>> There is a learner guide created for today's webinar. It is something for you to extend your learning on the topic. There are a handful of questions for you to use to discuss or consider on your own and some activities that can help you take that learning and apply it to action. Be sure to check out the learner guide. Also, you can customize it. If you and your team have steps or actions you'd like to take, you can customize that guy to make it your own. I am thrilled to welcome today's pre sen ter. She comes to us from the associate professor and head of research and instructional services at SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and she is also very passionate about this topic. She is the author of the book creating inclusive libraries by applying universal design. We are so glad to have you here. Thank you so much for bringing your expertise and passion to this topic to a WebJunction webinar. >> CARLI: Thank you for having me. Today we will talk about universal design and how you can use it at your library. We will go ahead and dive right in. First, let's have as some background in talking about what is accessibility so we can understand that in contrast to universal design approach. Accessibility is usually focused on specifically access for people with disabilities. It is often focused on meeting legal minimum requirements, particularly in the United States. It is often something that is brought up when we are talking about fixing existing design. So, approaches that may be will make an existing space accessible as a retrofitting project. On the left-hand side, you can see one example of this that is very common, which is a chairlift or a wheelchair lift. These are often used to make an existing staircase that can't be replaced with something more accessible like a ramp or an elevator accessible for people who are using certain types of assistive devices. One of the hallmarks of this type of accessibility or one of the things that does happen frequently is that it has its own real limitations. In this example of a wheelchair lift, one of the issues is that it really only helps people with very specific needs. For example, if you are using a wheelchair, this might be useful for you, but it's not going to help if you are using crutches. Generally speaking, these sorts of platforms are designed for somebody who is not sitting down. They are not safe or stable enough for someone standing, particularly not someone that might have balance issues using crutches or have some other balance problem. Another in this is requiring additional supports. In the case of a wheelchair lift, often, this needs another person to operate it. Sometimes it requires a key, which is held in another location. It adds the need for intermediation between it. Somebody needs to help you to access the space, help you to use this tool. On the right-side of the slide, we have another example of a common issue. Here you can see that the main entrance to this face is a series of stairs, and there is a sign saying over on another street is where wheelchair access would be. This is a very common situation as well with accessibility. There's a separate service or entrance or space available for people who need it, but they have to use something that is separate and may sometimes not be available for whatever reason and that generally means they may not be able to stay with their party. In some cases they are not able to stay with the main group or they have to draw attention to themselves to use something that is in accessibility accommodation. Universal design is an approach that tries to change this. Universal design is a concept that was coined by a term -- a team led by Ronald Mase, who we see in this picture. He is an architect and industrial designer who himself used a wheelchair, because he had polio. He described universal design as the design of products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. The idea is that from the design stage, you are taking into account the broad needs of your population. You want to try to make a single space, a single product, single environment that can be used by everyone at least to the greatest extent possible without having to have separate spaces or separate solutions for some users. Universal design assumes that the range of human ability is ordinary, not special. It's about understanding that everyone does have different needs and that good design should take into account the fact that there are these range of needs rather than designing for a single need and assuming that that is the main need of the community or that that is a good enough solution for everyone using the space. Think of universal design is focusing on inclusion instead of minimum legal requirements set by accessibility law and focusing on thinking about how you could make a single experience that brings all users together, which is one reason why it works so well for libraries, because for all of what we are using, we are trying to be a resource for all numbers of our community and not just a subset. This allows us to be welcoming and designed from the first moment for everyone who is a member of our community. Universal design can help you to serve patients of of all ages, all sizes, those who speak all different languages, patrons to limited access to technology, those who are caregivers, and patrons distracted. In fact, all members of your community will really be served well if you adopt an approach to design that really thinks of everyone from the start. So, what's the concept of universal design developed? It became something used throughout life, even when we don't notice it. Do you have some examples of day-to-day places you've seen universal design, perhaps? Feel free to put them in a chat if you have ideas. It could be something from your library, but it could also be an example from anywhere else in the world you might see out and about. We will talk about a few. I will talk about some of them while people are, hopefully, putting things in the chat. Perhaps the most quintessential example of universal design and something that predates the idea of universal design term is the curb cut. Curb cuts are a really great example of a design innovation that had a particular purpose in mind related to accessibility. They were originally developed so that people who used wheelchairs would be able to use their public spaces and sidewalks without having problems when they reached the corner. I am sure we have all encountered other uses for this. When you are pushing a cart, pushing a stroller. Maybe even just when it is snowy and you are