We'll be taking a break over the next couple of weeks, so wishing everyone who celebrates a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and we'll be back from January 5th.

The Open Research team @uoylibrary.bsky.social will be short-staffed next week, then out of office on Wednesday 24 December and back at work on Monday 5 January ⛄ Here is the Library's opening information over the vacation period. See you in the new year!

"Who is it?” Us: “Say it’s RNIB, sharing their alt text tips so blind and partially sighted people can enjoy our social posts too!” It’s so easy to add alt text. Create your post, click the image button, add your image description and press done!

Accessibility Q: Does anyone know of tools that can be used to create slide decks suitable for people with extremely reduced motor function. Think voice dictation into a slide deck. AI has (surprisingly) completely failed as it's making stuff up, paraphrasing badly and obviously difficult to edit.

As this is our Last Social Media Day of 2025, here's a link to all the key info about vacation opening, 24/7 for the exams, etc etc. The short version, though, is we're mostly open 8am - midnight as usual over the Christmas period! www.york.ac.uk/library/abou...

Visiting (or staying on campus) over the winter break? Opening hours for some of our on-campus outlets will be altered until Sunday 4 January. View the latest at: https://www.york.ac.uk/eat-drink-shop/opening-times

Sighted users often use bold or large fonts to create the appearance of headings in documents. People using screen readers have no way of understanding these visual cues. Use heading styles from the styles menu to correctly format headings.

And just like that, the winter break is upon us ❄️ Whether you're leaving York or staying on campus, student support continues over the winter break. We've rounded up everything you need to know about accessing support over the break: https://tinyurl.com/muv6ctk9

We are 1! Well, 1 and a little bit - the Digital Accessibility Unit has been here for just over a year. Our latest blog post shares our team highlights for 2025: blogs.york.ac.uk/digital-acce...

Deck your posts with stunning alt text, fa la la la la, la la la la 🎁

UoY teaching staff: if you have any qualms or queries about your reading lists or accessible readings, please pop into @uoylibrary.bsky.social this Thursday, 4th December, as we'll be on hand in a drop in session 10 to 11:30am in LFA204 the Fairhurst building. Come and say hi and ask any questions!

It's a little bit late, but here is our latest blog post, in which Alice reflects on UK Disability History month (which only started on the 20th November, and runs for a whole month, so we've not published it all that late really...) blogs.york.ac.uk/digital-acce...

My awesome team won an Inclusive Impact Ward! Details are below, but my team built a Toolkit to help researchers navigate the sensitives around including disabled people in research practice.

We're delighted to announce a project we were involved in, the DISCO Including Disabled People in Research Toolkit, won the award for Building Bridges at the University of York's Inclusive Impact Awards! 1/

Some are suggesting you deliberately write inaccurate or confusing alt text, because they say this confuses AI scrapers that are analyzing images. The purpose of alt text is to help people who cannot see the image. Deliberately misrepresenting the image is a gross misuse of alt text. Don't do it.

Making your content and information accessible is viewed as a nice thing to do. And it is. But this World Kindness Day, we wanted to remind everyone that access to information is a human right. We shouldn't need to keep asking for it, it's simply how it should be.

Don't forget to add alt text on Instagram and Facebook, too. When you forget, the auto-generated alt text is not as helpful, complete, or accurate as human-written alt text. A.I. can't know the purpose of a photo. Always add your own alt text on Instagram and Facebook.

People who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter. www.w3.org/WAI/people-u...

When considering rainbow text, don't forget to consider readability and legibility. Text filled with rainbows can be difficult to read. Same with complex rainbow backgrounds. Putting each word or letter in a different color of the rainbow could force readers to work harder.

Avoid emoji icons in alt text. Emoji icons are a visual element, so it's counterintuitive to add them to non-visual content. You'll likely confuse people with messages that don't make sense. In alt text, use plain text, free of symbols, icons, or any weird special characters.

Want to include everyone in your high quality awesome and hilarious Bluesky content that has images? Want to stay faithful and not forget? Settings > Accessibility > Require alt text before posting Then, when you add an image, you'll see the warning and the post button will be greyed out...

Many live with the limitations of not understanding numbers and the impact that has on everyday life. Laura Parker's Accessible Numbers project offers guidance on how to design services and write content for people who need help with numbers. accessiblenumbers.com

Get your nominations in for our Community Champions 2026! I know there's loads of you out there doing great work in your respective professional communities. Calling all librarians, learning tech folk, teaching and learning and IT crew.

The BBC's Accessibility Guide has several resources, including step-by-step instructions to using assistive technologies. The resource includes insight into several assistive technologies, including VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, TalkBack, ClaroRead, and Dragon. bbc.github.io/accessibilit...

