Join us for this workshop where PKP will highlight existing and planned accessibility improvements in Open Journal Systems (OJS).
📅 Date and time: Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 10 AM – 11 AM MDT
🌐 Online and free
Event Description
Accessible publishing means creating content that is free of barriers for the broadest audience possible, regardless of their ability or disability. In this workshop we will highlight existing and planned accessibility improvements in OJS software. We will demonstrate PKP’s accessibility auditing process and empower users to report accessibility barriers via our open Github project. We will then switch gears and talk about tools and techniques available to authors and editors to create, evaluate, and publish content in an accessible way. Finally, we will touch on the considerations for publishers looking to incorporate accessibility provisions into journal policies and editorial workflows.
Intended Audience
You don’t need to be a scholarly publishing tech expert to join in! Along with tech and web support experts, we invite journal managers, editors, publishers, OJS administrators, authors, readers, and those accessing OJS or any PKP software to join in.
Learning Outcomes
- Participants get to know about the existing and planned accessibility functionality in OJS
- OJS users know how (and are encouraged) to identify and report accessibility issues
- Journal teams and authors learn about accessibility considerations and tools for published content
- Publishers learn about integrating accessibility into journal procedures and workflows
Presenters
Israel Cefrin is a Library Information Technology Specialist/Developer at the University of Waterloo (UW) in Waterloo, Ontario where he is also co-chair of the Library Accessibility Committee. He has also served PKP in different capabilities such as System Administrator, UX Researcher, and, more recently, Digital Accessibility Specialist. He is a consultant to address accessibility issues in OJS Themes and the platform backend. At UW, Israel has been involved in improving the accessibility of the Library’s digital platforms including OJS-hosted journals, websites in Drupal, static website tools, and third-party vendor solutions. His main activities include accessibility audits, reports, tracking and monitoring accessibility issues, and code remediation following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines and Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) legislation. He is also part of a community of practice of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) that gathers University Libraries staff as librarians and developers to discuss and tackle accessibility issues in the platform used to host their websites called “Drupal Accessibility – Birds of Feather”. Currently, Israel is also serving the Ceweb.br/W3C Chapter in São Paulo as translation reviewer of the official WCAG 2.2 document to Brazilian Portuguese.
Mariya Maistrovskaya has extensive experience with OJS, publishing best practices, scholarly communications, and copyright. As a member of the PKP Publishing Services team she works with journal editors to provide OJS training and troubleshooting, and contributes to PKP documentation for its open source software. As the creator and former lead of PKP’s Accessibility Interest Group, she spearheaded the development of documentation and educational resources on accessible publishing in OJS, and hosted webinars and community calls on accessibility in library publishing.