walking, it's easier not to have to step up on a big curb area there are many reasons why the curb cut can be useful for all different uses. Another example we see here is this textured pavement. That is another thing developed with a specific accessibility need in mind. It is meant to help those that are low-vision or blind. It's also something I know tons of people who use it as a post to see when they come to the curb or the edge of a train platform when looking at a phone or looking at something they are holding for you I see that we have some examples in the chat. Touch free automatic doors is a great example. That's my very next slide. Really helpful for people who are wheelchair users but also super helpful if pushing a cart, dragging luggage, all different types of uses. Captions is another great example. It is really wonderful for people who maybe can't hear the sound of the show that they are watching, but it is also useful for English language learners, people learning to read, and it's also just really useful if you are in a noisy environment. It allows you to watch videos even in a quiet part of the library if you turn on captions. Ramps are another really good example. Having curb cuts for the parking lot is what someone said. That is really great. Audible signals for crosswalk. Definitely. That's another thing as more people are distracted when they are walking around, particularly looking at devices, it's great to have audio input as well. Symbols instead of words for signage is what we will talk a lot about. Automatic doors, car hatches that open when you wave a foot underneath. Definitely great. That meets another one of the principles we talk about, because it lowers the physical effort. Many years ago, car hatches were pretty heavy and you had to lift them up. Now it is much easier. Using microphones and audio when you are doing programs to amplify audio is a great example. Another one I hadn't thought of until I started studying universal design is doorknobs that are lever doorknobs instead of the more traditional circles or spheres. This is a really great example of something that blends in. People use it for all different types of designs now, but it doesn't require manual dexterity of that's required to grasp a spherical doorknob. It was originally design for low dexterity. It's great in many cases. It's so much easier to open for you many working in libraries have had situations where we carry a big stack of books, and you press down with it on your elbow, just very easy to use, very seamless and so much so that you don't even realize it was something designed to help people who had access needs. Forced another example is virtual meetings. That's great for a lot of different people. Height adjustable tables, text to speech, and toilets that are higher can be useful, because that is a great example of how it offers flexibility. If you have different level toilets in your restrooms, people can use whichever is best for their height, for their physical needs of any sort. Wider doorways is another good example. All of these are related to the seven principles that we are going to look at next. These seven principles were designed by the same team that came up with the concept of universal design. To help put into practice practice. They realized that the actual designers struggled to know how they could achieve this goal of designing for everyone. It's easy to say you should designed for everyone, but how do you put it into practice. Seven principles, basically, things to think about which to focus in on your design so that you consider the different type of elements of a truly universally designed product, service, or space. The first one is equitable use. I mentioned that when I was showing the picture of a person looking at assigned. Basically, the idea behind equitable use is you want to ideally have everyone use the same design. And that is just so they cannot have to jump through additional hurdles so that they can stay with their group. They don't have to single themselves out, which is important. Some people don't want to discuss the fact that they have a disability. Some people may not view themselves as disabled. Some people may not have a disability but might have a particular reason they need additional support, either for a short-term period of time or all the time. It really just makes things more flexible and easy for everyone to use if everyone can believe use the same thing. The next is flexibility use. This is really one that can mean a lot of different things. Basically, it means that you want your designed to be flexible. We saw the example someone gave in the chat of adjustable height tables. That's a great example of one type of flexibility. It's something that can be used in different manners by each person uses it. Another really good example of flexibility can be something as simple as changing your policies so that you have more option for people that offer them flexibility about how they choose to interact with a particular service, offering an option to attend a program in person or virtually is a great example of flexibility. Offering many, many different styles of furniture throughout your library might be an example of flexibility, because it means everyone can choose whichever works best for their particular comfort level and needs. There's a lot of ways that you can think about flexibility and offer a flexible experience in your library. Simple and intuitive use. I think this is focused on a lot already, but the idea is that you don't want a large learning curve to use a product or a space or a service. You want it to be pretty straightforward. This is something that is good to keep in mind when doing projects like web design or designing learning materials or slides, exercises that you want people to do. The process for signing up for a library card. We want all of that to be flexible and intuitive so everyone can understand it. That makes it accessible for people with different cognitive needs but also accessible for people distracted, people who are not necessarily wanting to spend much time on something. It makes it much easier process. Perceptible information is another example mentioned in the chat, and that is using symbols when you are doing science and other announcements. Whenever you use text, if you could use other ways such as symbols or, for example, another person posted in the chat the idea of the crosswalk sign having an audio element. That's another example of offering a visual and audio weight of perceiving the information. Tolerance for error. Basically, you want to try to not