Balancing Act: Achieving Accessible and Sustainable Repositories

With the Spring 2026 deadline in the United States for online material to meet federal accessibility standards, ensuring that material in institutional repositories meets these standards has become a top priority for IR managers. At the same time, making IR content accessible can feel like an overwhelming task, especially in terms of remediation. This panel will discuss how three U.S. university libraries have addressed accessibility of materials in their IRs and plans for future deposits. Panelists will speak to the history of accessibility and their IR, how their university's policy on accessibility has affected their work, and how they've approached working with authors and creators to ensure their works are accessible. How has accessibility requirements affected deposit rates? What does it mean for increased labor of IR staff? How is preservation affected? They will also discuss what roadblocks they continue to face, resources that have helped, and what more is still needed, especially from publishers and other third parties that benefit from scholarship.