In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) on May 16th, the ASERL Accessibility Interest Group would like to share a number of new resources you can use to grow your accessibility skills and make your libraries more accessible.

The ASERL Accessibility Interest Group is excited to share our Accessible Hiring Conversation Guide, a resource to help library workers have conversations about how to make the hiring process accessible for candidates and search committee members. The advice and ideas provided in the guide are not hard-and-fast rules that guarantee an accessible hiring practice. Instead, they are a place to start talking about how to make hiring as inviting and accessible as possible at your library. This guide was created by the ASERL Accessibility Working Group on Library Spaces which is a small group led by the ASERL Accessibility Interest Group. If you have ideas or suggestions, get in touch with us via this form. We would love to hear your feedback and how you are making hiring accessible at your library.

As you likely know, ASERL is a member of the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA), an organization of library consortia founded to promote “equitable access to library services and electronic resources” (Library Accessibility Alliance, “Who We Are.”). We are excited to share a learning resource from our LAA colleagues at the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA). The Cultivating Belonging: Library Accessibility Essentials Online Course is a self-paced online course designed to provide “basic accessibility knowledge to begin navigating the University resources for better support of patrons and each other” (Self-Paced BTAA Cultivating Belonging: Library Accessibility Essentials, “Learning Outcomes”). The Canvas course was developed for BTAA library staff but the BTAA has graciously opened it up so ASERL library staff can also take the course for free.

Finally, check out our 3 steps you can take to make your library more accessible blog post from GAAD last year for more information on how to jumpstart your libraries accessibility journey.