Category Archives: Accessibility Committee

Fondren’s Accessibility Committee Events

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National Disability Employment Awareness Event at Fondren Library, Rice University, Oct. 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each year the Fondren Library Accessibility Committee invites Rice’s Disability Support Services Office to participate with us in bringing accessibility information to the library staff and the whole campus.  For the 2016/17 year we sponsored two events. On October 12, 2016 to commemorate National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Dr. Josh Eyler, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Adjunct Associate Professor of Humanities at Rice, presented “Disability and Difference in the Oz Narratives.”  He examined L. Frank Baum’s fiction about the land of Oz and the literary and cinematic legacies of the Oz mythology using the lens of Disability Studies.

On November 10, 2016, the Fondren Library User Experience Office joined the Accessibility Committee and Disability Support Services to host “Accessibility and Usability – A celebration at Rice University of World Usability Day” which addressed three topics. Dr. Lewis Maher, who held space science post-doctoral appointments at Rice University and at RadioPhysics Inc. before joining Exxon Production Research, discussed the various technologies that were available to the blind in the period of 1949 through 2016, and the accessibility of the current science environment. Dr. Claudia Ziegler Acemyan, a human factors and human-computer interaction (HCI) postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology at Rice University, discussed voting system usability, or the study of human behavior and performance while using a particular voting system or product. Andrew Bertics, a junior architecture student, Ethan Chan, a junior art and architecture student, and Kajal Patel , a senior architecture student spoke for the interdisciplinary team of students who  designed and implemented the Hangout outdoor learning space, a creative configuration of hammocks between Fondren Library and the Humanities Building.

The World Usability Day event was recorded and is available on Fondren’s YouTube site at https://youtu.be/Vi28nrV7CYg. Our previous World Usability Day recordings are also available: Designing Technology Around the World (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMrinM1-1hM (2012); and Designing for Social Change (2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPHcSn-uDys.

If you have suggestions or issues concerning accessibility in Fondren Library,  please contact one of the Accessibility Committee members: Mary Brower, Melinda Reagor Flannery, Debra Kolah, Peggy Shaw, Linda Spiro (Chair), or Jane Zhao. If you are new to Fondren Library or just haven’t visited it in a while, check out our Accessibility Tips LibGuide (http://libguides.rice.edu/accessibility) created when the committee formed to share ideas about disability etiquette, promote awareness of accessibility issues and provide tools for achieving greater accessibility.

Accessibility Help in Fondren

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Did you ever feel like you put your foot in your mouth when interacting with a person who has an accessibility challenge? Fondren Library’s Accessibility Tips LibGuide http://libguides.rice.edu/fondren_accessibility was created to help library staff feel more comfortable and confident in dealing with accessibility issues. The guide was inspired by a disability etiquette talk by Kleo King of the United Spinal Association who was invited to speak in 2008 by the newly formed Fondren Library Accessibility Committee.

Fondren Library’s Accessibility Committee developed out of a workgroup formed in February 2008 when interlibrary loan staff members were helping a print-challenged graduate student. The workgroup identified a need to provide staff training and morphed into a committee. The newly formed committee looked at existing services and clarified or added services where needed. The committee also added annual staff training about accessibility issues usually held in October in conjunction with Disability Employment Awareness Month or in November for World Usability Day. It felt other departments on campus would also profit from accessibility training and asked if Disability Support Services would be interested in co-sponsoring the training events, a collaboration that continues. For the initial training session in October 2008, Kleo King of the United Spinal Association gave both a morning and an afternoon two-part program for library staff and members of the Rice and greater Houston communities. For each session the first part of the program discussed disability etiquette, while the second part focused on physical compliance with ADA rules. Kleo also toured the library and gave pointers about increasing accessibility. Key personnel from the library and the campus ate lunch with Kleo to get answers to specific questions.

Programs in the following years included the 2009 Forum on Universal Access in Universities and Other Research Institutions with speakers from Rice and Baylor College of Medicine. In 2010 during daytime and evening hours the Disabilities Awareness Film Fest highlighted films on various accessibility issues. Starting in 2011 Fondren’s User Experience Office joined the Accessibility Committee and Disability Support Services to organize events. Both 2011 and 2012 highlighted themes of World Usability Day. In 2011 a series of speakers and several demonstrations of campus usability efforts were organized around the topic of Education: Designing for Social Change (http://youtu.be/aPHcSn-uDys). In 2012 speakers addressed the topic of Designing Technology Around the World (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMrinM1-1hM&list=UUN3R0Y1w1Lv36N4Fe6NtpKQ ). In 2013 Mitchell Massey, a student worker from the User Experience Office, presented a workshop on iPad accessibility features. For 2014 the committee has been coordinating a special presentation from a Rice graduate, but details are still being worked out. Since the campus just hosted two Brown Bags about disability issues in late September, the event will most likely happen in the spring.

Please feel free to address any of the following committee members with ideas, concerns, or suggestions: Diane Butler, Melinda Flannery, Debra Kolah, Ginny Martin, Jane Segal, Peggy Shaw, Linda Spiro (Chair), and Jane Zhao.