Case Study: ARL Walks the Walk on Accessible Content

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) provides leadership in public and information policy to 125 research and academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada. A few years ago, in an effort to increase community engagement and reduce costs, ARL made the move from print to digital publications using the Tizra platform.

"Our goal was not just to go e-only, but to get there with enhanced functionality," said Publications Program Officer Lee Anne George.

When evaluating digital publishing platforms, ARL had some critical requirements including:

Support for existing publication formats
A full e-commerce platform supporting both free and paid content, as well as password- and IP-authenticated access for individual users or entire organizations
Mobile responsive design support
Full-text searching including relevancy ranking and linking to specific pages in search and social sharing
Support for ARL's digital accessibility mandates

After extensive testing, including an extended public beta, ARL Tizra best met their requirements and moved into production starting with its flagship newsletter Research Library Issues.

An important part of the project was to provide open and equitable access to information for those with print disabilities. "We needed to 'walk the walk' when it came to the accessibility practices we recommend to our members. Tizra's ability and willingness to support our initiatives were an important part of our decision making process," said George.

ARL is strongly committed to providing access to its own web content to people with print disabilities and is currently working to comply with the requirements of W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA (WCAG 2.0 AA). Tizra has worked with ARL to create accessible landing pages for its digital content and is working with ARL in taking additional steps to improve screen reader interpretation, including adding alt text to images, captioning videos, using style settings to define text types, assigning languages and completing metadata.

To learn more about ARL's accessibility initiatives and digital success, download the case study.

Comments

Tizra Upgrade Provides a Crisper, More Interactive E-Reading Experience

In the print world, when you think about a reader’s user experience, you consider factors like the size and weight of a book, paper quality, typeface, layout and design. Moving to digital, some of these factors still hold true, but others are replaced with concerns such as speed, intuitive controls, cross-platform compatibility, plus as with any human interface, a host of intangibles. We’re always working to make the Tizra reading experience crisper, easier, and less distracting, because happier readers mean happier publishers. Tizra reader upgrade makes it easy to enhance content with interactive lightbox effects. The update builds on Tizra’s ability to provide usability and compatibility across all the most popular web browsers and viewing devices, and is now available to all Tizra customers. Enhancements include: Speed -- e-reading should be as crisp, fast and simple as turning a page. Your readers are not going to tolerate delays waiting for cont...

See Tizra at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Guten Tag! If you are attending the Frankfurt Book Fair and thinking about your digital publishing strategy, we’d like to meet with you to tell you about all the great things happening at Tizra including: Our recent partnership with HighWire to power their Folio ebook platform (see below) How Goodheart-Willcox uses Tizra to create digital first content Exciting new features such as an improved e-reading experience , new mobile responsive design templates , and new APIs for faster uploading and better design integration Plus, some big news we can't tell you about until the show! Find Tizra at: The American Collective Stand Hall 8.0 S31 or email us at carlos.martinez@tizra.com to arrange a meeting. Please join us in congratulating HighWire on the launch of Folio! Built on the HighWire Open Platform and leveraging Tizra for ebook integration, Folio is a flexible, scalable, ebook solution, providing a user-friendly, intuitive reading experience t...

Using XML to Create a Better Online Reading Experience for the American Payroll Association

Congrats to the American Payroll Association on their recent launch of XML-based publications on Tizra! Thanks to this collaboration, APA's authoritative books for payroll professionals are now available in crisp, reflowable HTML, creating a user experience that feels like a truly digital native product, rather than a conversion from print. XML-based publishing also creates a better mobile reading experience, supports more precise search and navigation, and opens the door to better accessibility for users with low vision and other disabilities. Our partners at Scribe did a great job supporting APA through the process of producing the XML for loading into Tizra, and we’d definitely recommend them to anyone interested in such a transition. It’s hard to overstate what a big step forward this is for Tizra as a platform and a company. XML has long been planned for in the product's architecture, but now for the first time, we have a working example that demonstrates t...

Tizra Blog

Search This Blog