumption that the user cannot see anything on the screen. Screen readers are primarily used by people who are blind.
When creating your files, it is important to create them in such a way that people who have varying levels of visual acuity and people who listen to text are able to access all the written information.
When creating a document, it is important to be mindful of how your text appears. The color, font, and size all make a difference in whether someone can read the text or not. Here are some tips to make sure your text is readable.
It’s important that there is sufficient color contrast between the color of the text and the background so that people with low vision conditions can read it easily. Generally, black text on a white background is a good option, because it is readable by a large population. If you are planning on using different colors, please use a color contrast analyzing tool to make sure that there is sufficient contrast.
It is best to use a san serif font when writing, as these fonts are most accessible. Please avoid any overly ornate fonts that can make it hard to distinguish letters. Additionally, underlining text or using italics can make it difficult for some people to distinguish letters. If you must emphasize a portion of text, using bold letters is the best choice.
It is recommended that font size be above 11 point font to ensure accessibility.
Sometimes people make text bold or a different color to signify important information. However, this is not a good system to use since people who access documents by listening to a screen reader or text-to-speech program will not be able to hear “bold” or “color.”
For this reason, if you need to signify important text, it is important to do so in more than one way. For example, if you write the word “important” and then write the information that is important, a person will be able to hear that read aloud. Likewise, if you write a note that important text will be signified by an asterisk and then use an asterisk to note important text, a person listening will be able to hear the asterisk read aloud. In conclusion, it is okay to use bold font or colored font to signify importance, but if you do so, you must also have an additional way of noting its importance that a text-to-speech program or screen reader will be able to speak aloud.
Its important to write content that everyone can understand. Highly intelligent people can struggle with reading comprehension for a variety of reasons, ranging from having a learning difference to reading a text in their non-native language. Following plain language guidelines in your writing will ensure that text is as accessible as possible.
For this week’s clue, complete the activity listed under Week 3 in the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle Page.
LITS invites Bryn Mawr faculty, staff, and graduate students to apply for project grants to support digital teaching, learning, or research activities broadly construed. Digital Bryn Mawr Project Grants may be used to support professional development opportunities; curricular development; symposia or other events; and other teaching, learning, or research-focused projects, including digital scholarship projects.
These grants are intended to help advance engagement with digital technologies, regardless of an individual’s prior experience or expertise. We welcome proposals from absolute beginners, seasoned experts, and everyone in between! We support projects of different scales and at stages ranging from discovery/prototyping to implementation. Please see information on current and past projects for ideas.
If you’re not sure if a Digital Bryn Mawr grant is appropriate for your project or how to get started, we encourage you to reach out to us and sign up for a consultation or info session.
Requests to support professional development opportunities or co-sponsorship of events can be submitted and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We will review proposals for other types of projects twice a year, with deadlines for submission on March 15 and Oct. 15.
To learn more, visit our Digital Bryn Mawr Project Grants page.
Please contact the Help Desk if you have any questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.
EZBorrow will be unavailable from 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 23. EZBorrow will be doing necessary maintenance on their services during that time.
Contact the library with questions: circulation@brynmawr.edu
To understand accessibility, it is helpful to understand how people who use assistive technology navigate elements on the computer. For example, some people with limited functional vision use a tool called a screen reader. A screen reader reads aloud all the elements on a screen and allows the user to navigate through these elements using keyboard commands.
Since screen reader users often cannot see the screen, to skim through a document or webpage they navigate by headings, listening to each heading to get a gist of what the article contains. If headings are not programmed correctly, the screen reader will not be able to detect them, and the user will need to listen to the entire webpage read aloud in order to know what is on the screen. This process can be very time-consuming and confusing.
To best support people who navigate by headings, there are two main things to remember.
When you create proper headings, you will see a little triangle appear when you hover the mouse over the text. This means that the heading has been programmed. Once the heading is programmed, if you don’t like the automatic font of the heading, you can change it by selecting a new font under Font Name and Font Size.
For this week’s treasure hunt clue, log onto the Moodle page and complete the activity under Week 2.
If you have any questions, please reach out to Grace Cipressi.