<div dir="ltr"><p>Hi Sagan,</p>
<p><br></p><p>Thanks for reaching out and for the care you're clearly putting into improving accessibility in your library archives. It’s heartening to see someone thinking not just about compliance, but about actual usability and experience for blind readers.</p>
<p><br></p><p>That said, I do want to gently flag that asking blind screen reader users to review multiple documents and provide UX feedback, without compensation, can feel like being asked to donate our expertise and lived experience. This is valuable labor, and when done well, it’s not just “feedback,” it’s user testing, consulting, and accessibility evaluation work.</p>
<p><br></p><p>If your institution is able to allocate funding or formalize this into a paid opportunity (or even a structured pilot with clear parameters), I imagine you'd get more consistent, thorough feedback, and it would set a strong precedent around valuing access labor.</p>
<p><br></p><p>Totally understand if you’re early in the process or navigating constraints, and I appreciate you opening the door. Just wanted to be candid about how this sort of request might land.</p>
<p><br></p><p>Wishing you all the best with the remediation work—this kind of deep accessibility work is sorely needed.</p></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 2:38 PM Wallace, Sagan via athen-list <<a href="mailto:athen-list@u.washington.edu">athen-list@u.washington.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="msg-4880804834759685819">
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Hello all,</div>
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This is a big ask, so I'm sending this out to a few lists. Would anyone who is an experienced screen reader be willing to review one of the documents linked below, and give feedback on how effectively they were remediated? If you were a visually-impaired researcher
using our archives and downloaded this material, would you be satisfied? Frustrated?</div>
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Background: I am working on remediating our library archives for screen reader accessibility. These are theses and dissertations, most of which are STEM-heavy. All of our documents are PDF scans and we are converting them to HTML or EPUB. I am finding it's
hard to make some remediation decisions because we are remediating to have these available for any researcher who encounters them, rather than being able to tailor them to an individual reader's needs. I'm confident in our ability to do a basic correction,
but I want these documents to be actually pleasant for our future reader to use. Hopefully I'll be able to conduct an actual UX test with our patrons, but until then I'd love some general feedback.</div>
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Each folder has the original PDF, and our output file:</div>
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<div role="presentation"><a title="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/ys5o4xtdmwlwkkejej9rvwyi06he1h66" id="m_-4880804834759685819LPlnk951654" href="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/ys5o4xtdmwlwkkejej9rvwyi06he1h66" target="_blank">Example of a math-heavy PDF
converted to HTML</a></div>
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<div role="presentation">Math was made using the Word equation editor. I'm particularly curious how equation 104 on page 77 is, since that was made using MathPix.</div>
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<div role="presentation"><a title="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/67packz54fb96vnxwgp3h07lon1fdxck" id="m_-4880804834759685819LPlnk995138" href="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/67packz54fb96vnxwgp3h07lon1fdxck" target="_blank">Document with lots of footnotes</a>,
converted to EPUB</div>
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<div role="presentation">In particular, how is the navigation back and forth between the end notes and the main text?</div>
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<div role="presentation"><a title="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/6u0po6y3qmtcyc4co3zjtxobvq1cjgle" id="m_-4880804834759685819LPlnk870472" href="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/6u0po6y3qmtcyc4co3zjtxobvq1cjgle" target="_blank">PDF of a poetry book</a>, converted
to EPUB</div>
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<div role="presentation">I haven't been able to figure out how to maintain the formatting and page breaks, but I don't think keeping it as PDF is the answer.</div>
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<div role="presentation"><a title="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/2uhr3tul3p9ibxnhz1xflsga6gqokzlm" id="m_-4880804834759685819LPlnk390332" href="https://oregonstate.box.com/s/2uhr3tul3p9ibxnhz1xflsga6gqokzlm" target="_blank">Scan of a typewritten document
from 1874</a>, converted to EPUB</div>
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<div role="presentation">In this one I'm trying to balance maintaining the original formatting, while making the difficult-to-read text audible. We have a lot of documents written in cursive that will need to be corrected.</div>
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Thank you for any support, and I hope you have a wonderful week!</div>
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Best,</div>
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<p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:11pt">
Sagan Wallace</p>
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<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><i>they/them</i> </span></div>
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Library Accessibility Manager</div>
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Oregon State University Libraries & Press</div>
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</div></blockquote></div><div><br clear="all"></div><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)">Best Regards,</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)">Kevin Andrews</span><div><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)">Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Coordinator </span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)">University Information Services </span><br style="color:rgb(136,136,136)"><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)">Georgetown University </span><br style="color:rgb(136,136,136)"><br></div></div></div></div></div>