We talk a lot about access to legal information in law libraries. Yesterday’s decision in the PACER fees case is a good example (PDF). Recently, I’ve been working on the other type of accessibility: how accessed information is made useable. Law libraries may be subject to statutory obligations like §508 in the US or a regional obligation like the one that I’m trying to meet. This isn’t a post about the tools. Instead, I’ve been trying to navigate the library’s role as content access point, but not necessarily as creator.

I said this post isn’t about the tools. But it’s worth getting some experience with the tools and the terms of art. Legal obligations may specify particular ways to comply, but may rely on external standards like WCAG. We are obligated to meet WCAG Level 2 AA, for example, which sets out specific parameters. Digital formats that go beyond HTML can pose particular challenges.

That’s why I’ve been thinking about the workflow involved in getting digital information on to our platforms. While I believe that law libraries can fulfill a content creation role, we are most often content intermediaries. We collect content and make it accessible to others.

The Content Workflow

One of my goals when I wrote my books – on research and law practice – was to understand that workflow from end to end. Whether we’re talking about ebooks or continuing education documents, we’re talking about a pretty similar path:

  1. author creates the original digital object (document, slide deck, visualization)
  2. publisher received the original object and enhances it. This might include editorial or indexing, or it might be just reformatting to fit within a collection, or to convert it into a different digital format (docx -> pdf, pptx -> HTML5)
  3. publisher publishes the final digital object
  4. library acquires access to the final digital object
  5. library makes that access available. This might be a free PDF put on a web site, an ebook in a delivery platform like Overdrive, or a link to a publisher database. Each of these allows us different control over the content. We might be able to remediate a PDF to make it accessible but we can’t force change in a publisher database.

There are limitations as the content acquirer to our ability to make information accessible. At the most rigid end of this workflow, we license content and have no ability to make it accessible. The most we can do is to understand our content limitations, and potentially lobby vendors to improve.

LexisNexis Canada Advance as viewed through the WebAIM Wave browser extension on Firefox.

Unfortunately, the law library’s obligation may be different from that of a commercial provider. That will mean that the gap between the expected content accessibility and the reality may be much wider. So far, it seems as though legislation allows for this gap to exist, in part because it’s not really our digital object and not under our control.

Even if we are unable to make sure all of our content access is accessible, we should be aware of the potential challenges. Unfortunately, awareness may not be actionable. We may eventually need to make it so, though, by foregoing the collection of inaccessible licenses and materials.

The Law Library as Fixer

Unfortunately, I think other areas are murkier. The more control we have over the content, the more we may be in a position to need to make it accessible. Accessibility isn’t a negative to be avoided, but it may be that the library needs to develop a new skill set or acquire new tools.

The other alternative is to push the accessibility compliance further back along the workflow. If the content is made accessible prior to reaching the library-as-collector, then we do not need to take on that additional role. As far as I can tell, there’s no one best way to accomplish that.

Take our continuing education resource, for example. We have a digital repository of about 15 years of CLE articles. Those articles come directly from the authors and are not really enhanced in any way. They are distributed to course participants and then we receive a digital version of that content. We provide metadata enhancements but do not alter the object.

In this particular instance, there are numerous places to shift the obligation:

  1. The author is required to provide a WCAG Level 2AA accessible PDF version of their document. This would be ideal. But the reality is that the author is nearly always a lawyer and it is difficult to get good quality papers. Adding an accessibility burden may reduce cooperation.
  2. The receiving unit (education) is required to convert the digital object into an accessible format. This would be great for the library but now it’s just a matter of burden shifting. Education and the law library are all part of the same organization, so the cost of doing this may be the same to the organization.
  3. The digital publisher (third party contractor) who currently creates the digital objects for final publication is required to make it accessible. This would be advantageous because our organization already pays for some outsourcing and this organization is more likely to have the tools and expertise to handle this additional issue.
  4. The library makes the published digital object accessible.

It’s a matter of dollars. There is a cost that floats through the workflow. The lawyer, the staff, the outsourced provider, everyone has a time and tools resource cost. Who pays it is really a policy decision more than anything.

Let’s change the example a bit, though. What if you are receiving government documents (local ordinances, court orders or announcements) or commercial ebooks? If I have a PDF format ebook from a legal publisher, does that workflow change?

If there’s no DRM on the PDF, and our library is making the PDF freely accessible, I wonder if the library needs to remediate the book? The author can make an accessible original but the reality is that publishers will make substantially different digital objects as they create the final product. It means that the ability to make an accessible digital object is only at the publisher’s final step or when it arrives at the library.

One of the areas in which I’m still not confident is the tools. When I get different results from different commercial tools, how do I determine which one is correct. Do I have to?

Ideally, if we’re dealing with government documents, and those governments are themselves subject to a statutory obligation, the issue won’t arise. But government documents aren’t perfect. When they throw up accessibility errors, we may need to know whether they create a problem if we’re republishing them.

Here’s an example from a provincial court that is the sort of thing we might link to or republish if it wasn’t widely available otherwise.

Ontario Courts practice direction run through the online Tingtun PDF checker.

From a technical standpoint, I can probably make most PDFs and common ebooks accessible. From a practical standpoint, I’m not sure I have the resources to properly support that role. The cost implications mean that adding the resources would reduce the resources available for collecting content.

I apologize if you got this far and expected any answers. I’m not sure. And even if I was, I’m not sure our environment – organization, applicable legislation, corporate risk stance – would necessarily apply to your law library.

But there seems to be an opportunity for us, as we acquire access to content, to consider where in the production workflow accessibility is being addressed. If it isn’t being addressed before the library acquires access, it should be. The question then becomes: how do we impact that workflow to ensure that’s the case.