make it a calamity of someone makes a mistake. You want things like a guard rail at the edge of your staircase so somebody doesn't topple down it if they are not looking where they are going or if they, perhaps, stumble. Low physical effort. We talked about this as part of the advantage. Automatic hatchback to a car that it automatically opens. There is lots of other ways that this might be useful as well, and we look at some examples in libraries. Size and space for approach and use. You want to make sure that you think about the different sizes and spaces that people might need when they are using particularly in the space sense. You might be wanting to have enough room around a copier so that someone can approach it regardless of whether they are on crutches, using a wheelchair, just walking, perhaps have a guide dog with them, perhaps a small child with them. You want to make sure there is enough space they can approach the copier and use it and not have it just in a small cubicle that perhaps doesn't allow everyone to use it. Now, let's look at some examples of each of these in more depth and with pictures so that we can get a better sense of how each of these work. Equitable use. This is the idea of making sure everyone can use the same version of something. This is a picture from a Museum, the Guggenheim here in New York, that has -- rather than having a staircase between the floors, through the center of the museum, there is a lightly sloped ramp that spirals up throughout the space. The exhibitions are actually integrated throughout that space. That means that if you are with a group and you are someone that uses a wheelchair and the rest of the group does not, you don't have to continually separate from your group to look for an elevator that maybe not everyone will fit in. You can just proceed through the exhibits like everyone else, because there is no need to use stairs to access any portion of this exhibit space. They still have an elevator if people prefer that for some reason. For example, maybe someone doesn't have the arm strength to use the ramp, but they offer an option that allows people to use the same exact space that everyone else would be using. A great example of this in libraries is often our entrances. Particularly, for many older libraries. They often have somewhat grand entrances that have stairs leading to the main door. These can be very attractive. They can look very nice. But that often means that people who are not able to use stairs have to use a separate entrance. It might not be a particularly well put together entrance. Sometimes it is a temporary ramp. Sometimes it might be around the back in the alley. An equitable use approach would be to try to design libraries if you were doing a renovation, for example, so everyone uses the same main entrance. That offers stair free access to the library as well as having doors that are easy to open for everyone and, generally, just creating a large enough, open enough, and usable enough space that everyone can use the same entrance. Flexibility in use. This really is about making sure that everyone can use something, which is why I love this example of these scissors. I am left-handed, and I love this style of scissors, because they can be used by someone who is left-handed. They can be used by someone that is right-handed. They are actually spring-loaded, so they are much easier and require less force to use them, which also means they are accessible for more people. They have an ergonomic grip to help people who maybe don't have as much grip strength to be able to use them. Basically, that's the idea. They are flexible, because they offer all of these different features so that you can use them in many different ways. That is something that I think you can really see throughout a lot of things in libraries, but there are a lot of ways we can make that more clear to people. We can offer more flexibility by offering things like multiple ways to return materials. A great example of Lex ability in libraries is having an outdoor return then. That is great for people who maybe have children with them and don't want to get out of the car. Some have it so that you can drive by and drop off materials without getting out of your car. It's great for people who have social anxiety and don't want to interact with someone. They'd rather drop the book off without talking to anyone. It's great for people who maybe work long hours and can't always get to the library during the normal hours. If you've got a drop box, they drop things off at 3:00 a.m. Flexibility really allows you to serve a lot of people with the same services that everyone would have. It's a good way of making sure that you are welcome and all members of your community by thinking about how you can be flexible. Another good example of flexibility is about how you change your policies to be more flexible. Sometimes some libraries have managed to do things like going find free. That offers flexibility as well. That's something the library near me has done and I appreciate it, because in the past I didn't want to have things checked out in the winter because it does snow where I live. I was concerned if there was not snow and I wasn't able to get around well, I wouldn't be able to return a book on time. Now that they have gotten rid of their finds, I know that I can check something out and not worry as much if I were a couple days late because of a snowstorm. Simple and intuitive design. I think that this has been pretty much perfected with something like this defibrillator machine. This is really designed so that someone can be using it. Having no knowledge of how to use it but also in an extremely stressful situation. You can see that it combines images that don't require reading. They are very clear. They show what needs to be done step-by-step. It also has that I hear, that means if you click that, it will give audio explanation as well very simply. That's the sort of thing you want to think about. If you do need to give instructions, how can you pair that down to the simplest information and how can you convey that information to make it as intuitive as possible. It's definitely something to think about in a lot of different ways in libraries. It could be everything from how you describe the process to print in your library. I know at many libraries that involves multiple steps. Also, how you navigate through the library. Some have done creative things with having patterns on the floor, either different lines of different colors to show people where they might go for different departments in the library or one library