Accessibility for Library Resources: Databases

The ACM Digital Library does not offer any sort of built-in screen reader. However, the ACM does list the following features for visual impaired users:

Color contrast

All text on the platform meets the minimum recommended contrast ratios against the background. This is 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. If you have trouble reading the text on the site you can change the text size as per the instructions given previously. Alternatively, you may find it helpful to use a browser extension to specify your own color combinations, such as Change Colors for Chrome browser.

Text alternatives for visual content

Navigational images and icons, as well as many images in the content itself, contain useful alternative text. When alt text and long descriptions are available in the content, these are rendered in the interface.

Screen reader compatibility

The ACM Digital Library is designed to follow a logical reading order and semantic structure.

Text to speech

All content on the ACM Digital Library can be copied and pasted into a text-to-speech tool.

Further information can be found on the ACM's accessibility page.

The author of this guide tested several PDFs downloaded from ACM and found that they did not work properly with Adobe Acrobat's read-aloud feature. Alternatively, users should consider using the HTML version, as it should behave more consistently with screen readers.

• ACM Digital Library
  Contains bibliographic information, abstracts, reviews, and full-text for articles published in ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) periodicals and proceedings.

Text-to-Speech

Full-text articles in EBSCO databases may be available as either PDFs or as in-browser HTML documents.

Full Text PDFs

All PDFs uploaded to EBSCO databases since September 2004 contain an Optical Character Reader (OCR) layer and are ADA-compliant. Unfortunately, PDFs uploaded prior to September 2004 are not ADA-compliant and cannot be read by a screen reader.

Compatible PDFs can be read aloud in Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat using the instructions found on the PDF Read Aloud page.

HTML Full Text

Articles available in HTML Full Text format can be read aloud by selecting the "Listen" option at the beginning of the article:

After selecting "Listen," the tool will display playback options:

Please see the EBSCO HTML Text-to-Speech instructions for further details.

HTML Full Text articles can also be downloaded in MP3 format.

For more information about text-to-speech in EBSCO resources:

• EBSCO FAQ for JAWS
• EBSCO Accessibility FAQ

Elsevier databases do not include a built-in read-aloud feature. However, some (though not all) PDFs tested by this guide's author seem to work properly with the read-aloud feature in Adobe Acrobat.

Find more at the Elsevier accessibility page.

Elsevier databases include:

• ClinicalKey
  Elsevier’s current medical and surgical content including: First Consult, journals, medical and surgical books, videos and images.
• ScienceDirect
  Provides citation access to books and over 2,000 journals published by Elsevier in the following disciplines: science, technology, medicine, and social sciences. Full-text content is available to most of the journal titles 1995 to the present.

Listen feature

Most Gale databases include a Listen feature that can be accessed from the text's main listing page:

Selecting "Listen" will bring up a new panel that will allow you to start and stop the playback as well as change the volume.

Articles in Gale databases can also be downloaded as an MP3 file or as a PDF. However, Gale does not guarantee that downloaded PDFs will be ADA-compliant.

More details about accessibility in Gale/Cengage databases can be found on the Cengage Group Accessibility page.

• Gale Academic Onefile
  Contains peer-reviewed, full-text articles in the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects.
• Gale Ebooks
  Provides an online collection of reference e-books. The collection covers a wide variety of subject matters, such as English literature, history, biography, literature, medicine, health, sociology, and education.
• Gale General Onefile
  Indexes newspapers, newswires and a collection of refereed academic journals, business publications, technology periodicals, general interest magazines as well as specialty titles in law, health care and computers. General OneFile includes more than 7,800 full-text titles; hundreds of newspapers -- a total of nearly 12,000 titles in all with more than 30 years of backfile coverage from 1980 to present.
• Gale Literature
  A research portal that provides enhanced ways and methods to search literary collections from Gale.
• Gale Primary Sources
  A research portal that provides enhanced ways and methods to search numerous primary source collections from Gale.

