<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Accessibility on Crossref</title><link>https://www.crossref.org/categories/accessibility/</link><description>Recent content in Accessibility on Crossref</description><generator>Hugo 0.139.4</generator><language>en-us</language><managingEditor>support@crossref.org (Crossref/Cazinc/Benoît Benedetti)</managingEditor><webMaster>support@crossref.org (Crossref/Cazinc/Benoît Benedetti)</webMaster><lastBuildDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.crossref.org/categories/accessibility/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>Mission Accessible: building better user interfaces for everyone</title><link>https://www.crossref.org/blog/mission-accessible-building-better-user-interfaces-for-everyone/</link><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><author>Lena Stoll</author><guid>https://www.crossref.org/blog/mission-accessible-building-better-user-interfaces-for-everyone/</guid><description>&lt;p>Today is &lt;a href="https://accessibility.day/" target="_blank">Global Accessibility Awareness Day&lt;/a>, and accessibility has been on our minds lately. We&amp;rsquo;ve recently completed an internal audit of all our user interfaces, and have added a new &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/operations-and-sustainability/accessibility/">accessibility page&lt;/a> to our website, where you can find the accessibility documentation that we put together as part of the audit.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="why-accessibility-matters">Why accessibility matters&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Of course we want to keep the barriers to participation in Crossref as low as possible for users with various disabilities. But also, more accessible tools work better for everyone. A person&amp;rsquo;s access needs can change really quickly: even if you consider yourself to be relatively able-bodied, you are only one minor inconvenience away from at least a temporary disability. All it takes is some dazzling sunlight hitting your eye or your phone screen, or perhaps your dog going after a rabbit in an awkward direction while you are holding the lead (ask me how I know!) - and before you know it, you will be relying on accessibility features to navigate the digital and/or physical world for a while.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>An accessible user interface is one that you can navigate and interact with by various methods, including a mouse or touchpad, keyboard, screen reader, voice control, and other assistive technologies. It can be used on various screen sizes and supports zooming in or out without losing any content or functionality. It has sufficient colour contrast, doesn&amp;rsquo;t flash fast-moving images at you, and has a clear structure that can be understood by both humans and machines.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="where-we-are-today">Where we are today&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>It is worth mentioning that we didn&amp;rsquo;t only start thinking about accessibility when we started tackling the full audit of our user interfaces in March 2026. For example, Patrick Vale has previously &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/pp4rw-mtv44" target="_blank">written in this blog&lt;/a> about a browser extension he has created to improve the accessibility of DOI links anywhere on the Internet. And we have known for a long time that there were accessibility gaps in many of our tools, but we didn&amp;rsquo;t have this centrally documented anywhere.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>When we did begin testing all our interfaces for compliance with level AA of the &lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/" target="_blank">Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2)&lt;/a> as part of the audit, we knew that some of what we would find was not going to be pretty. In the 26+ years of working with and for the scholarly community, Crossref has built countless tools and reports to offer to members and users, many of which we still maintain today. These are often decades old and have been built in a way that makes it virtually impossible to make them more accessible without rebuilding them entirely. So we know that we will continue to have accessibility gaps for the foreseeable future, but at least now we have a better idea of the scale of the challenge.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>It&amp;rsquo;s also not all doom and gloom: more recently created user interfaces, such our &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/register-maintain-records/metadata-manager/">new Metadata Manager&lt;/a>, performed much better in the audit than legacy alternatives such as the &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/register-maintain-records/web-deposit-form/">web deposit form&lt;/a>. We found a similar trend when looking at our &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/reports/">report interfaces&lt;/a>. To illustrate this, compare what happens when running the &lt;a href="https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/axe-devtools-web-accessib/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd" target="_blank">axe DevTools extension for Google Chrome&lt;/a> on a member&amp;rsquo;s &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/reports/participation-reports/">participation report&lt;/a> - this is a user interface that was completely re-implemented in 2025. Doing this brings up 26 issues:&lt;/p>
&lt;div style="text-align:center;margin:10px">
&lt;figure class="img-responsive">&lt;img src="https://www.crossref.org/images/blog/2026/accessibility-issues-participation-reports.png"
