Disability Accessibility in the School Library

We School Librarians need to be aware of federal guidelines for disabilities and examine our facility layout for barriers that may inhibit students from access and comfort. Here's what I discovered about my School Library and how I solved the problems. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary #schoollibrarian #facility #accessibility #disabilitiesIn “3 Strategies for a First-Time School Librarian“, I cautioned new School Librarians to not make changes before they understood their school culture and how students and classes used the library environment. However, there is one area that new and veteran School Librarians need to examine and change immediately if it does not meet guidelines, and that is the accessibility of the School Library for those with disabilities.

A BRIEF LOOK AT ACCESSIBILITY LEGISLATION

In 1968, the federal government passed the Architectural Barriers Act, mandating that facilities built with federal funds, such as courthouses, libraries, and schools, be accessible to persons with disabilities. From that first measure up through 1996—with updates through 2008—a total of 10 different acts have been passed to address persons with disabilities:

  1. Architectural Barriers Act of 1968
  2. Rehabilitation Act of 1973
  3. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975
  4. Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980
  5. Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984
  6. Air Carrier Access Act of 1986
  7. Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988
  8. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
  9. National Voter Registration Act of 1993
  10. Telecommunications Act of 1996

Two of these Acts are of particular importance to our School Libraries:

  • Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975/1990/1997/2004 mandating a free and appropriate education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE).
  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990/2008, “a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public.”

LRE AND ADA ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES

Public schools must provide a least restrictive learning environment for disabled students. The physical structures of our school libraries have been built or updated to align with ADA Guidelines, but the interior arrangement of our bookcases, tables & chairs, computers, and other furniture or decorative items may inhibit free access for those with wheelchairs or other assistive devices.

When I arrived at my middle school library, I noticed major accessibility problems that needed to be eliminated for our 2 students in wheelchairs. You may also need to eliminate barriers in these areas of your school library:

  • entry/exit doorways
  • walkways
  • approach to tables, computers, and other seating
  • aisles between bookcases
  • moving from one aisle into another
  • reaching books on shelves
  • the circulation counter.

The 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design provided by the Department of Justice are very detailed about how much room is required for various wheelchair accessible areas, including illustrations that I’ve inserted below. (click to enlarge)

Entry/Exit Doorways

404.2.4 Maneuvering Clearances. Minimum maneuvering clearances at doors and gates shall comply with 404.2.4. Maneuvering clearances shall extend the full width of the doorway and the required latch side or hinge side clearance.
404.2.4.1 Swinging Doors and Gates. Swinging doors and gates shall have maneuvering clearances complying with Table 404.2.4.1.

Clearance around doors must be 48-60 inches, depending on which way our library doors open. That means we wouldn’t want to put displays, tables, or even signage too close to our entrance/exit doorways.

Walkways

403.5.1 Clear Width. Except as provided in 403.5.2 and 403.5.3, the clear width of walking surfaces shall be 36 inches minimum.

403.5.1 Clear Width. Except as provided in 403.5.2 and 403.5.3, the clear width of walking surfaces shall be 36 inches minimum.In my school library, the areas between tables were too narrow when students were seated, but because there was ample wheelchair access to and around the end tables on either side of the library, I did not consider this a barrier to be eliminated. Be sure, when your library tables are fully seated, that a wheelchair can still maneuver to other areas of the library.

Approach to Tables, Computers, and Other Seating

802.1.3 Depth. Where a wheelchair space can be entered from the front or rear, the wheelchair space shall be 48 inches deep minimum. … public schools must provide learning environments with counters and workspaces accommodating students seated in wheelchairs.

802.1.3 Depth. Where a wheelchair space can be entered from the front or rear, the wheelchair space shall be 48 inches deep minimum. … public schools must provide learning environments with counters and workspaces accommodating students seated in wheelchairs.In my school library the table area was quite wide with computer stations at one side. There was easily 48 inches from the computer counter to the chairs at the adjoining table, so the computer stations were accessible to wheelchairs, as were the 2 tables on that side of the library. In our magazine area I arranged chairs so there was open access to the magazines and for a wheelchair to pull up to the conversation area.