Some people need to change the way text is displayed in order to read it. This includes changing size, spacing, font, color, and other properties. When people customize text, the text should re-flow so they don’t have to scroll horizontally to read. www.w3.org/WAI/perspect...

We've put this up on our big vertical screen again this year... #UoYTips

Thank you so much for sharing. I would also suggest thinking about accessibility more generally, I wrote a blog post that also reflects on other forms of accessibility and has a video that explains some of those decisions as well enhancingaudiodescription.com/darci-confer...

Keeping to time is an accessibility issue! People need breaks between sessions in conferences for all sorts of accessibility reasons - whether for cognitive load, to take medication, needing bathroom breaks, check blood sugar or anything else! Making an effort to keep to time is inclusive.

More conferences are choosing to provide quiet and/or sensory spaces to help make events more inclusive - this blog post offers some ideas if you're planning an event and are interested in including such a space:

ICYMI: The 2026 #DisabledInSTEM Mentorship applications are now open! I look forward to seeing your applications soon! 💜

Huge thankyou to CILIP Disability Network for awarding NLISN this Accessibility Award, which has now safely arrived in the post! We won as an organisation so although Jo and Andy are named, this award is for all of us. The committee, the network and all our allies. #cilip #libraries #accessibility

So as Halloween draws near, time for a seasonal PSA: if you taken any kind of oral medication, beware novelty black food for Halloween. The colouring, especially in any baked goods, is commonly achieved using powdered charcoal. This can absorb medication, effectively reducing the dosage. 1/

It's that time of year again... time for #DisabledInSTEM 2026 Mentorship applications! I'm so excited to be running this program for the sixth year and seeing the growth over the years! Mentee form: forms.gle/um5DvYnBi3tn... Mentor form: forms.gle/BvaxnQm8uhUR... Applications due December 5th!

Hello! We're going to be part of an ADHD awareness month stand in @uoylibrary.bsky.social library foyer today! The stand runs 12.30-14.30 - do drop by with any questions, to find out more about available university support or just to have a chat!

Whether digital or physical, universal design is the best approach. Building accessibility into your building, designs, product or service from the start is so much easier than trying to retrofit.

Vestibular disorders affect people's balance as well as their visual perception of their world around them. Don't make animations, sliders, videos, or rapid movement start automatically, as autoplaying elements could trigger a bad reaction in people who have vestibular disorders.

The internet’s down and suddenly it’s chaos. Welcome to a day in the life of blind and partially sighted people trying to access websites that aren't accessible, it’s like the internet’s down all the time.

A reminder that the ADHD Awareness library stand is TOMORROW (Tues 21st October) in the library foyer, 12:30-14:30. If you're on campus west, do drop by to find out more and have a chat! And if coming to speak to us wasn't enticement enough, there may also be cake...

Acq/ER folks, have you heard anything about how publishers are going to make journal articles and ebooks compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA level? #CripLib #libraries

✨ Happy Diwali from the School for Business and Society! On this Festival of Lights, we warmly wish a Happy Diwali to all our colleagues, students, alumni and wider community who are celebrating here and around the globe. Enjoy the joyous celebration with your loved ones! 🪔🕯️

October is #ADHDAwarenessMonth! To help mark this, at Uni of York we're joining colleagues and students at a stall in the Library foyer on Tuesday 21st October, 12:30-14:30 to help raise awareness both of ADHD and of support available at the university. Do drop in and say hi! 1/

Tomorrow (Friday 17th, 1pm) I'll be speaking as part of the series of talks organised by The Digital Archaeology & Heritage Lab at York at King's Manor and online. I'll be exploring how we study the sounds of the past + approaches to sound installations in museums and online experiences

University of York staff are very welcome to join the digital-accessibility channel in Slack! It's an open channel, so staff members can add themselves - join us!

Gearing up for @ire.org's #AccessFest25 this week. Here's a friendly reminder to include alt text on your images. Bluesky has a setting that will remind you to add alt text before posting any images. Go to "Settings," then "Accessibility." Select the checkbox for "Require alt text before posting."

What day is it?

Boosting for University of York staff - this should be really good session, so do join us to learn more about tactile data representation and different kinds of tactile resources. We have some great examples to show you!

UoY teaching staff! Do join us in person at 12:30 on 24th October for a session exploring different types of tactile resources, as well as how to create and use tactile resources to support teaching of vision impaired students. Book your place via the form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Also if you're in any way tempted to go in any flood water (I have no idea why but some people do seem to want to) then DON'T! There can be hidden debris and it is not at all clean water.