even did a variation on that that was based on the path of a local river. They were able to integrate something that tied to their locality but use it as a way to help people know how to get through the library and get to where they were going. There's lots of things you can do to just make things more intuitive about what you are looking for and how to achieve your goals. Perceptible information. We talked about signage. I think that is an important example of it. Anytime you can duplicate the information that you are providing with symbols or colors and symbols, even better. That's a really great thing to do. Another example of that is modern day fire safety equipment. Many of us have probably been in a situation where there is a fire alarm that goes off, and it's a combination of sounds and flashing lights. That's exactly what this principle really focuses on target you want to offer multiple different ways to perceive information. In a library setting, that might pertain to the fire alarm, but it might also pertain to things such as can you offer both an option to read information on your website or watch a video if you prefer? When you are selecting -- for example, if you have book clubs in your library or a common read in your community, can you select books that you can offer both in regular standard print, large print, and audio, for example? That is a good way of offering many different ways to interact with something that the library is using and making sure that you are being inclusive of many different people. When it comes to signage, this could be everything from having icons to indicate sound levels if you have different zones in your library. I have seen many libraries that have, for example, a quiet zone, collaboration zone, and they indicate that with symbols as well as indicating it with text. The people can at a glance know which zone they are in. They can make decisions about where they want to sit in the library. It is also something that can work really well I think for navigating collections quickly. If you have signage talking about where different call number ranges are or where different subsections of your collection are, can you colorcode those, or can you at some libraries use icons such as the mystery section. At that can be a really great way of helping people to navigate through who are maybe not able to read the detailed information on the sign and make it quicker for people as well. The key is to make sure that you offer multiple options all at once, because that way if color doesn't work because someone is colorblind, they will have a backup option of reading text, for example. Tolerance for error. We talk about things such as the idea of making sure that someone is able to follow the tolerance for error, but there are a lot of other examples out there as well, particularly digitally. One example is anything that we have that allows us to set up a password these days pretty much tells you if your password doesn't match when you are creating your password, if you can't use a username. by indicating as we see here with an icon and also with color that something is wrong. It won't let you proceed if you have done something wrong. That's a great example. In the library world, we think of this when we look in many catalogs. Many of our library catalogs, if we misspell a word, it will pop up with a prompt saying, did you mean this other word? That's a great way of making sure people don't get zero results and get frustrated and give up. Think about other ways you can do that. Maybe an option is to integrate into various places on the website a chat reference feature or if you don't have that, a pop-up with information about how you can get help in other ways such as via e-mail or phone. That can help people to know that if they didn't get the results they were expecting that they can get help and that there is sort of a tolerance for error. In fact, getting rid of late fines can fall into this tolerance for error. You are taking away the problem that arises for someone when they make the mistake of missing your deadline. Low physical effort. We talked about this one in regard to a doorknob. You can think of automatic doors. To be able to interact with their environment is a really great way of lowering the effort. It is also something that we can see in libraries in lots of different ways. A really good example of lowering physical effort is book trucks for patrons and employees. Whether you are in charge of shelving books or you are a patron using a truck to transport several items because you are not able to carry them all at once. Book carts and book trucks can be a helpful way to lower the physical effort needed for interacting with your physical collections. You can also do this by making choices about how you lay out shelving. For example, maybe you want to consider lower shelving or not using the top and the bottom shelf so that you can make this collection more accessible to people who can't reach as high or can't and down as easily. It could also be if you are not able to move your collection or offer book trucks for people, another way to lower this effort when it comes to interacting with collections quickly to offer a book paging service. That something many libraries, including mine now, offer everyone because they have a hold service and that means you can go on the website and say, I'd like to put this on hold. You don't have to say whether or not you have a disability. You don't have to give a reason. You just know that if you give a couple days, it will be waiting for you on the hold shelf. That's a great way of making it so people don't have to identify themselves as having a disability and they can make sure that they can get access to the book without having to go through your stacks and gather them themselves. That is also useful if you have a possibility that part of your stacks are accessible. A lot of us are in older buildings, and maybe you have one section of your collection that isn't in an accessible area. Offering pickups can be a great way of addressing that when you can't do that renovation that you might want to. I see that someone mentioned in the chat having curbside pickup. That is a great option as well. If you are in an environment you can have curbside, it makes it easier for people, and it's one of the things you don't have to get out of the car, whether that's mobility impairment or because it is a pain to get a small child in and out of the car, which plenty of parents I am sure have encountered. It's a great service that people will appreciate for many different reasons. You