alt="Screenshot of the Participation Reports interface with axe DevTools showing 26 total issues" width="800px">
&lt;/figure>
&lt;/div>
&lt;p>Meanwhile, the &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/reports/browsable-title-list/">browsable title list&lt;/a>, which has completed a few more trips around the sun, has 254 issues listed:&lt;/p>
&lt;div style="text-align:center;margin:10px">
&lt;figure class="img-responsive">&lt;img src="https://www.crossref.org/images/blog/2026/accessibility-issues-title-list.png"
alt="Screenshot of the browsable title list interface with axe DevTools showing 254 total issues" width="800px">
&lt;/figure>
&lt;/div>
&lt;h2 id="beyond-wcag">Beyond WCAG&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>If you&amp;rsquo;ve read this far, I hope you are convinced that accessibility is more than just ticking boxes on a conformance report. But especially for a global community like ours, there are other, less technical barriers to participation that we have to consider. For example, language is a major accessibility factor: much of what we as Crossref staff write and say is in English. When we host &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/events/">community events&lt;/a>, we enable captions, and we try to leave space for these captions at the bottom of our slides.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We have also started experimenting with simultaneous interpretation during our online events, such as our recent project showcase event for the 2026 &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/a5qzf-k1738" target="_blank">metadata sprint in São Paulo&lt;/a>. You can find recordings of this event in &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws9qrLJ1aCc" target="_blank">Spanish&lt;/a>, &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocRP_UIq0Qs" target="_blank">Portuguese&lt;/a>, and &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU0Uq71Q944" target="_blank">English&lt;/a> on our YouTube channel to see the promising results of these efforts.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="what-we-are-working-on-next">What we are working on next&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>We are currently addressing the accessibility issues identified in our audit of the &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/services/crossmark/">Crossmark&lt;/a> service. Many Crossref members have implemented the Crossmark button and pop-up on their own platforms and websites, so we thought this was a great place to start the remediation efforts following our audit.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We are also in the process of redesigning our main website, &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org" target="_blank">www.crossref.org&lt;/a>, following an &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/058mr-k3s56" target="_blank">information architecture review&lt;/a> completed in 2025. Making changes to the design and navigation of our website will be the perfect opportunity to make our content not just more discoverable and more understandable, but also more accessible.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Clearly there is even more to be done, so watch this space for more updates on our accessibility roadmap and improvements. And if you have first-hand experience of using Crossref services and interfaces with assistive technologies, or you have other input or feedback you&amp;rsquo;d like to share, leave a comment below or start a discussion in our &lt;a href="https://community.crossref.org/" target="_blank">community forum&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="references">References&lt;/h3>
&lt;ol>
&lt;li>Vale, P. (2025). Enhancing DOI Accessibility for All Users. Crossref. &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/pp4rw-mtv44" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.64000/pp4rw-mtv44&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>World Wide Web Consortium (2024). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. Retrieved May 8, 2026, from &lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/" target="_blank">https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Montilla, L. &amp;amp; Mahomed, R. (2026). Voices from Crossref Metadata Sprint in São Paulo. Crossref. &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/a5qzf-k1738" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.64000/a5qzf-k1738&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Stoll, L. &amp;amp; Korzec, K. (2025). Request for proposals: Crossref website information architecture review. Crossref. &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/058mr-k3s56" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.64000/058mr-k3s56&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;/ol></description></item><item><title>Enhancing DOI Accessibility for All Users</title><link>https://www.crossref.org/blog/enhancing-doi-accessibility-for-all-users/</link><pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><author>Patrick Vale</author><guid>https://www.crossref.org/blog/enhancing-doi-accessibility-for-all-users/</guid><description>&lt;h2 id="2025-update">2025 Update&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>In 2022, we set out to update our DOI display guidelines with the intention to adopt &lt;a href="https://doi.org/10.64000/gyw3h-trd87" target="_blank">the proposals&lt;/a> in 2025. It’s important to note from the outset that we are not mandating any immediate changes to the &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/display-guidelines/" target="_blank">DOI display guidelines&lt;/a>. Instead, we are working with our community to co-create a solution that addresses the diverse needs of all users, rather than imposing technical changes that may not suit everyone.