A recent blog post on We Are Teachers, How to Create Inclusive Classroom Spaces for Students With Physical Disabilities, had this recommendation:

2. Make the Whole Classroom Accessible
Mobility does not simply involve access between the student’s desk and the door to the classroom. … Therefore, ensure students with disabilities are able to move around the whole classroom so that they can participate in all workstation and group-work activities. In particular, aim to ensure all pathways, desks, and computer workstations are accessible for students with physical disabilities.

Aisles Between Bookcases

225.2.2 Self-Service Shelving. Self-service shelves shall be located on an accessible route complying with 402. Self-service shelves include, but are not limited to, library, store, or post office shelves.

My initial situation was 8 lines of paired bookcases angled out from a curved back wall. The aisles were unevenly spread across the space, with some quite wide, but others so narrow that 2 students couldn’t enter at the same time, let alone a wheelchair.

225.2.2 Self-Service Shelving. Self-service shelves shall be located on an accessible route complying with 402. Self-service shelves include, but are not limited to, library, store, or post office shelves.Wheelchairs need to have “full maneuverability radius” between bookcases. The minimum width for a wheelchair is 36 inches, but since other students would be in the aisles, I wanted to allow 48 inches, which is the minimum width for a wheelchair and an ambulatory person. Since my aisles would abut a wall, I also needed to allow a minimum turning radius of 60 inches.

Moving from One Aisle into Another

403.5.2 Clear Width at Turn. Where the accessible route makes a 180 degree turn around an element which is less than 48 inches wide, clear width shall be 42 inches minimum approaching the turn, 48 inches minimum at the turn and 42 inches minimum leaving the turn.

In my school library the shelving area jutted far into the table area, so there was a very narrow walkway between the ends of bookcases and the tables, allowing little room to maneuver from aisle to aisle, especially for our wheelchair students.

403.5.2 Clear Width at Turn. Where the accessible route makes a 180 degree turn around an element which is less than 48 inches wide, clear width shall be 42 inches minimum approaching the turn, 48 inches minimum at the turn and 42 inches minimum leaving the turn.The space between the ends of bookcases and any other solid object needs to allow for a wheelchair to emerge from the aisle, turn & traverse to the next aisle, then turn again and enter. So, I needed to allow at least 4 feet from the end of bookcases to other furniture so a wheelchair could move from one aisle to another.

Reaching Books on Shelves

308.2 Forward Reach.
308.2.1 Unobstructed. Where a forward reach is unobstructed, the high forward reach shall be 48 inches maximum and the low forward reach shall be 15 inches minimum above the finish floor or ground.

Our school library bookcases were, what I consider, the perfect height for middle school students: 5 feet with room for 4 shelves. I did have to slightly lower the shelves so the top shelf could be easily reached by our wheelchair students. I realized how advantageous this decision was when I began to need a scooter chair to move around, and shelving books on that top shelf was not difficult at all!

308.2 Forward Reach. 308.2.1 Unobstructed. Where a forward reach is unobstructed, the high forward reach shall be 48 inches maximum and the low forward reach shall be 15 inches minimum above the finish floor or ground.Because we had an ample number of cases, I decided to not use the bottom shelves for books, which would be too low for students in wheelchairs. Instead I lined the bottom shelves in fiction and part of Dewey with our extra slanted shelves, providing a face-out display area for new or featured books. This brought the top of a book up to the 15″ minimum.

The above mentioned article on We Are Teachers also included the recommendation to “3. Make All Materials Accessible.”  Especially for an elementary school library, that might mean using bins for books instead of lining them up on shelves.

Access to the Circulation Counter

904 Check-Out Aisles and Sales and Service Counters
…variant-height circulation desks,
904.4.1 Parallel Approach. A portion of the counter surface that is 36 inches long minimum and 36 inches high maximum above the finish floor shall be provided. A clear floor or ground space complying with 305 shall be positioned for a parallel approach adjacent to the 36 inch minimum length of counter.

