Abstract
Web accessibility in academic libraries is frequently approached as a compliance exercise: meet a standard, pass an audit, reduce legal exposure. While legal and technical standards remain essential, a narrow compliance orientation can result in “checkbox accessibility,” which fails to enhance the everyday experiences of disabled students, staff, faculty, and community users who rely on library websites, discovery tools, guides, repositories, and vendor platforms. This paper reframes web accessibility in academic libraries as an inclusion practice anchored in user experience, disability justice, and continuous service improvement. Drawing on international human rights principles, evolving regulatory requirements, and library-focused research documenting persistent accessibility failures in academic library web environments, the paper distinguishes between conformance and inclusion and explains why the difference matters. It synthesises key findings from recent studies of academic library websites, accessibility webpages, and LibGuides, as well as procurement scholarship that highlights the accessibility risks embedded in licensed digital resources. Building on this literature, the paper proposes an inclusion-oriented framework for accessibility work that emphasises co-design with disabled users, institutional accountability, transparent communication, and a shift from retrofits to accessibility-by-design. The recommendations section offers actionable strategies for academic libraries, governance structures, accessible content and design systems, testing programs that combine automated and manual methods, procurement and vendor management practices, and metrics that align accessibility with educational equity and student success. The conclusion argues that treating accessibility as an ongoing public service obligation rather than a periodic compliance task strengthens academic libraries’ missions of equitable access to information and knowledge.
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