might find that it gets people to use the library who weren't really able to in the past. It's a nice service to be able to offer if you can. And size and space for approach and use. I like this example because I think it shows clearly the idea that you can redesign something so that someone can navigate it even when seated in a wheelchair. I also think there are examples of this throughout libraries. From adjustable height tasks, which were hugely popular at one of my past libraries play because a lot of students liked to have a standing desk, so people would love to have the adjustable height which was originally mostly meant for accessibility purposes. We found lots of people were using it just so they could have a standing desk. It really shows that people might have a whole set of needs and preferences then were considered when thinking about the original design. Another example of size and space for approach and use that is good to keep in mind is when you think about how you design your service desks, you want to make sure that either you have something that is multiple heights at the same service desk, which is my current library. We have two service points staffed at the same time mostly. One is at the seated level and one is at a higher standing level. That's helpful because it gets back to what I was saying before about how universal design should be considered from the employee standpoint as well, but having two levels, we have the option to see ourselves at the desk or to stand. Different people have different preferences. Sometimes maybe the same person might have a different preference on different days even. It is really something that is useful to have for patrons and also for staff as well. Actually, I'm going to go back. Before we proceed, does anyone have questions they would like to ask? I have been trying to keep an ion the chat, and there have been good suggestions of what people are doing so far, and I am impressed with what a lot of you have been up to. Anybody have questions they would like to ask before we go onto the next section? >> JENNIFER: Maybe while we're waiting for folks, I thought I would ask you to comment. Somebody mentioned when you were talking about the entrance into buildings, they said, at my library the entry has no stairs, but the design of the building says everyone has quite a distance to cover between the parking lot and the doors. Is that just sort of a compromise in terms of making it accessible? >> I think it depends. Sometimes it's not even necessarily about accessibility, it's just the lay of the land means that you are going to be a little bit far from things. I think that it's definitely something that might make it harder to attract some people to the library. There's a few approaches I know libraries have taken to address that. I talked to people who have had that specific concern. One option is if it is quite a distance and you think it's enough of a distance that it might be a struggle for some patients, patrons, then people have put in benches in the space, and then it can be for people sitting outside, but it also can be a spot that people have that option if it is a long walk or if they are carrying a lot of books because they checked a bunch of things out. They have a spot to stop for a rest, I would say. One thing to consider, if possible, is if that is your situation, it would be I think a great scenario in which to see if it's possible to have a drop box right near the parking lot area. If you are coming into drop something off, you can drop it by the parking area and not have to make that trek. A solution like that might be able to mitigate it. I think for many libraries, either we were designed a while ago and we were not able to do a complete redesign, or we got the space we got in terms of geography and it might be great or it might be not quite what we would have picked in our ideal world, but a lot of it is being creative and thinking about how you might try to come up with ways to address that. >> JENNIFER: There are a few more questions. If any of these are those that you want to address in a bit, that is fine, or some of them might be a little bit more robust. There is definitely questions about recommendations for places to look for grant that might support. >> CARLI: A lot of the best grants for this stuff are local. I would talk to any local library organizations or government groups that you know about that because a lot of times there are local ones that small grants that people can do may be through the state library organization or consortium. I have heard about so many states that have accessibility in universal design and inclusion specific grants available at the state level, but it's a little hard to keep up with what every single state is offering at any given moment. Part of it is looking at your local options. For anyone here who is sort of a smaller or rural library, there were grant specifically focused on accessibility. The deadline for the grant has passed, but I am hopeful that they will make this ongoing. I would definitely watch for that to come up again. It was a really great sort of moderate sized grant for very specifically accessibility focused, high-impact projects. It's a really great way to look for money as well. Sometimes you might also be able to find it from local organizations that support accessibility or that support inclusion. You could think about it creatively, depending on how you approach it by it sometimes might be grants specifically for including people with specific types of disabilities, for people of the specific age groups. A lot of these grants, even if they don't say accessibility in them, that might be something you can focus on this, particularly if you take a universal design perspective that helps everybody. Also, we are going to be talking about the fact that a lot of what this is can be very simple. You can improve the universal design of your library just by moving the furniture around so that you have broader aisles and you make sure that your displays are not blocking navigation. You can have better universal design by focusing in on making sure that you have a variety of furniture in each different type of space that you offer in your library so that people can decide based on lighting or based on sound level which space to use and know that the type of furniture they prefer or need is going to be in that space. You can improve your universal design by printing out redesign signage. A lot of things that you can do can have a really high-impact are not that expensive and you might be able to do without even necessarily