Our circulation counter had the required lower counter, but because the computer monitor and keyboard were there, it prevented a person in a wheelchair being easily visible and able to reach the actual checkout scanner.

A wireless scanner made it much easier for our wheelchair-bound students to check out library materials.A wireless keypad made it much easier for our wheelchair-bound students to check out library materials.To solve this problem, we ordered a wireless scanner and a wireless keypad so our wheelchair-bound students could check out library materials more easily. Other students also appreciated this. Often I find that differentiation for one group of students benefits everyone. It has helped me to always look for the simplest and most accommodating means to teach in and manage the school library.

BECOMING AWARE OF ACCESSIBLE DESIGN

Is Your School Library Disability Accessible? - ADA Guidelines are very detailed about how much space is required for wheelchair access in our school library. We can use resources in this article to assess our own facility for possible barriers. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary #accessibility #disabilitiesFor those wanting to examine your own school library, the ADA Library Accessibility Checklist from Project Enable can help you assess for barriers within your facility.

To solve the accessibility problems in my school library, I carefully measured the shelving area and drew a new plan to ensure federally-mandated wheelchair accessibility. I decided to eliminate the gaps along the back wall & between bookcase pairs, since they served no positive purpose and there would be ample maneuverability within the new aisle spaces.

I put strips of masking tape on the carpet to mark new bookcase locations, and spent the next month moving them. The results were better than expected:

  • The aisles were more evenly spaced and had plenty of room, with 4 feet at the front of each aisle and 5-6 feet across the back wall.
  • Students in wheelchairs could easily enter the aisles, maneuver within the aisles, reach books, and move from one aisle to another, even with other students browsing the area.
  • The continuous line of bookcases prevented the previous problem of “hide & seek” and we gained 6 feet of space in the table area, allowing for wider walkways along the bookcase ends and across the back & front table walkways.

Intellectual Access

A School Library Research article about accessibility, “School Librarians as Ambassadors of Inclusive Information Access for Students with Disabilities” advocates “a space that is physically accessible, information that is intellectually accessible, specialized instruction that meets the needs of each individual student.”

Intellectual access should also be inclusive and multimodal or multi-encoded, providing a multisensory experience. Signage, normally encoded in one mode (print), should be encoded in two modes (e.g., large print, and color picture or symbol) or three modes (e.g., large print, and color picture or symbol, and Braille or other texture) to be accessible to a larger group of students. In terms of navigating the school library by means of signs and posters, multimodal or multi-encoded intellectual access is more inclusive to the special needs of students with disabilities (Farmer 2009).

When I arrived at my 2-year-old school library, there was no signage at all. I created a variety of signage that includes images, so students can more easily locate the books they need, especially in the Dewey area. This is another example of adjustments for accessibility that benefits all students.

You can find my Fiction & Dewey signage products in No Sweat Library, my TeachersPayTeachers store.

For better intellectual access I also changed the location of 2 main sections of the library collection :

  • Reference was on the opposite side of the library from the computers, so using those books during projects would be inconvenient, and with Fiction next to the computers, students browsing for a book would distract students working at computers. Switching these 2 areas made a huge difference in accessing both, even though I substantially reduced the reference section in later years.
  • Many students were confused by the similarity of alpha spine labels on Fiction and Biography books—which were on opposite sides of an aisle, so I moved Biography to shelves between the 2 numbered areas, Reference and Dewey. This helped not only with locating the materials, but no longer did my shelving volunteers get the FIC and BIO books mixed together!

One excellent resource that helps school librarians increase intellectual access for students with disabilities is the American Library Association’s Schneider Family Book Award, which honors “an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” There is a list of winners back to its inception in 2004, as well as a 9-page bibliography of books published between 2000 and 2008 about ‘the disability experience’. (From this site I learned 1 out of 7 Americans have a disability!)