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="background">Background&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>DOI links are the lifeblood of scholarly communication. They’re the canonical identifiers that enable researchers to find, cite, and assess academic work. In essence, they’re stable, reliable, and easy to use—provided you can see them. But what happens when a user can’t rely on visual cues?&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="the-accessibility-challenge">The Accessibility Challenge&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>For users of screen readers and other assistive technologies, the full value of a DOI link can be lost. While sighted users benefit from the context surrounding a DOI link—such as the title, abstract, and other metadata—screen reader users often hear just the bare URL. This means they might not know what content the DOI link represents, leading to confusion and a diminished browsing experience.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>The problem is compounded by the technical nature of DOI links. Being URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers), they don&amp;rsquo;t naturally lend themselves to the same accessibility techniques as standard URLs. When we attempted to tweak DOI links directly, every change that improved accessibility for one group inadvertently hindered another. Whether it was a WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) rule or an ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attribute, a solution that worked in one area would break in another.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="a-community-driven-approach">A Community-Driven Approach&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Realizing that a one-size-fits-all fix wouldn’t work, we took a different approach - one that involved the community from the outset. After consulting with early adopters and attending an insightful session with the &lt;a href="https://jats4r.niso.org/" target="_blank">JATS4R&lt;/a> accessibility group, it became clear that the answer lay in experimentation and iteration. Rather than modifying the DOI display guidelines immediately, we are developing a tool that enhances the user experience without disrupting the current standards.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>It’s worth noting that this solution places the responsibility on the end user rather than on publishers and platform providers. However, by doing so, users can have a consistent browsing experience regardless of the platform they use to access scholarly content. This approach also serves as an important stepping stone toward a future publisher-provided solution—be it via accessibility-focused JavaScript or a mandated dual-link implementation—and any efforts to recommend or mandate such changes will benefit greatly from concrete evidence of the effectiveness and scalability of this approach.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="introducing-the-doi-accessibility-enhancer">Introducing the DOI Accessibility Enhancer&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>First &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBnfkOxVr6s&amp;amp;t=1916s" target="_blank">demonstrated at the recent Crossref Annual Meeting&lt;/a>, here we share our DOI Accessibility Enhancer browser extension. Available now on the &lt;a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/crossref-doi-a11y-tool/" target="_blank">Firefox Add-on Store&lt;/a> and the &lt;a href="https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/crossref-doi-accessibilit/nmpnpkdfcdnbnpiekngokijfoilpfpbc" target="_blank">Chrome Web Store&lt;/a>, this extension is designed to improve the experience of DOI links for screen reader users without altering the default behavior for sighted users.&lt;/p>
&lt;div style="text-align:center;margin:10px">
&lt;img src="https://www.crossref.org/images/blog/2025/doi-a11y-enhancer-2025.png" width="60%" alt="The Crossref DOI Accessibility Enhancer browser extension running in Firefox" >
&lt;/div>
&lt;h2 id="how-it-works">How It Works&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Scanning for DOI Links:&lt;/strong> The extension scans any webpage for DOI links.&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Querying Metadata:&lt;/strong> Once a DOI is detected, it queries the Crossref REST API to retrieve the title of the corresponding scholarly work.&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Enhancing the Link:&lt;/strong> The title is then injected as a screen-reader–only link. This means that when a screen reader user navigates to the DOI, they hear the title of the paper rather than the opaque URL.&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Maintaining Visual Integrity:&lt;/strong> For sighted users, the original DOI link remains unchanged—visible, clickable, and easy to copy-and-paste.&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Highlighting for Testing:&lt;/strong> An optional feature highlights updated links, making it easier for developers and testers to see the changes in action.&lt;/p>
&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="get-involved">Get Involved&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>This project is very much a community effort. The extension is open-source, and we welcome feedback and contributions via our &lt;a href="https://gitlab.com/crossref/doi-accessibility-enhancer" target="_blank">GitLab repository&lt;/a>, email, or &lt;a href="https://community.crossref.org/" target="_blank">Community Forum&lt;/a>. Your real-life experiences and insights will drive future improvements, ensuring that our solution meets the diverse needs of all users.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="try-it-out">Try It Out&lt;/h2>