having to find a grant area for sure, there are going to be projects that we all want to do that require more of that grant funding. >> JENNIFER: Excellent. That's really helpful. We will take a look, if there is anything open now, we will add it to the event page as well. There are a couple questions folks have put out to the group. I want to encourage folks to respond. Somebody asked, what are some examples of carts that libraries have for patrons to use. Some folks were talking about the different kinds of cart, like little shopping carts that folks use. And the other one that was open to anyone, has anyone found a solution for large -- to make large type materials more accessible? Do you want to comment on either of those? >> CARLI: The carts one, I really like shopping carts in libraries. I think they can be very useful. I have seen that you can get these miniature ones. They are not really -- they don't require that much space to store them, and I think patrons really like them. In terms of solutions for making large type material more accessible, I'm not sure if that's large print book, for example, or if that's more -- >> JENNIFER: I'm guessing larger physical items. >> CARLI: I see, I see. I think that one option is thinking about whether you can offer alternatives. For example, is there anything you can see three people to that's digital if they are not able to navigate using a larger book, or is there something that might be like an alternative you can offer? The other thing I think is if you do offer a bulk paging service, that can be helpful in those scenarios as well. If you are able to offer scanners, people might not have to take a large item with them. They can scan what they need. That might even be being ready to advise people. Sometimes when I have worked in libraries where we don't have easy act sets to a scanner, we also sort of had an app we were comfortable recommending that lets you scan things with your phone. For those people that did have smart phones available. That's a possibility. >> JENNIFER: The other question in terms of digital accessibility, someone is asking for recommendations for folks who are visually impaired and you need a way for them to sign in. Do you use digital sign in? If so, do people have software's or programs that they are using? >> CARLI: I don't know of a specific software, but I will say that it is worth noting that nowadays a lot of the devices that you might be using has built in screen readers. Either the browser that you are using or the device if you are using an iOS, like if you are using an iPad or an iPhone. The device or if you are using a Mac computer. You can get open-source screen readers for a PC. That might be integrating a screen reader and perhaps if necessary than also some way of using headphones if it would be disruptive to have it read out loud. That could be one approach. You will want to make sure that your software is accessible. Another alternative might be -- it would depend on the exact workflows, but you might be able to offer the option for people to sign in and pants and you look them up in the system to verify they have signed in. Often, for people with a variety of disabilities, it's easier for them to use their personal technology set up, because they have everything exactly as they needed with the tools they need to help with their particular disability. That might be another option, depending on the exact needs of your workflow. >> JENNIFER: There's definitely a lot of other contributions in the chat. We appreciate you chiming in with your suggestions. Let's continue on. We can wrap up with any outstanding questions. >> CARLI: Sure. Then I just wanted to talk about problems to watch for when implementing universal design. I think there can be this thought that there are issues that people miss when thinking from the universal design standpoint. I want to make sure that we focus on those. Universal design does not mean one-size-fits-all. As you've noted, it's to the greatest extent possible that you design for everyone. Nothing is going to work for absolutely everyone. Why is that important to know? It's important to know because you want to make sure that you keep in mind that you are not necessarily able to meet everyone's needs, and you need to have a plan if you don't. You still need to be ready to offer accommodations if people make requests because of their disability. You still want to think about what you might need to do to offer flexibility in some way for someone who you are design does not work for. You still want to be thinking about this always to make sure that you are not just assuming it would work for everyone and you have no plan for when it might not work for someone. There is also the thought sometimes, some people criticized for saying it has too much focus on technology. I don't think this is necessarily an inherent problem with universal design, but I do think a lot of people have focused in on creative technologies that use the principles of universal design, and then use universal design is marketing terminology. They will say they have the software that helps you to provide a universal design for learning environment, for example, or they will say this particular software, perhaps, offers universal design for some other thing that libraries offer. I think the important thing to keep in mind is universal design doesn't inherently have anything to do with technology. We talked about plenty of examples here that are low-tech, low cost, really not necessarily focused on anything that requires a new technology. Some things may benefit from technologies, but there are plenty of things you can do without technology, and it shouldn't be that you are just purchasing a new software to try to solve this problem. It's about creativity, flexibility, and broadening who you think about as your user when you are designing how you offer your services. Competing priorities can complement implementation. It might be difficult to have a design that works for every single person. There is always the risk that there is going to be someone left out. An additional way in which there might be competing priorities that complicate things is often it is very easy to start paring back some of the universal design elements if you are not careful with a design. You might start off -- particularly in the case of renovations. You might start off with a great plan that seems like it's going to offer all of this universal design. As we get to cost overruns, may be the decision is made to cut back on certain features. You want to make sure that there's always going