2019 Winners & Honors for Teen, Middle School, and Young Children
2019 Schneider Family Book Award Teen Winner 2019 Schneider Family Middle School Book Award Winner
2019 Schneider Family Book Award Teen Honors 2019 Schneider Family Book Award Middle School Honors 2019 Schneider Family Book Award Young Children Honors

A “WHEELCHAIR TOUR” OF THE SCHOOL LIBRARY

I hope we all take a fresh look at our school library facility with an eye to its accessibility for students with disabilities, especially wheelchair access. I was fortunate to already have 2 students in wheelchairs to open my eyes, and in later years we gained 4 other students who used hearing, visual, or ambulatory assistance.

May I suggest you head to the nurse’s office, borrow their wheelchair, and put on a pair of sunglasses to simulate impaired vision. Begin by opening your library door and entering. Tour the entire space, browse for and choose books, and try a book checkout; make sure everything is completely accessible. I think you will be surprised at what you’ve taken for granted!

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Looking Back @ the Past Decade(s)

Looking Back @ the Past Decade(s) - Looking backward at the past decade—and the many decades of my life before that—I see so many changes in our lives, yet I also see that we have so many ways we can improve. Let there be peace on earth...and let it begin with me. #NoSweatLibraryAs 2019 draws to a close, bloggers and media outlets are reflecting on this past decade. As for me, I’m nearing a milestone in my life, so I choose to reflect back on the many decades I’ve lived on this planet Earth. This is a purely personal blog entry, so read or skip as you will…

I’ve seen the birth of the US Highway System and Rock & Roll, of McDonald’s and Disneyland, of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood & Sesame Street, of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and the Environmental Movement. But I’ve also seen the tragic deaths of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, John Lennon, and Princess Di.

Christa McAuliffe - NASA public domain photo

I touch the future; I teach.

I’ve seen the first launch of a chimp into space, man’s first Earth orbit & walk on the moon, the successful return of ill-fated Apollo 13, launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the building of the Space Station. But I’ve also seen the fiery deaths of 3 different groups of astronauts, including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

I’ve seen love-ins & Woodstock, Brown vs. Board of Education, Miranda vs. Arizona, and Roe vs. Wade, 3 Constitutional Amendments and the addition of 2 States to the U.S., the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR. But I’ve also seen Watergate, 2 Presidents impeached, race riots in Watts, Detroit and 100 other cities, racial shootings that motivated Black Lives Matter, and school shootings in Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and Parkland.

I’ve lived through the Korean War, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve also lived during the time of peace activists like Albert Schweitzer, Cesar Chavez, Mother Teresa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Joan Baez, and Malala Yousafzai.

Symphonies Of The Planets 1 - NASA Voyager RecordingsI’ve listened to music on 78rpm records, 33rpm albums & 45rpm singles, on 8-tracks & audio-cassettes, on CDs & iPods, on Sirius & Pandora. I’ve heard harpsichords & zithers & pan-flutes, madrigals & Dominican chants & Celtic ballads, Big Band sounds & folk songs & heavy metal, yet my favorite background music is electronic sounds from space.

I’ve watched television on a 14” black & white screen with vacuum tubes and a rabbit-ear antenna, on a solid state 26” color screen with an outdoor roof antenna, on a 4-ft rear projector TV with cable, and an LCD HD flatscreen from a small satellite dish on my roof. I’ve viewed 4 channels broadcasting 6am-midnight to hundreds of channels broadcasting 24/7, and I’ve watched Betamax & laserdiscs & VHS & DVDs & on-demand live streaming at the touch of a remote. All that, yet I mostly read books.