&lt;div style="text-align:center;margin:10px">
&lt;img src="https://www.crossref.org/images/blog/2025/doi-a11y-enchancer-firefox-addons-2025.png" width="60%" alt="The Crossref DOI Accessibility Enhancer browser extension in Firefox Add-ons" >
&lt;/div>
&lt;p>If you’re using Firefox, head over to the Firefox Add-on Store and install the &lt;a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/crossref-doi-a11y-tool/" target="_blank">DOI Accessibility Enhancer&lt;/a> today. If you’re a Chrome user, you can find the extension directly in the &lt;a href="https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/crossref-doi-accessibilit/nmpnpkdfcdnbnpiekngokijfoilpfpbc" target="_blank">Chrome Web Store&lt;/a>. If you use a screen reader you’ll experience the difference firsthand - and if you don’t, give it a try with VoiceOver enabled (Command-F5 on a Mac).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Together, we can advance scholarly accessibility and ensure that critical research remains discoverable for everyone.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>The PLACE for new publishers – a one-stop-shop for information and a friendly community</title><link>https://www.crossref.org/blog/the-place-for-new-publishers-a-one-stop-shop-for-information-and-a-friendly-community/</link><pubDate>Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><author>Kornelia Korzec</author><guid>https://www.crossref.org/blog/the-place-for-new-publishers-a-one-stop-shop-for-information-and-a-friendly-community/</guid><description>&lt;p>The Publishers Learning And Community Exchange (PLACE) at &lt;a href="https://theplace.discourse.group" target="_blank">theplace.discourse.group&lt;/a> is a new online public forum created for organisations interested in adopting best practices in scholarly publishing. New scholarly publishers can access information from multiple agencies in one place, ask questions of the experts and join conversations with each other.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Scholarly publishing is an interesting niche of an industry – it appears at the same time ancillary and necessary to the practice and development of scholarship itself. The sooner and more easily a piece of academic work is shared, the greater the chance that others will find and build upon it. Many practices of the publishing industry have been developed to support discovery and integrity of the scholarship that produces shareable works, and as the landscape of scholarly communications constantly evolves, a number of agencies arose to promote and continuously update the standards and best practices within it.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We realise that the sheer number of agencies involved in regulating and preserving scholarly content is in itself a challenge and can be confusing. Newer publishers may find it difficult to know where to go to find the right information, what policies they need to follow or international criteria they need to meet and how to go about doing so. When time or finances are tight, it’s not easy to try to reinvent the wheel.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Following the long-established practice of signposting organisations between us, we’ve worked together with the &lt;a href="https://publicationethics.org" target="_blank">Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)&lt;/a>, &lt;a href="https://doaj.org" target="_blank">the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)&lt;/a>, and the &lt;a href="https://oaspa.org" target="_blank">Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)&lt;/a> to establish the PLACE. We share values and goals to work more effectively to better support the needs of our communities. Each organisation is taking actions to lower barriers to participation and provide greater support for the organisations that publish scholarly and professional content that we work with.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Hence, we envisaged the PLACE as a ‘one stop shop’ for access to more consolidated and plainly put information, to support publishers in adopting best practices the industry developed. We also hope that by setting the information service as a forum, we will encourage open exchange with publishers who aspire to do things right, as well as between them.&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Forming new relationships: contributing to open source</title><link>https://www.crossref.org/blog/forming-new-relationships-contributing-to-open-source/</link><pubDate>Wed, 19 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><author>Patrick Vale</author><guid>https://www.crossref.org/blog/forming-new-relationships-contributing-to-open-source/</guid><description>&lt;h2 id="tldr">TL;DR&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>One of the things that makes me glad to work at Crossref is the principles to which we hold ourselves, and the most public and measurable of those must be the &lt;a href="https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/" target="_blank">Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure&lt;/a>, or POSI, for short. These ambitions lay out how we want to operate - to be open in our governance, in our membership and also in our source code and data. And it&amp;rsquo;s that openness of source code that&amp;rsquo;s the reason for my post today - on 26th September 2022, our first collaboration with the &lt;a href="https://jsonforms.io/" target="_blank">JSON Forms&lt;/a> open-source project was &lt;a href="https://github.com/eclipsesource/jsonforms/releases/tag/v3.0.0" target="_blank">released into the wild&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Like most organisations, we depend heavily on open-source software for our operations - the software is universally available, generally high quality and &amp;lsquo;free&amp;rsquo;. And it&amp;rsquo;s easy to take that dependency, and the associated dependency on free time and effort on the part of the maintainers, for granted - but that&amp;rsquo;s not very sustainable. In fact, we believe relying on open-source software without helping to sustain it is an anti-pattern, and this project marks the start of our efforts to make funding open-source software a standard part of our technology budget.