While my previous post was about how LLMs can supplement web accessibility work, they certainly do not match a thorough, human audit of web code and content. Real human eyes on the problem are often effective at diagnosing many of the most common pitfalls.

Our library is working on such an audit. A small sub-committee of two librarians went through the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines rather painstakingly, and vernacularized their sometimes obtuse language to make them useful to librarians who were, say, reviewing their LibGuides. This was a bit of a laborious process, and indeed, it had to balance the risk of oversimplifying the WCAG guidelines with the pragmatic need for librarians to make sense of them. The result was this survey, which we distributed to librarians.

We also offered a workshop for the librarians on why this was necessary; how to use the survey; what to do if you were unsure what a question means; or what to do if you are stuck on how to fix a specific issue. The workshop was repeated several times so that most of the librarians could attend. The librarians have now been set loose upon their guides, and we will track the overall progress of the audit via their feedback and the form submissions.

It remains to be seen how this will work out!

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