VPAT and Accessibility

np626
Hello,
Can you provide me with a VPAT for Zotero?
Also, what are the recommendations for a student using Zotero with a screenreader? Do you find one screenreader works better than another (JAWS vs NVDA), and do you recommend one browser over another?
Thank you.
  • cvnZoterro
    I, too, am hoping that we can see a VPAT for Zotero in the nearer future. My university has had to become quite strict on software accessibility, and there really isn't another platform available to do social bibliographies with students quite like Zotero.
  • liloukc
    edited September 28, 2021
    I think there is a strong possibility we may have to stop supporting Zotero in the absence of a VPAT.
  • jkilker
    Hi Dan and Zotero team,

    I'm a committed early user and supporter of Zotero--Dan, you might remember me as a participant in an early New Media History workshop at GMU that Roy and you ran. I've used Zotero to support research collaboration in courses and with other faculty over the years and recently presented a session on this topic at the 2023 "Teaching for Learning" (T4L) conference.

    I like to second (third? fourth?) the above comments and questions about the critical importance of having a VPAT, Accessibility Conformance Report, or similar document in order to recommend and adopt Zotero in the current, modern institutional environment.

    Previous questions about this in the forums go back to at least 2008:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3754/is-zotero-section-508-compliant

    and more recently in 2019:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/76259/does-zotero-have-a-vpat
    and 2020:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/85495/vpat-or-acr

    In a presentation I gave to our IT staff recommending Zotero adoption on our campus, I noted improvements in Zotero's accessibility discussed here:

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/71770/voice-reading-software
    and
    https://twitter.com/DaniJonesOcean/status/1504760625796464640

    In the 2019 forum discussion, Dan noted that "We're in the process of porting Zotero to a new architecture, and we're hoping to address many accessibility issues at the same time. We're also working on a new version of the web library with much better accessibility support."

    I appreciate that Zotero is developed and maintained by a small, non-profit entity. And I want to repeat my admiration for creating and sharing such a useful tool. However, I also have to report that these forum discussions were not enough to address the requirement for a VPAT at my university.

    In the spirit of recent webinars by Brendan (see https://www.zotero.org/support/webinars) that included a call to assist with outreach, I can state that: The single most useful action Zotero developers can take to help with outreach now is to post a VPAT on your site. I'd be happy to connect you with staff at my university who can provide more details and examples.
  • jbotts
    Hi all,

    I wanted to endorse the latest thread on this post. If you need funding to make this kind of documentation feasible in the near term, please let me know so I can explore the feasibility of lending support to this effort from my office at the Department of State.

    Best regards,
    Josh
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