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>This isn&amp;rsquo;t the first time we&amp;rsquo;ve &lt;a href="https://github.com/sckott/habanero" target="_blank">supported&lt;/a> or &lt;a href="https://gitlab.com/crossref/rest_api" target="_blank">released&lt;/a> open-source software. Indeed for the past few years, all our new software is open source, and we&amp;rsquo;re in the process of replacing old closed code with new, so that eventually all our code will be open source. But this is the first time we&amp;rsquo;ve contributed extensively to something that isn&amp;rsquo;t focussed primarily on us, and our services. This is a project that we will find very useful, but it is a general purpose tool, and it&amp;rsquo;s already gaining traction in the community.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="background-and-motivations">Background and motivations&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>A while back, I was tasked to do a quick &lt;a href="http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/" target="_blank">spike&lt;/a> of work on testing the theory that we could use automated form generation tools to bring new interfaces to our users more quickly, and make them easier for &amp;ldquo;people who aren&amp;rsquo;t devs&amp;rdquo; to adapt and manage. We wanted to build a new user interface for registering content, and especially we wanted to make it easier for funders to register the grants they were awarding. As well as being more approachable by a less-technical audience, we also wanted these forms to be accessible (in terms of &lt;a href="https://www.a11yproject.com/" target="_blank">a11y&lt;/a> and users of assistive technology) and localisable - we wanted a solution that would cater to the needs of our rapidly diversifying membership.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="enter-json-schema">Enter JSON Schema&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>We were clear about one side of the puzzle - we knew that we had to look beyond the XML ecosystem upon which much of our existing system is built - and landed on &lt;a href="https://json-schema.org/" target="_blank">JSON Schema&lt;/a>. JSON Schema is a &amp;lsquo;vocabulary that allows you to annotate and validate JSON documents&amp;rsquo;. This means you can describe the shape you expect your data to take, and apply constraints-based validation to that. Which means, in terms of a form library, that you can infer the structure of the form and test that the data entered into it matches what you expect. More than that, you can use that built-in validation to provide error messages to help people get the data right, first time.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Working backwards from the outcome, the argument for adopting JSON Schema is compelling. It provides a mechanism for checking that data you are handling (for example, receiving input from a form) conforms to the constraints that you declare, but also allows you to tell people up-front, in a human and machine-readable way, what structure and format you will accept. This closed-loop of data annotation and validation gets more appealing when you look at the wide adoption of JSON Schema across languages and libraries. You can pretty much guarantee that for whatever client or server -side technology you are using, there will be a JSON Schema validator for it. Being able to share schemas across your systems (and equally importantly, with third parties) moves JSON schema from &amp;lsquo;just&amp;rsquo; being about data validation, to a key supportive technology.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Building a form derived from a JSON Schema is an equally attractive prospect. JSON Schema &lt;a href="https://www.jviotti.com/dissertation.pdf" target="_blank">was conceived&lt;/a> during the AjaxWorld conference in 2007 as a &amp;lsquo;JSON-based format for defining the structure of JSON data&amp;rsquo;, and its use as a form-generation tool is relatively new, but there is growing community interest. There is even a &lt;a href="https://github.com/json-schema-org/community/discussions/70" target="_blank">discussion&lt;/a> about how to best create a JSON Schema vocabulary, specifically geared towards addressing some of the needs of form generation users. However, even in its current form, a JSON Schema can be passed to a library, and a very serviceable user interface appears. The devil is always in the detail, and the client-side libraries differ in their abilities to customise areas such as layout (you may not always want your form fields to appear in &lt;strong>exactly&lt;/strong> the same order as they do in your JSON Schema), custom elements (you might want something that wasn&amp;rsquo;t a form input, or that changes based on user input) and localisation. The ability to flexibly customise the appearance and behaviour of the interface was a key factor in our selection of a client-side form generation library.