Universal Accessibility Interest Group

I thought I'd ask you all for thoughts about a reference interaction I struggled with today.  This is for a graduate level social work introduction to research course, with a lit review as the main assignment in the course.  The professor emphasizes not having a huge topic and trying to do a comprehensive search.  I'm working with a blind student who relies on human readers rather than using a screen reader or otherwise accessing the internet, at least as far as I know so far. 

I'm okay with the idea of working with the student verbally because I know there are problems with accessibility of our website and likely with databases and there are problems with availability of training on assistive technology in the world.   I'm okay with spending extra time to function partly as a human reader.  I've been offering more time than the student has seemed inclined to take advantage of so far, so time is not the issue.

The challenge I'm running into is that as a librarian, I've been trying to encourage them to think about doing a comprehensive search, and not just pick a few results.  The student persists in asking to choose results by the length of the article, and hasn't responded to suggestions about the idea of narrowing down the topic.  I suggested that I email them a large number of results so that they could go through some of them and get ideas about how to narrow their topic. (I believe they use email.)  However, they continued asking if I would help to exchange a few articles that they found for shorter articles on the same topic, later when we meet (preference for less than 30 pages, or something like that).   We have only started working together briefly.  They are making an appointment for a more in depth consult. 

 They are going to communicate with the professor before we meet, which may help.  If they think the professor is okay with their broad topic, I'll probably feel better about accepting that is good enough for the course.  If not, any suggestions on how to convey the ideas I'm trying to get across?   I feel like sometimes the idea of choosing a narrow topic and doing a (relatively) thorough search is  harder to communicate to blind users who are not tech savvy and may tend to  be accustomed to difficulty obtaining enough results for accessibility reasons.  Or, alternatively, thoughts on how you would decide when to take off the librarian hat and follow their request of choosing articles by length or other less than ideal criteria?  Or just commiseration?

Thanks!

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Adina Mulliken
Social Work Subject Specialist & Associate Professor
Hunter College, CUNY
New York, NY
She/Her/Hers,They/Them/Theirs
am2621@hunter.cuny.edu
(212) 396-7665
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Hi Adina!

I helped a blind student with research many years ago. They were in undergrad, and I noticed many of the same behaviors you describe, and a habit of leaving things until the last minute. It's been a while but I imagine I felt then somewhat then like you do now, and eventually settled on the thought / realization that all students can leave things to the last minute, or seek out easier to digest sources. It feels different because there are details of the situation that are different (behind the scenes work for access can add to timelines, etc etc) but I tried not to hold my student to a higher standard than their peers (full disclosure I was doing plenty of learning of my own at this point). 

I don't think you're doing that- but my advice (if you can call it that) feels emotionally related. What do we do when any student seeks out less appropriate sources? Let them know that they might be missing out on information or more nuanced takes in longer articles, offer to strategize about how to make longer or more complex sources more digestible/readable, and ultimately leave the choice with them. They probably won't be the only students using less than adequate sources, and hopefully there's some learning baked into the process for that choice. 

Does this resonate? Am I way off base? I'm willing to hear it. Hope you're well!

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Anaya Jones She/Her/Hers
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Accessibility & Online Learning Librarian
Northeastern University
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