Designing Scalable Accessibility Workflows into our Institutional Repository

Briana Wham

As new Title II ADA requirements reshape expectations for accessible digital scholarship, academic institutions are navigating how to translate high-level accessibility mandates into services that meet the day-to-day requirements of diverse research communities. This presentation shares the iterative approach we have adopted to meet accessibility requirements for content deposited into our institutional repository and to educate the research community on fulfilling these obligations. Our strategy is built around balancing regulatory requirements, user needs and expertise, and the realities of staffing and cost. We have implemented three approaches so far in our institutional repository. First, we added the ability for depositors to provide alternative text (alt text) for image uploads directly within the repository interface. Second, we introduced an automated pre-deposit PDF accessibility check that generates a digestible report summarizing where accessibility conditions passed or failed. Sharing this report with depositors at the point of upload equips them with actionable information and offers an embedded educational opportunity. The third initiative pilots an automated remediation workflow that generates an accessible PDF using the Adobe auto-tagging API alongside generative AI to develop alt text for images within the PDF. Under this approach, PDFs are auto-remediated upon initial download, followed by a targeted manual review. This workflow reflects our need for a scalable yet pragmatic method for improving the accessibility of content in our institutional repository.