Accessibility Essentials: A 2025 NISO Training Series

Scope

Accessibility Essentials is a new 8-week training series that will empower attendees with actionable insights and practical guidance toward accessibility compliance for professionals in scholarly communications and publishing. Attendees will come away with an operational understanding of what it means to engage in accessible publishing and methods to ensure their organizations are prepared to achieve accessibility compliance. This seminar will cover upcoming regulatory changes and what is needed to avoid fines and expensive lawsuits; accessibility standards and best practices; and human-centered web design. From production to public relations, this seminar is critical for all information practitioners, content or product development experts, and scholarly communications professionals. Each week will focus on answering these questions:

1. What is inclusive publishing and why do we care about accessibility?
2. What are the repercussions for non-accessible content, services, other programs?
3. What does an accessible or inclusive publishing program look like; what does it take to achieve?
4. What does an inclusive web design program entail, and what methods or techniques are involved?
5. What are the relevant standards for accessible publishing programs?
6. How do we implement inclusive text-based content production?
7. How do we implement inclusive multimedia content production?
8. How do we develop inclusive publishing strategies, roadmaps, and budgets for the long term?

Course Duration and Dates

The series consists of eight (8) weekly segments, each lasting 90 minutes. Specific dates are:

• April 3, 10, 17, 24
• May 1, 8, 15, 22

Each session will be recorded and links to that archived recording will be disseminated to course registrants within 2 business days of the close of the specific session.

Training Facilitator

Lettie Y. Conrad, Product Experience Architect, LibLynx, and Part-Time Instructor, San José State’s School of Information

With more than 20 years’ experience in scholarly publishing and product design, Lettie brings human-centered methods to her work with technology and service providers. She is a dedicated information professional, passionately delivering inclusive innovations in research and publishing. 

Lettie is driven by an interest in how scholarly communicate and manage their research information. In her 8 years as an independent researcher and consultant, Lettie contributes both commercial solutions and original research to the study of scholarly information experiences.

In her 10 years with SAGE Publishing, Lettie played a key role in establishing product management expertise and user-centered product lifecycles and market research routines. She was instrumental in launching user-centered web and mobile products, driving research and analysis that enabled evidence-based product management to maintain outstanding quality of SAGE platforms. 

Currently, Lettie serves as Product Experience Architect for LibLynx, a part-time instructor in San José State’s School of Information, among other independent projects. In her spare time, Lettie is a Publications Committee member for the Association for Information Science & Technology and a ‘chef’ with the SSP’s Scholarly Kitchen blog. You can read more about Lettie on her LinkedIn and ORCID profiles.

Training Facilitator

Simon Holt, Senior Product Manager, Content Accessibility, Elsevier

Simon Holt is Head of Central Strategies, Content Acquisition at Elsevier. He is also Disability Confidence Manager for the organization, working to identify and remove barriers that prevent people with disabilities achieving their potential at work. He lives in Oxford, UK.

Guest Speakers

Confirmed guest speakers include: Will Awad, Digital Accessibility Consultant, iAccessDigital; Bridget Burke, Front-end Designer and Accessibility Expert, University of Michigan Libraries; Rachel Comerford, Senior Director of Accessibility Outreach and Communication, Macmillan Learning; Caroline Desrosiers, Founder & CEO, Scribely; Neil Gilstrap, Chief Technology Officer, Cadmore Media; David Haber, Director, Journal Publishing Operations, American Society for Microbiology (ASM); Bill Kasdorf, Principal, Kasdorf & Associates, LLC, and Founding Partner, Publishing Technology Partners; Stephen Laverick, Senior Associate, Maverick Publishing Specialists; Bob Liu, User Experience Strategist, University of Arizona Libraries; Jack McElaney; Chief Revenue Officer, Microassist; Simon Mellins, Independent Digital Publishing Consultant and Accessibility Specialist, Simon Mellins Consulting; Richard Orme, Chief Executive Officer, DAISY Consortium; Beth Richard, Senior Publishing Editor, Institute of Development Studies; Stacy Scott, Head of Accessibility, Taylor & Francis; Leon Terner, Head of Multimedia, The Lancet Group; and Satyen Vora, Manager, Digital First Optimization, Elsevier.