I’ve seen the development of UNIVAC, IBM, Cray, DEC/VAX, HP, Wang, Commodore, Compaq, Apple & Mac, Chromebooks, Atari, Nintendo, Playstation, and Xbox; Fortran, COBOL, BASIC, PASCAL, UNIX, C++, MS-DOS, Windows, LINUX, HTML, and Javascript; ARPANET, Ethernet, TCP/IP, DNS, LISTSERV, Gopher, FTP, HTTP, and the World Wide Web. My livelihood for the past three decades has been tied to technology, yet my relaxation is putting together a 500-1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

Punchcard

Punchcard

I’ve used a dial phone, push-button phone, Princess phone, Nokia phone, flip-phone, and Smartphone. I’ve typed—as fast as a person talks—on a manual typewriter, an electric typewriter, a punch-card machine, and a computer keyboard. And I see students who can message that fast with their thumbs on a phone, yet they hunt & peck on a keyboard because we can’t take time to teach them how to touch-type.

I’ve seen public education go through 3 iterations of the same things given fancy new names—including the rise & fall of standardized testing and the respect & denigration of the teaching profession. We churn out the best & brightest of scholars, yet we lament that high school graduates can’t read, spell, form a complete sentence, or add numbers in their head.

Peace builders - Let there be peace on earth...and let it begin with me.As I ponder our achievements and fiascoes, I realize that nothing has really changed. We are still the same imperfect humans, trying our best to make our way in the world and to make the world a better place. My life has been much the same: I can take pride in my finest achievements and shrink in shame at my lowest failures, yet I remain hopeful that all is working its way toward a better future.

Let there be peace on earth…and let it begin with me.

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6 Steps to Create a Great School Library Website

6 Steps to Create a Great School Library Website - A school library website is the virtual version of the school library and the school librarian, and it's a powerful advocate for our services. Here are 6 steps to create a school library website that is a valuable information resource for the school community. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary #schoollibrarywebsiteA School Library Website is our most valuable online presence. We may have a blog, social media accounts, and resource links on proprietary services, but none of these will serve our students and our community—nor advocate for the school library—the way a School Library Website can.

Creating a School Library Website happens not with the tips of the fingers, but in the depths of the brain. It isn’t the result of fancy software, but rather of good planning. School Librarians aren’t professional Web designers, so here are 6 recommended steps to create a great website.

1. ESTABLISH AN IDENTITY & USE IT CONSISTENTLY

Viewers should know exactly who we are, and after following a link, should know that they’re still within our school library website. That doesn’t mean every page looks the same, but identifying characteristics are consistent throughout the site.

Decide on a theme to clearly convey our identity: the graphics and the color set (an eye-catching combination of colors for images, background, text, and links). School colors, the school mascot, and library-related images—books, the alphabet, numbers—are an obvious, but excellent, theme for a school library website.

Choose the main identifying image and colors for the homepage, and complementary graphics and colors for sub-pages. For example, we could have school mascot images in school colors, then use a light outline of the mascot for a background image. Or, we could have books, singly or in stacks, then use ABCs or Dewey decimal numbers as a border or background.

Sample images of Bronco school mascot as website images

Flashy graphics won’t help an inconsistently applied theme, so keep it simple and be sure that viewers see “us” on every page of the site.

2. KNOW USERS & SUPPORT THEIR NEEDS

School Librarians know their users and are responsive to their needs; successful school library websites are the same. Students, parents, and community members visit our site for information about the school and the library: they want to know what’s going on, how we can help them, and how they can get in touch with us.

Provide the school library phone number and all staff email addresses on the homepage, and include our School Librarian email on every page. Parents and students don’t want to click through several pages before they can send an email to us.

Student requests and parents emails can pinpoint the information we offer on our school library site. We can also ask the school’s phone receptionist what information our community requests most often.

Instead of duplicating existing information, link to District webpages for book searches, online resources, and other district services. Web users know how to use a browser, so insert a short message under the link inviting visitors to return to our page by using the Back button. These intra-district links promote interactivity and support the entire school district. (And relieve us from having to keep them updated!)

Teachers usually have their own webpages for instructional purposes, but we can determine what students may need from the school library to support their classroom learning and provide links from our homepage to that information.

Mapping out what to provide and how to provide it will save time and effort later. All websites change over time, but we want that due to changed user needs, not because the site didn’t meet user needs in the first place.