to be competing priorities, but you want to make sure if there are competing priorities, you are keeping an eye throughout at every stage in the process on the question of who are you serving, who are you serving, and are you still following the principles of universal design? Often, it's not inherently more expensive, but it might be easy to lose track of, particularly depending whether or not the people you are working with on the project are equally as much committed and knowledgeable about universal design. A big problem is that designers may not understand users needs. This is one that comes up a lot. The picture here is because this ramp is technically a ramp and the designer may have thought, I'm going to put it in this ramp so that we are accessible. The reality is that it's not very user-friendly. It is very narrow. It doesn't have much tolerance for error if you are using a wheelchair. It does not have any railings. It makes the stairs on either side very difficult to maneuver if you are using crutches. It's very steep, and this might be somebody who isn't someone is experienced using a wheelchair or hasn't really thought about using crutches or has ever had a mobility impairment. They are thinking, okay, I've checked the box of having a ramp, but they might not understand the true needs of users. It's important to think about how you can get the feedback from your users. We will talk about that in a bit. You want to think about how you can involve your users in the design process so you are meeting their needs. Now, we are going to talk about how to implement this at your library. How do you bring universal design to your library. First of all, it needs to be a multilevel commitment. You need to think about everything from how does universal design fit into your strategic plan, how does it fit into specific goals, and making those connections are really going to be what helps you to get everyone on board and what helps you to not just have this something where you think about it for one particular project and then you lose track of it. This is what will help you to integrate it into being an institution wide commitment and an ongoing workflow changer. It's going to be what makes sure you are integrating this throughout your library. And you need to be thinking throughout about how will these and supposed be reflected in ongoing work. As I was saying, you want to involve your community along the way. This isn't something that should be done by a small team or a solo person. You want to offer opportunities for feedback. It's really important to get feedback and make a connection to people in your community. That's something that can be very easy to do but it is also easy to lose track of how you are doing it. You want to offer multiple ways to offer feedback. If you offer a survey, you should also offer a way to maybe call and leave you a voicemail if someone doesn't like to write. Maybe offer a way to e-mail it in or you may be an anonymous way of providing feedback for people who are not comfortable attaching their name to the feedback. If you are offering a survey, make sure it's using accessible surveys tool so that you know that people who use assistive technologies can respond to the survey. You want to look at who you are getting feedback from and make sure that reflects your community. You want feedback from the people who are the most likely -- you want to think, who am I not seeing in my feedback, and how can I do outreach to them? Baby go to a local farmers market or a political event or something else in your community outside the library to collect feedback to try to reach people who have never visited the library and find out why they are using the library. Exactly that. What are the barriers? Why are people using your library, and how can you get them to the in your door and using your services? Think about how you can highlight what your collection already has to offer. This is another example how you can do things for free. Market. Specialized formats, such as audiobooks, braille books, high interest low reading level books, captioned videos and audio described videos. That could be DVD or video content in your database if you have any. But you need to be thinking about how you are marketing this. As I said, if you are having a book club, make sure to point out that you have the book in these other format, because that might not be something people think about. When you are doing outreach, think about how you can do outreach about the different segments of your collection that some people may not realize you even have. Try to integrate multiple formats into displays. If you have a display, have it is a large print book as well as a standard print book. If you have a display on a particular topic, do you have audiobooks on that topic? That will help to make sure that you highlight everything that your collection already has to offer and the ways in which you are already offering in an lose of experience and multiple means of perception throughout your collection. Start with no or low cost changes. This is really helpful, because it can be a way to get buy-in from your colleagues and your community, and it can be a way to show you are having an impact that you can then talk about if you do a grant proposal, for example. Rearrange furniture and displays to make things easier to navigate. Redesign signage to increase accessibility and multiple means of perception. Making it so that people who don't read English can even navigate your library. Maybe when you are making furniture purposes, maybe you have a checklist that involves universal design considerations, so it may not be a more expensive piece of furniture, but you pick the piece of furniture with the maximum flexibility and the best design from a universal design perspective or your library's needs. Focus on being creative and flexible. These are the keys to success. Rethink existing spaces and services rather than trying to undertake a new construction project. We talked about moving things around, but think about how you can rethink what you already have. Facilitate user creativity by offering modular and movable or even circulating furniture equipment. Some libraries offer whiteboards that are removable and can be used to block off space by someone that is more distractible, blocking their line of vision. Some people circulate lights so that people can plug in an additional light if an area of the library is not bright enough for them. Some people circulate headphones for people who need to have lower sound or lower sensory areas area there's lots of different ways