Present: Christy Branston, Judy McTaggart, Jim Parrott, Susan Routliffe (Chair), Mary Stanley, Jackie Stapleton, Melanie Watkins, Rose Koebel (Recorder)
Regrets: Helena Calogeridis, Richard Pinnell, Linda Teather
Guests: Susan Bellingham, Janet Wason
Minutes of Previous Meeting
The minutes of the
meeting of May 20, 2003 were approved.
Accessibility Issues
As mandated by the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, the University must
develop an Accessibility Plan by this September. The plan is to include ways of identifying barriers
to people with disabilities, and details on how we plan to remove those
barriers. As part of the work necessary
to prepare the Library’s contribution to this plan, Janet Wason, Coordinator, UW Library Services for Persons with Disabilities, joined today’s meeting for an initial discussion
of issues/concerns related to information services for users with disabilities. Janet began by reviewing what the Library is currently doing to make
its services more accessible to people with disabilities. The focus of the discussion then turned to identifying access barriers
to those with disabilities, particularly in the areas of reference service,
library instruction and publications. The group raised several questions
and issues, including:
What access barriers exist in the Library to hearing impaired students?
Are there any difficulties associated with having the Adaptive Technology Centre located in only one library?
Are there barriers that can’t be overcome? For example, how much assistance should library staff provide for photocopying large amounts of material?
What difficulties do students with learning disabilities have when using the Library?
Some online collections, particularly those in PDF, may be problematic for screen readers.
In exploring these issues, it was suggested that some of these questions would best be answered by students with disabilities. Perhaps the Accessibility Plan could include conducting focus groups to better understand what barriers Library users believe exist. Committee members will let Janet know if anything should be added to the inventory of successes and barriers reviewed today. She indicated that the Office for Persons with Disabilities will be holding a Disability Issues Awareness Session for library staff on June 4.
Next Meeting: June 10 at Davis. Topics for discussion: focus groups (background information, project charter); in the context of the organizational review, is there on-going need for ISMC?