On Monday 18th April I made the long trip across Trumpington Street to the Disability Resource Centre to participate in this workshop, along with about a dozen or so other library staff from across Cambridge.
I'll be honest, I was expecting it to be a bit worthy, a bit sermonising, maybe even dull, but I have never done anything about accessibility in this library, and knew that it was going to be a good opportunity to find out what I could usefully do to be a bit more proactive in catering for disabilities. Being open to all, and not having a core readership in quite the same way as a college or faculty library, I can't easily anticipate what disabilities my readers will have. Occasionally I'm forewarned - for example one reader asked if there were steps, because he's on crutches, and I was able to say no, we're ground level, plus we could offer a wheelchair (the museum has several on hand for just such an occasion). But - and particularly in the case of unseen disabilities - generally I'm not going to know in advance of a visit, so I can only respond, not prepare, so it would be useful to know if there were things I could have ready for the more common accessibility issues.
There was a nice mix of UL, college and faculty library staff, plus me. One of the plus points about this workshop was it had relevance to all of us. I've been on other courses run within the university, where it's been of practical use to colleges and faculties, but not my library, which rather sits out on a limb and provides a very special service to a very different population than the ones served by colleges and faculties. This rather takes the wind out of my sails, when I get back and think "well, that was great, except it just doesn't work in my situation" - like the OA one, where our researchers are all academic-related, not academic. And while I learned about Student Support Documents, and saw how college and faculty libraries made use of them, there was still lots of advice I could take away and use here.
We started (after the mandatory icebreaker) with a Disability equality quiz, first filling it in on our own, then discussing in pairs, then finally sharing with the group. It was really interesting to see what assumptions we were bringing to the table - one of the questions asked us to list disabilities in order of how many students at Cambridge were affected. I put social/communication impairment (eg Aspergers) much higher than I should have, and longstanding illness/health condition (eg cancer) much lower than I should have, I suppose because autism is a lot more obvious when communicating with someone affected, than say, diabetes. We learned a little about disclosure of disabilities, and how not every student with a disability will disclose it. It was interesting to find out that students are given a second opportunity to disclose a disability after being offered a place, and that around 60-70 students will disclose who previously hadn't, of which the majority disclose a mental health disability such as depression, which shows the stigma that still surrounds mental health impairment in society.
After a break we got into small groups and were given several case studies to discuss (for example: "Tom is studying for a PhD and needs to use the library... He has a disclosed mental health difficulty which primarily impacts in terms of anxiety and depression"). We had to identify the barriers each student would face in using the library, and how we could overcome these and make the library more accessible. To be honest, I spent more time asking the college library staff in my group about the Student Support Documents, which I'd never come across until this workshop (see what I mean when I say our situation is different?!). The SSD goes to everyone that the student says it's okay to, so there's full, partial, or zero disclosure, and because they've okayed it, it's fine once a library knows about an SSD to contact the student in advance and say "Hi, I understand you have an SSD. What can we do to help when you come to the library?"
A lot of the practical methods to improve accessibility tended to be things like book-fetching, being more generous and flexible in borrowing terms, reserving desk space, and better signage, but there were other things I'd not even thought of, which even I could implement, such as having coloured paper available to lower contrast between text and page, thereby reducing visual stress. The DRC staff strongly recommended getting a scanner, if nothing else, and I'll be contacting them again to ask if there's anything more I can do for the potential reader without having to break the budget on expensive equipment that may never get used!
So overall, this turned out to be a lot of fun, very interactive, and full of practical advice for every library, not just college and faculty ones. I was really pleased I went along, and I'm going to try and make sure we implement everything we can to make our library more accessible.
I'll be honest, I was expecting it to be a bit worthy, a bit sermonising, maybe even dull, but I have never done anything about accessibility in this library, and knew that it was going to be a good opportunity to find out what I could usefully do to be a bit more proactive in catering for disabilities. Being open to all, and not having a core readership in quite the same way as a college or faculty library, I can't easily anticipate what disabilities my readers will have. Occasionally I'm forewarned - for example one reader asked if there were steps, because he's on crutches, and I was able to say no, we're ground level, plus we could offer a wheelchair (the museum has several on hand for just such an occasion). But - and particularly in the case of unseen disabilities - generally I'm not going to know in advance of a visit, so I can only respond, not prepare, so it would be useful to know if there were things I could have ready for the more common accessibility issues.
There was a nice mix of UL, college and faculty library staff, plus me. One of the plus points about this workshop was it had relevance to all of us. I've been on other courses run within the university, where it's been of practical use to colleges and faculties, but not my library, which rather sits out on a limb and provides a very special service to a very different population than the ones served by colleges and faculties. This rather takes the wind out of my sails, when I get back and think "well, that was great, except it just doesn't work in my situation" - like the OA one, where our researchers are all academic-related, not academic. And while I learned about Student Support Documents, and saw how college and faculty libraries made use of them, there was still lots of advice I could take away and use here.
We started (after the mandatory icebreaker) with a Disability equality quiz, first filling it in on our own, then discussing in pairs, then finally sharing with the group. It was really interesting to see what assumptions we were bringing to the table - one of the questions asked us to list disabilities in order of how many students at Cambridge were affected. I put social/communication impairment (eg Aspergers) much higher than I should have, and longstanding illness/health condition (eg cancer) much lower than I should have, I suppose because autism is a lot more obvious when communicating with someone affected, than say, diabetes. We learned a little about disclosure of disabilities, and how not every student with a disability will disclose it. It was interesting to find out that students are given a second opportunity to disclose a disability after being offered a place, and that around 60-70 students will disclose who previously hadn't, of which the majority disclose a mental health disability such as depression, which shows the stigma that still surrounds mental health impairment in society.
After a break we got into small groups and were given several case studies to discuss (for example: "Tom is studying for a PhD and needs to use the library... He has a disclosed mental health difficulty which primarily impacts in terms of anxiety and depression"). We had to identify the barriers each student would face in using the library, and how we could overcome these and make the library more accessible. To be honest, I spent more time asking the college library staff in my group about the Student Support Documents, which I'd never come across until this workshop (see what I mean when I say our situation is different?!). The SSD goes to everyone that the student says it's okay to, so there's full, partial, or zero disclosure, and because they've okayed it, it's fine once a library knows about an SSD to contact the student in advance and say "Hi, I understand you have an SSD. What can we do to help when you come to the library?"
A lot of the practical methods to improve accessibility tended to be things like book-fetching, being more generous and flexible in borrowing terms, reserving desk space, and better signage, but there were other things I'd not even thought of, which even I could implement, such as having coloured paper available to lower contrast between text and page, thereby reducing visual stress. The DRC staff strongly recommended getting a scanner, if nothing else, and I'll be contacting them again to ask if there's anything more I can do for the potential reader without having to break the budget on expensive equipment that may never get used!
So overall, this turned out to be a lot of fun, very interactive, and full of practical advice for every library, not just college and faculty ones. I was really pleased I went along, and I'm going to try and make sure we implement everything we can to make our library more accessible.
