Q: For online courses what is the best away to connect students to accessible articles in KSU library databases?
Answer
Here are some suggestions for connecting students to accessible articles from the KSU Library System databases:
Select HTML Format - When possible, select HTML format articles for student use. HTML documents are frequently more accessible than PDF format documents. PDF documents may be a scanned image and screen readers cannot process images. See this FAQ for how to limit EBSCOhost searches to HTML Full-Text articles.
Consider Online Versions for Readings - Consider searching online for alternate versions of readings - some authors post them to an institutional repository, for example. Or you could try reaching out to the author to see if they can provide an alternate version. This is a lot of work for you, but if the article(s) are critical for your course, this may be a viable option.
Report Accessibility Problems to Database Vendors - If you come across articles with accessibility issues, report these to the database vendors and ask them to provide accessible versions. Our two main database providers, EBSCO and ProQuest, make it easy to report issues: EBSCO and ProQuest. For the smaller database publishers to which KSU subscribes, reporting issues may be more difficult since you will have to navigate that specific database site and find their support contact information.
Consider Open Access and/or Open Educational Resources - Since you probably do not want to wait for database vendors or publishers to correct their files, and you may not have much luck finding alternate versions of specific articles, you might consider Open Access and Open Educational Resource alternatives. For more information about these resources, see the Open Access Research Guide (https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/openaccess) and the Open Educational Resources Research Guide (https://libguides.kennesaw.edu/oer/).
Use Digital Learning Innovations Services - Finally, consider contacting DLI Online Accessibility services and see if they might be able to assist in tagging PDFs to make them accessible or know of other accessibility improvement options.