3. CREATE USER-FRIENDLY NAVIGATION

A school library website provides quick access to information through well-planned site navigation. Our site may start small, but imagine the complexity when we have webpages for information, for instruction, for student projects, and for various programs and activities. By developing good navigation now, our viewers quickly get what they need, and we can easily insert new pages of content as the need arises.

Create a site map to organize information, grouped by users or topics. A site map can be a simple outline with sub-pages indented from top level pages, or it can be sets of bullet lists, or we can use a table with colorized cells to identify similar types of pages. Make it easy to add new types of pages so site navigation continues to be user-friendly.

A site map is also valuable for web viewers. It’s like the table of contents or index of a book—it shows what’s there and where. By linking each page of the site map, we provide another navigation tool for visitors.

Determine the hierarchy of the website and create page templates for each level of navigation. We might want the homepage to have very few links—10 links is the most we can expect young students to comprehend at a time. For higher grade levels, we can provide more links so students can scan the full range of available information to find a specific piece.

  • School Library Website few-to-many: For a school library homepage with few links but numerous support pages, create a unique homepage, a different unique template for 2nd-level navigation pages, and 3rd-level templates for each identified sub-group, using the same template for all a particular group's pages. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary

    click to enlarge

    For a school library homepage with few links (1-6) and numerous support pages, create a unique homepage, a different unique template for 2nd-level navigation pages, and 3rd-level templates for each identified sub-group, using the same template for all a particular sub-group’s pages.
    linebreak

  • For a school library homepage with many links (10+), but fewer links off 2nd-level pages, create a unique homepage and a different unique template for each group of lower level pages. Use a unique icon on the homepage for each link to its 2nd-level page so the distinctive identity of each group is carried through all its sub-level pages (for example, school library pages have books, student pages have pencils, events pages have yellow stars, clubs have notepads, parent pages have apples).

The real test of site navigation is what happens below the homepage. Don’t expect viewers on bottom-level pages to return to the homepage and then re-click through the same intermediate pages. Use a chain of links in the same place on every page showing the navigation:
Homepage↔2nd level page↔3rd level page↔current page.

4. PAGE LAYOUT FOR USER READABILITY

We want pages to catch viewers’ attention so be creative with page layout, but don’t confuse viewers; rather, give them the information they need. The better we do that, the more likely they’ll use our website again and again.

Analyze how text will be most readable: a busy background image would be unsuitable behind a lot of text, and don’t use a dark background and light text color on a page we expect to be printed out.

Here’s a basic rule from print: use margins and empty space for balance and symmetry. Our eyes see empty space as a block, just as we see a block of text or a block image. An eye-catching webpage uses empty space to highlight page elements and enhance readability.

The human eye encompasses about 4″ of text at a time, so text stretching from one edge of a browser window to the other is difficult to read. Blockquote margins make heavy text pages easier to read by indenting sections of text, creating a larger margin on both sides of the page.

Creative Webpage table layout example - Tables are a tool with enormous variety for webpage layout. Using merged cells in rows & columns can make unique designs. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibraryTables offer enormous variety for page layout. We can adapt an appealing table layout from anyone’s webpage—HTML is open source. One disadvantage of tables is that navigation inside tables may not be readable by machines for the disabled, so provide text navigation at the bottom of each table page.

Size, shape and color of text areas can convey our theme, and highlight or contrast with our images. Text in bright crayon-box colors suggests children, while dark, grayed colors suggest maturity and stability. Just be sure text is easy to read.

Note: A browser displays text in fonts that are installed on the viewer’s device, so use standard fonts, such as sans-serif Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, or the serif Times New Roman. Since serif fonts don’t display well on computer screens, use sans-serif fonts for small text.

5. CRAFT PURPOSEFUL CONTENT

Viewers come to our school library website for information, and if they don’t get what they need, flash and glitz won’t bring them back. Pack essential information into well-organized segments, and write clearly and concisely; give the what, where, when, why, who and how. Then, cut it in half: our webpages aren’t the place for flowery writing.

