Web accessibility initiatives in Malaysian academic libraries: enthusiasm and challenges

• Main Author: Ku Saud, Ku Azhar
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: LB Theory and practice of education; T Technology (General); Z719 Libraries (General); ZA4050 Electronic information resources
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/23452/1/AS5397338611261441505693988437_content_1.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/23452/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

As a visual medium for structuring and displaying information, website plays an important tool in library service. In fact it has now become the most usable feature that users use when accessing the library without even being there in person. This phenomenon has grown even faster as the search browser and social media applications become a way of life for most people and the influence on how the library should react in dissemination information. Academic libraries on the other hand faced a crucial decision whether to disembark the traditional library services to cope with the current evolution or keep the conventional way literally. These perplexing conditions happened as the academic libraries have to manage the academic stringent in teaching and studying that demand their students to familiar themselves with physical materials. Other crucial issue is that there are not many academic resources available online as there are still matters of copyright and restricted regulations to comply with. On such background, this paper will examine the experience from 20 Malaysian public university libraries in handling the web accessibility issues and evaluates the current state of web accessibility compliance of their website as outlined by WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 based on AChecker and WAVE tools. The results suggest a relatively low level of compliance to the guidelines as specified and conclude that sharing information in an open access framework is crucial in web accessibility but the flexibility and capability of the libraries should also be equal as well