Elysé Girard
Executive Director of Assessment, Communications, and User Experience
University of Virginia
Dennis Nangle
Assistant Dean, Resource Development and Access
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Building Accessibility Governance Infrastructure at a Research Library
The US Department of Justice’s 2024 Title II mandate requires digital accessibility compliance, with enforcement beginning in April 2027 for many institutions. For a research library, the scope of what that means is vast: websites, discovery platforms, licensed databases, digital collections, repositories, and vendor-managed systems, each with different technical constraints, ownership structures, and remediation pathways. Much of this landscape is not fully controlled by the library, requiring coordination with vendors and consortia. At the University of Virginia (UVA), the Library also coordinates with the professional school libraries, including Health Sciences, Law, and Business, on process, training, and approach. This briefing reports on the UVA Library’s approach to building a durable governance infrastructure for digital accessibility: a cross-unit working group with a subcommittee architecture, a published multi-year strategic plan, and an emerging operational action plan that connects strategic direction to daily practice. Critically, this infrastructure is not a standalone initiative with dedicated staffing. It is an additional layer of coordination built on top of work that staff across the organization are already doing. Rather than treating accessibility as a project with a finish line, UVA Library has built a model that treats it as ongoing collective institutional responsibility, distributing operational work across roles and units rather than centralizing it in a single compliance function. This session is presented by the executive director who designed the governance framework, offering both the strategic architecture and the daily practice of sustaining accessibility at a decentralized research library. The presenter is especially interested in discussing how institutions at different stages of accessibility maturity might adapt this approach and where the model’s assumptions need pressure-testing.
Building Accessibility Capacity in Academic Libraries
As libraries at public universities prepare to meet Title II digital accessibility requirements, many are discovering that compliance is only part of the challenge. Long-term success depends on an organization’s capacity to create, maintain, and continuously improve accessible services, resources, and technologies. This project briefing explores how the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, is approaching accessibility as a leadership and organizational development challenge rather than a finite compliance initiative. Drawing on experiences across collection management, repositories, licensed resources, web content, interlibrary loan, course reserves, and historical collections, the presentation examines how library leaders can build the skills, workflows, partnerships, and shared accountability needed to sustain accessible services over time. Rather than focusing on specific remediation techniques, the session argues that Title II presents an opportunity to strengthen digital stewardship, improve user experience, and advance equitable access by embedding accessibility into everyday decision-making and library operations. Participants will gain practical strategies for developing accessibility capacity within their own organizations and positioning accessibility as an enduring component of library leadership and service excellence.