Web users prefer concise, 2-3 sentence sections, with topic headers, so they can scan for the information they need. Use bullet or numbered lists to focus the eye on specific points.

A question-answer format is user-friendly, so create FAQs—Frequently Asked Questions—pages. Add information that might be needed when the school is closed.

6. USE GRAPHICS WISELY

A school library website filled with images can have charm and impact, but they can overpower the viewer. Use graphics to enhance the theme and identity of the website, and bring clarity to content. There are 3 types of images we can use on webpages: GIF, PNG, and JPEG.

  • GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) are clipart-type images. Some are animated by a string of movements which cycle continually, or cycle once and freeze on a single image.
    A single animated GIF at the top of a page punctuates a theme and adds a bit of whimsy. When the visitor scrolls down, animation scrolls off the window, so a viewer is not distracted while reading. On navigation pages with little text, we can use more animated images because the viewer spends too short a time on the page for movement to become annoying.
    linebreak
  • PNG (Portable Network Graphics) was created as a replacement for GIF and supports a wider range of colors. It’s the most widely used format on the Internet.
    linebreak
  • JPEG images (Joint Photographic Experts Group) are typically photographs, with subtle shading and blending rather than crisp lines.

Size of Images

Webpage example with Icon Links - Icons are small GIF or PNG images, about 24-32 pixels square. Visually descriptive icons can represent various links, especially if the icon is carried through to the page being linked to. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary

click to enlarge

Icons are small GIF or PNG images, about 24-32 pixels square. Visually descriptive icons can represent various links, especially if the icon is carried through to the page. Intuitive icons, such as arrows, help navigation when used consistently throughout a site (but always provide text links at the bottom of a page for accessibility by the disabled).

Digital camera photographs can enhance content, but remember that school district access may be faster than that of a visitor. Photos that display quickly on our workstation may load slowly for visitors, and several on a page can take much longer than viewers want to wait. (Average wait-time is 10 seconds before clicking away.) For faster loading, use an image editor to reduce the file size and limit large photos to 1 or 2 per page.

For better page balance, we can change the viewing size of an image. A large image can easily be reduced, but maintain the aspect ratio to avoid distorting the image. Avoid enlarging small images, which causes blurring and pixelation.

Placement of Images

Where we place images on a webpage can enhance or undermine a page. A right-facing graphic looks better on the left side of a page, and a left-facing graphic looks better on the right side of a page. Use an image editor to flip an image for better orientation.

Webpages are more 3-D than printed pages. We unconsciously experience gravity, and our senses are jarred by composition that ignores it. Place weightier graphics further down the page than lighter ones or balance them with heavy text areas.

Pages are often longer than a single window, so if a webpage looks odd, try rearranging text areas, graphics, and empty space for better balance within each window.

Include ALT tags for every image

What are ALT tags? ALT stands for “alternative text” and is part of the HTML that displays an image on a webpage. Use a descriptive phrase to identify the picture, like Westside Middle School Eagle Mascot.

ALT tags serve viewers using audio screen readers or braille displays. Without ALT tags, images are shown as the word “image” so a disabled visitor doesn’t know what is displayed. When the image is a link to another webpage, a disabled visitor is at a particular disadvantage if no ALT tag is provided–they don’t know what the link is or where it will take them.

We can also use ALT tags to increase our site’s identity with search engines. For example, with a school logo at the top of the page, incorporate the school motto or some special recognition or award: “Westside Middle School—A State Recognized Mentor School where every child will succeed.”

FOR CONTINUED SUCCESS

Keep the school library website current. Remove dead links and outdated information. Create a discussion forum that invites users to interact with us and each other. Periodically, add a survey to invite reader feedback about the school library and about the website.

We can also embed various features and media in our webpages to make the site more attractive and useful. For some ideas, read my post An “Embedded” School Library Website.

Our school library website is our virtual library, and it’s seen by the entire world. Build it wisely and it is a valuable information source for our school community.

For more in-depth information about creating a website, visit Ms. P’s Web Design Tutorial.

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