Universal Accessibility Interest Group

Welcome to July! I hope everyone is having a good summer.

As you know, the convenorship for ACRL Interest Groups changes in July of each year. As of now, I have moved into the role of current convener. I would like to thank our past co-conveners, Catherine Lantz and Bridgid Fennell, for their service over the past year. I would also like to introduce and welcome our incoming co-conveners, Caelin Ross and Leela Denver. Caelin and Leela will move into their co-convener roles in July 2026.

I'll start with a short introduction and after that, Caelin and Leela have each provided their own introductions.

We look forward to a year full of discussions and information sharing. We invite all of you to start the year by introducing yourselves, sharing what you do and why you are interested in this group.

Thank you all!

Karen's introduction:

In the spirit of self-reflexivity, I acknowledge my position as a white, cis-gendered, non disabled woman. These identities grant me certain privileges, yet limit my ability to fully understand the lived experiences of others. Every day, I strive to improve and learn from my mistakes.  I look forward to learning and growing with everyone here.

I am currently the Licensing Librarian at Arizona State University Library. My interest in accessibility started around 15 years ago at a private institution where, shortly after starting, I was tasked with working with a library vendor to fix accessibility issues with their platform, ensuring our new library website would pass an accessibility audit upon  its launch. That was such an eye opening experience! At ASU, my accessibility work centers around ensuring that license agreements include accessibility language, gathering VPATs/ACRs, conducting basic accessibility testing, and communicating with vendors about resolving issues.

In addition to UAIG, I am also involved with the Digital Library Federation's Digital Accessibility Interest Group (DLF DAWG). I encourage anyone interested in learning more about this group to attend a monthly meeting or two. 

Caelin's Introduction:

Hello, I'm Caelin Ross (she/her/hers), a Performing Arts Librarian with over 10 years of experience in academic libraries and non-profits. My path to accessibility advocacy began in public elementary schools, where I worked on literacy initiatives and taught in classrooms serving students with diverse learning disabilities, sensory needs, and histories of trauma. These early experiences opened my eyes to how traditional educational approaches often fail to meet the varied ways people learn and process information.

My commitment to accessibility is deeply personal. As someone who navigates neurodiversity, chronic illness, and mental health challenges-including CPTSD and a language processing disorder-I understand firsthand how misdiagnosis and inadequate support systems can impact learning and well-being. This personal connection fuels my passion for understanding the complex intersections between trauma, neurodiversity, and learning differences.

In my current role, I work with performing arts students who bring a wide range of learning needs and experiences. For instance, I've worked with students with ADHD who found traditional hour-long research sessions overwhelming, so I developed a practice of offering shorter, more frequent meetings with built-in break reminders. I'm particularly mindful of creating frameworks for engaging with challenging topics rather than avoiding them entirely. Before students begin research on potentially complex subjects-whether exploring traumatic historical events, violent themes in performance literature, or emotionally charged social issues-I facilitate conversations about how they want to approach the material. We establish agreements in advance regarding their comfort levels, the support they may need, and how they'll proceed as a group if they encounter challenging content.

What fascinates me is how performing arts students often demonstrate heightened awareness of accessibility needs in both classroom and creative spaces. The performing arts environment offers unique opportunities to create responsive, multi-sensory learning experiences that can be more inclusive than traditional academic settings.

I'm excited to join this group to share insights from the intersection of library science, performing arts education, and lived experience with disability. I'm particularly interested in exploring how we can better support individuals whose needs may be overlooked due to misdiagnosis or the complex ways that trauma, neurodiversity, and learning differences can manifest and interact

Leela's Introduction:

Hi everyone! 

My name is Leela Denver (she/they) and I am an Instruction and Outreach Librarian at Arizona State University. I have 8+ years of experience in the field ranging from special collections work to academic librarianship. My commitment to accessibility is both professional and personal. I am a neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill human whose life has hugely benefited from embracing principles of disability justice and being in community with other disabled individuals, especially those who also have Tourette's Syndrome. 

Professionally, I have found libraries to be spaces of high-potential when it comes to advocating for and addressing accessibility needs, prioritizing the implementation of necessary changes, and examining and challenging histories of ableism, oppression, and disenfranchisement. My professional work with accessibility began during my time at the University of Arizona Poetry Center where we embarked on a multi-year Mellon grant-funded captioning project to make over 60 years of audio-visual poetry recordings accessible. A major portion of my role in this project was to review each caption and transcript for accuracy - a unique task due to the nature of the content and medium of the archive. 

My current role allows me to center accessibility in daily tasks as well as advocate on a broader scale. My day-to-day centers heavily on student-facing work. During the Fall and Spring semesters I can be found giving library instruction, providing reference support, and facilitating outreach programming. Each of these areas requires me to consider accessibility as it relates to the learning and accommodation needs of the students, staff, and faculty I work with. This past semester I had the pleasure of supporting Neurodiversity Week outreach initiatives and look forward to a nascent project that will bring sensory spaces and sensory toolkits to ASU Libraries. My work with accessibility, however, is and will continue to be ever-evolving; my interest in serving as co-convener for this group is driven by the desire to know more, do better, and remain in conversation with like-minded colleagues. 

I look forward to the learning and conversations we will share together and, through that, hope to get to know each of you better. Thank you for having me!