Accessibility Rules Can Be Enforced for Websites

A recent court ruling confirms that ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) rules can be enforced for websites as well as for physical buildings, according to an article at eWeek.com.

A group of visually-impaired consumers has brought a class action lawsuit against Target.com because its e-commerce web site is not sufficiently accessible to visually-impaired shoppers. Target's lawyers have been contending, in part, that the ADA rules designed for brick-and-mortar stores do not apply to websites. A court ruled on October 2 that the litigation can go to trial, confirming that the accessibility rules can be enforced for websites.

The tools that visually-impaired users rely on for reading web pages rely on standard HTML practices, such as text equivalents for images. Animations and other special effects can make web pages inaccessible to these tools.

The eWeek article can be found at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2191625,00.asp?kc=PBWBPEMNL101607EOAD

More About LibraryThing for Libraries at Bedford Public Library

In response to all of the questions that were generated by the previous posting about LibraryThing for Libraries, Barbara Johnson has sent the following information:

The process was really easy. I read about LibraryThing for Libraries and thought it would be a great catalog enhancement so I contacted the company (www.librarything.com). They had me send them a tab delimited file of ISBNs, authors and titles from which they set up a demo. Once the demo was tested, they had me incorporate a few simple html snippets into my OPAC. LibraryThing used some CSS to make the style fit seamlessly with our OPAC design. Bedford uses Innovative Interfaces so the process for doing this may vary depending on your ILS. That was pretty much it. There was some tweaking and when there were problems LibraryThing came up with a solution. The people were very easy to work with and the whole process took only about a month. I encourage other libraries to consider using it. LibraryThing LibraryThing for Libraries Thing-ology Blog See Example - Cozy Mysteries

LibraryThing at Bedford Public Library

from Barbara Glassford Johnson, Technical Services Manager/Systems Administrator at Bedford Public Library:

Bedford Public Library recently implemented LibraryThing for Libraries in its catalog. We've posted info about it on our web site.

I think other libraries might be interested in it. The process of working with the folks at LibraryThing was super easy, and it has provided some great new functionality in our catalog.

http://www.bedfordlibrary.org/ 817.952.2335
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Bedford Public Library adds LibraryThing for Libraries

Bedford Public Library became the second library in the nation to add
LibraryThing for Libraries to its online catalog. The new Amazon-like
feel to the online catalog is sure to appeal to patrons of all ages.
See us mentioned in LibraryThing's Thing-ology blog.
LibraryThing for Libraries will enhance our online catalog by allowing
users to view other editions, similar books and to search for items
using tags.
Other editions and translations: Links to audiobook editions and
Spanish-language versions of a title. See the title Foreign
Correspondent.
Similar books: Lists of similar books based on data from LibraryThing
and its members. See the title The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
Tags and Tag Browser: Tags are keywords and labels used by regular
people to categorize books as opposed to Library of Congress subject
headings which use a controlled vocabulary of predefined and
authorized terms. The tags come from LibraryThing's 17 million
member-added tags.
A simple "tag cloud" highlights some of the more popular terms people
use to describe a book. The larger a word appears in the "tag cloud"
the more people have used that term to describe the title thus it is
more relevant to the search. Tags with very low relevance appear very
small and may be meaningful only to the person who assigned it. Take a
look at this example: Cozy mysteries.
Incorporating LibraryThing for Libraries into our catalog will open up
valuable new ways for patrons to find books of interest to them. We
hope you enjoy this new catalog functionality.