Sharing is Caring at the NTKN LibGuide Petting Zoo
You are an information professional and you know what kind of gear you need to find what you are seeking in the wild untamed world of research, but what do you do when you have invited others to come along? They might need to take a different path. Of course, you want to be a good host and make it an inviting and beneficial experience! That can pile on the pressure in an already confusing situation.
What route do you take? We will show you!
Today Bobbi and Cara are going to introduce a wonderful guide that will take the mystery out of outfitting your research with the proper togs to make it approachable to all visitors.
Featured Guide: Inviting visitors to the zoo: Accessibility and 508 compliance
This LibGuide comes to you from a highly skilled information tamer:
Samantha Strain
National Transportation Library
The platform for this guide is provided through the National Transportation Library.
Guide Encounter
This is not your average LibGuide. First, you might notice that the tabs are along the left-hand side of the page instead of across the top.
When you hover the mouse over each of these tabs you will notice text that appears. This page practices what it preaches. It is accessible in many ways!
Like a sign at the trailhead, this page highlights the Final Federal Rule as of March 23rd, 2018. The updated 508 Standards apply to a federal agency's full range of public-facing content. For more direction, visit the tab on the left titled, Federal Rule/ICT Research.
508 Compliance has big implications if you want to tame your wild research and have it published by the National Transportation Library, so the second box on the front page succinctly summarizes the NTL Accessibility Policy. For a deeper look you can select the tab to the left, titled NTL Accessibility Policy.
As we venture further down the page, the third box down provides links to the tackle you need to outfit your PDF and Word Documents. Like a good pair of binoculars these accessories help us spot the ever-elusive descriptive terms that make our resources readable for those who use alternate means of access. There is also a Digital Submissions Checklist detailed in the tabs to the left.
If you are new to all of this, you are in luck because there is an introduction to accessibility and NTL Recommended Training Resources just below.
If a mouse is not for you this tab titled Section 508: Introduction to Accessibility talks about keyboard alternatives to mouse actions available within Adobe products, among many other instructions. Additionally, the tab titled NTL Recommended Training Resources provides a list of other useful equipment to domesticate your documents.
For adventurers who work at USDOT agencies, you will be happy to note special guidance provided by Larry Slaughter – Section 508 Program Coordinator, in the box to the left on the front page.
Did you miss our fellow librarian, TXDOT’s Kevyn Barnes’ trailblazing presentation at the Transportation Librarians Roundtable? It is called Accessibility for Document Creators and Providers and you can find it in the bottom left corner of the front page.
The tools found on this LibGuide should be of great help to anyone who wants to bring the wilderness to people in an accessible and user-friendly format that anyone can read.
Take a tour at https://transportation.libguides.com/accessibility/resources.
About the Authors:
Cara Marcus is the resource center manager of National RTAP
Bobbi deMontigny is the librarian at the Montana Department of Transportation
This sounds great, I want to know more!
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