TCDL 2026

Navigating the Accessibility Labyrinth
By: Michelle McCrary & Rebecca Richie

Embarking on an accessibility audit of our digital collections felt like stepping into a labyrinth full of twists and turns, unexpected challenges, and enlightening discoveries. With little prior experience, we began this journey to align with updated ADA Title II requirements and quickly realized the complexity of the task. We made mistakes, backtracked, and revised our approach multiple times, but each step taught us something new. Along the way, we developed strategies for assessment, prioritization, and staff training. This session offers an honest account of our ongoing work: what we’ve learned so far, the challenges that shaped our approach, and the practical steps we’re taking to make our collections more inclusive. Attendees will leave with insights, encouragement, and ideas for navigating their own accessibility labyrinth.

This session is suitable for all audiences. The session is structured to be valuable to everyone, regardless of prior knowledge or experience with the topic.

From Individual Repositories to Collective Action: Addressing ADA Title II in the TDL DSpace Community
By: Kristi Park, Xiao Zeng & Susan Hoover

This presentation will provide an overview of the updated Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II rule and its implications for digital repositories, as well as report on work of a Texas Digital Library (TDL) working group charged with developing resources for repository managers using DSpace.

In April 2024, the U.S. Attorney General signed a final rule addressing the accessibility of digital experiences under Title II of the ADA. The new rule requires state and local governments to ensure that web interfaces and content comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines. For most public higher education institutions, the deadline for compliance is April 2026.

The updated rule has implications both for platforms that libraries use to host digital content -- like the DSpace platform used for TDL’s Digital Repository Hosting service -- and for the content that libraries host in those repositories.

In response, the TDL DSpace Users Group convened a working group in Fall 2025 to address compliance of the content contained in TDL DSpace repositories, and charged it with developing a collective plan of action for TDL members. In this presentation members of the working group will report on initial work to develop a content accessibility toolkit for repository managers and to conduct an assessment of current accessibility practice among TDL members. It will also report on planned future work.