that you can offer the option for patrons to customize their library experience. Dream big but start small. That will help to get the ball rolling and show it universal design can do for your community. Just a few final thoughts. We will have a couple minutes still for questions. No matter how well-designed a space or service is, accommodations are still necessary for you you don't want to go into universal design thinking it will completely eliminate the need for other accommodations. You want to budget in terms of services, in terms of funding if necessary, in terms of staff time for the fact that some accommodations will be necessary. New designs might require new policies or procedures to ensure equitable and inclusive service. If you're going to offer more flexible options, you need to make sure you have the policies and proves agers to back that up. Outreach and communication about accessibility and universal design are key. There's a lot of research that shows people with disabilities are going to look at your website. They will do research to make sure that you are accessible for they come and visit. If you are accessible and inclusive, you need to tell everybody about that. Put that on your website, put it in your. If there are groups locally that work with people with different interests and different needs, reach out to those groups to talk about what the library has to offer, what's new, and how you are being inclusive of their group so they can help you get the message out. Universal design is an iterative process and an ongoing commitment. It's something that you can get started with small, but keep in mind that every time you make new decisions, launching new designs, buying a new item, it's good to think about the principles of universal design to guide that process. So, thank you. Feel free to e-mail me if you have specific questions about your library that you'd rather ask separately. I have a picture here of my book, which is available from some libraries via OCLC for interlibrary loan. You can definitely look at world cap if you want to loan it. I hope that this was helpful. Feel free to ask any questions you might have in a chat. >> JENNIFER: Thank you so much. A lot of information presented in such a great way. I know people are excited. Thank you to everybody. Feel free to post any additional questions that you have. There was one really good question. Somebody said, isn't universal design required for new construction? >> CARLI: So, it is not. I wish. There are laws in many -- I mostly talking about for U.S. In most areas of the U.S. and most of what I know about Canada, it's not required things be universally designed, but there are accessibility standards. Those are usually worded as minimums forget the nice thing about universal design is it is less focused on a minimum, like your door must be next inches wide, and it's more focused on trying to achieve the goal of inclusion. You do have standards. One note of caution about accessibility standards, even though they are required, things get built and it doesn't get caught even in new builds. Architects are always experts in accessibility or universal design. I'd encourage if you are working on a renovation project, ask the architects whether they are experts. Try to find architects that are. He didn't mind yourself. If you see something that doesn't seem like it's accessible, mention it. Don't just assume that they are going to catch it. >> JENNIFER: Really helpful. The other thing that came up in the chat was whether or not people are getting -- whether staff are training in ASL. It looks like there is some mixed results. Can you talk a little bit about what you have seen or heard in terms of perhaps staff learning ASL? >> There are trainings that are specifically for librarians. The focus in on the types of ASL's bills would be most useful in a library setting. You can definitely find those trainings. They are great. I would say that if you are able to do that, it is wonderful and it is so helpful and though appreciated I think by a lot of patrons to be able to communicate using ASL in their own language, but if you are not able to do that, because not everyone will always be able to have someone on staff who knows ASL at that particular moment, I think an important thing to know is that you can also encourage people to just have a plan for how they are going to communicate. A lot of people who communicate with ASL by preference will also communicate by, for example, typing something on their phone, and you can use the notes app to communicate with somebody. If that's not a possibility, you can write something out but it's not always possible that everyone will know ASL as much as it would be wonderful if everyone did, but you just want to talk to your team about having a plan in place to still be able to offer high-quality service, even if someone isn't immediately available who knows ASL. >> JENNIFER: Fantastic. If there are any other questions, feel free to post them. We are just about at the top of the hour. I wanted to mention, we're working on some other webinars related to this topic. Definitely looking at -- I know there was some questions about how to welcome neurodiverse folks to the library. We are looking at a session on that. Definitely keep your ideas coming. There is definitely lots of ways in which universal design overlaps with really every aspect of our work. I am so grateful that you've brought this excellent summary and lots and lots of things for folks to take action with right away. A reminder that the learner guide is a great way to take those next steps to discuss amongst your team or, perhaps, collaborators in your community. Don't be afraid to reach out, as was said, to find out what other people are doing and who those folks in your community are that you can get more ideas and be more inclusive in your design. Thank you so much. >> CARLI: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you, everyone, for coming. >> JENNIFER: Thank you for the contributions to chat. A couple reminders that I will send you an e-mail today once the recording is posted. I will also send you a certificate for attending. If you don't even need to request that. That will probably come to you next week. I'm also going to send you to a short survey as you leave. This helps us inform the presenters about the session, and then we also use it to help us guide our ongoing programming. Yes, there is a copy of the chat posted to the event page as well. Excellent. Thank you all so much. Everyone have a great restful weekend, and we will see you at our next event. Thank you.