Enhancing accessibility in STEM: a survey of accessibility errors in STEM academic databases

Abstract

Academic libraries must provide accessible electronic and information technology to patrons using assistive technology to access library materials. Accessibility of scholarly material is particularly important in the STEM disciplines, where attrition rates of students with disabilities is higher than in other fields. In this study, the accessibility of STEM indexing databases was evaluated using the WAVE accessibility tool, and the frequency of errors, alerts, and features encountered during the completion of typical searching tasks for each database was noted. The use of accessibility-checking tools like WAVE can supplement other methods used to verify the accessibility of vendor-created library databases.

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