JSTOR does not offer any built-in screen reader. However, the JSTOR accessibility page indicates that JSTOR should work well with browser plug-in tools such as Natural Reader.

JSTOR search results appear in the following order:

• Check Box
• Reference Number
• Article Title (which is a link)
• Author
• Reference Details
• Article Information
• Page of First Match
• PDF 

In order to utilize PDF screen readers, users can access full text articles as PDFs by choosing "Download" from either the results list or the article page. If a user discovers a PDF that has not been sufficiently tagged for screen readers, they can contact JSTOR and ask for the PDF to be manually tagged.

• JSTOR
  Provides image and full-text online access of all licensed JSTOR archival journals and primary sources. The collection covers all academic disciplines.

Project MUSE features several accessibility options, including high contrast and dark modes, which can be toggled in the Project Muse User Settings.

Unfortunately, Project MUSE's PDFs are not accessible and do not work at all with Adobe Acrobat's screen reader. However, users can also select View HTML in order to format the document with heading levels that will aid navigation.

• Project Muse
  Provides online access to current issues of selected scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.

Some ProQuest-published databases offer a built-in screen reader. Users can start the screen reader by selecting the "Listen" option located at the beginning of the article's full text:

Selecting this option will generate a widget that will allow the user to stop and start playback as well as change the volume and speed:

Most ProQuest databases also allow users to download full text documents as PDFs.

Further ProQuest accessibility information can be found in the ProQuest Accessibility Directory.

• ProQuest Ebook Central
  Provides authoritative, credible e-books from scholarly publishers. Access is also available to mobile devices.

PubMed primarily links to articles found in other databases and hosts only the abstracts directly on PubMed. That said, abstracts found on PubMed can be displayed in a text-only format that should be very easy for third-party screen readers to navigate.

More information about PubMed's accessibility options can be found at the PubMed Accessibility page.

• PubMed
  Journal citations and abstracts collected from the life sciences literature from 1947 to the present. Over 4,800 journals are indexed in the areas of clinical medicine, biomedicine, and health care.
• PubMed Central
  "The U.S. National Library of Medicine's digital archive of life sciences journal literature. Access to the full text of articles in PMC is free, except where a journal requires a subscription for access to recent articles."

Springer's databases do not feature a built-in screen reader. However, PDFs tested by the author of this guide did seem to work acceptably with the Adobe Read Aloud feature.

Also, Springer notes that their website is compatible with modern screen readers, screen magnifiers, speech recognition software, and speech packages, but does not provide specifics. More information can be found on the Springer accessibility page.

Listing links on the SpringerLink results page will result in links being ordered according to date. Each subsection will list references from a specific time frame in the past, such as within the last two weeks.

• Springer Protocols
  SpringerProtocols (now part of the SpringerNature Experiments collection), contains over 50,000 reproducible laboratory protocols focused in the areas of biomedicine and life sciences from 1980-2012. SpringerProtocols expands on the Methods in Molecular Biology series and other methods series from Humana Press. Protocols are documents that provide predefined written procedural methods in the design and implementation of scientific experiments.
• SpringerLink
  Provides online full-text access to journal titles from 1997 to 2016 (except for a small number of titles which are current) and to books published from 2005 to 2011. Published content is predominantly in the sciences, medicine, technology, business and economics.

Wiley's databases do not feature a built-in screen reader, and unfortunately, PDFs tested by the author of this guide were not consistently formatted properly for usage with the Adobe Read Aloud feature.

More information about Wiley's accessibility policies can be found at the Wiley Accessibility Page.

• Wiley Online Library
  Provides citation access to books and journals published by Wiley in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Full-text content is available to selected journal titles from 1997 to the present.
• Wiley Digital Archives: New York Academy of Science
  This archive of the Academy provides primary sources on multiple aspects of natural and physical sciences, as well as medicine and human rights.