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="choosing-a-library">Choosing a library&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The other side of the puzzle was less clear - choosing a UI library that would take this JSON Schema, and turn it into a useful, and usable, form. I made the prototype using the venerable &lt;a href="https://github.com/rjsf-team/react-jsonschema-form" target="_blank">React JSON Schema form&lt;/a>. This worked well as a proof of concept, but veered dramatically off our chosen Frontend stack of &lt;a href="https://vuejs.org/" target="_blank">VueJS&lt;/a> and &lt;a href="https://vuetifyjs.com/" target="_blank">Vuetify&lt;/a>, and had some architectural constraints that would limit the scope of customisations we could make to our forms. So I went off looking for libraries that would work with our stack and came up with &lt;a href="https://koumoul-dev.github.io/vuetify-jsonschema-form/latest/" target="_blank">Vuetify JSON Schema Form&lt;/a>, and &lt;a href="https://jsonforms.io/" target="_blank">JSON Forms&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Vuetify JSON Schema Form matched our stack perfectly, but made some interesting decisions about the layout of data within the form, and that wouldn&amp;rsquo;t suit our purposes without dramatic modification.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>JSON Forms was an abstracted library, with a core handling the JSON Schema transformation and validation, and separate rendering libraries to handle the form generation. This was great - they had renderers for Angular, React, and even some support for VueJS. But not Vuetify.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Clearly, we were going to have to make something.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We made contact with the maintainers of both short-listed libraries to see how we could collaborate in creating a tool that would meet all of our (and hopefully, much of the wider community&amp;rsquo;s) requirements. Both maintainers were very helpful, and we had constructive discussions in both cases. In the end, we decided that the abstracted nature of the JSON Forms project was a better fit for our needs, providing a flexible platform on which we - and others - could extend. We were fortunate to receive funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant Agreement #10485) in order to accelerate this work, so we could provide a Grant Registration UI more quickly. We paid a large portion of that funding to the library maintainers, and Crossref contributed a portion of my time on the project. This allowed us to enter into an agreement with &lt;a href="https://eclipsesource.com/" target="_blank">EclipseSource&lt;/a>, the maintainers of JSON Forms, to collaboratively develop the new VueJS and Vuetify renderer library. Stefan Dirix, the lead maintainer, worked with me to build it.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We didn&amp;rsquo;t forget about Vuetify JSON Schema Form though, and by way of appreciation for their help in the early stages, Crossref made a contribution towards the continued development of that library.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="json-forms---now-with-vuetify">JSON Forms - now with Vuetify&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Work started on the &lt;a href="https://github.com/eclipsesource/jsonforms-vuetify-renderers" target="_blank">JSON Forms Vuetify renderer set&lt;/a> in September 2021 - Stefan quickly created the first early prototypes of the new form renderers - but then we had a stroke of luck. Our repository received more input from the community. The one that made us sit up and take real notice was the news that someone else had already ported the JSON Forms React renderer set to Vue/Vuetify - and was &lt;a href="https://jsonforms.discourse.group/t/unclear-on-how-to-implement-basic-styling-in-vue2-according-to-github-page/347/5" target="_blank">offering this&lt;/a> as a contribution. &lt;a href="https://github.com/kchobantonov" target="_blank">Krasimir Chobantonov&amp;rsquo;s&lt;/a> fantastic first contribution got &lt;a href="https://github.com/eclipsesource/jsonforms-vuetify-renderers/pull/5" target="_blank">merged in&lt;/a> at the end of the month. This propelled the project forward massively, and was an early validation of the value of working in the open. Needless to say, we were very grateful. Another example of the open source value chain was that Stefan - as the maintainer - could take the time to carefully review and tidy up the incoming code, so what was merged was the product of two great developers.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Having this great head start meant we could turn our attention to one of the other big areas we wanted to get right - localisation. Traditionally, JSON Schema -generated forms have handled localisation (translation of text and adjustment of date and numerical formats) by wholesale duplication and translation of the schema. This is cumbersome, and doesn&amp;rsquo;t integrate very well with custom error messages, nor external sources of interface messages (think form labels, descriptions, placeholders). So Stefan came up with a proposal, which we accepted, to add complete &lt;a href="https://github.com/eclipsesource/jsonforms/pull/1825" target="_blank">i18n support&lt;/a> to the library. We now have a mechanism by which you can hook up a translation engine of your choice, and JSON forms will use that to lookup messages, before falling back to the validator (also localised!) and finally, the JSON Schema&amp;rsquo;s defaults. This gives much stronger integration and allows the community to plug in their existing localisation methods - no wasted effort.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Since the localisation addition, we&amp;rsquo;ve been working on fine-tuning the layout engine, making bug fixes, and integrating more closely with the underlying Vuetify library. This allows developers to more easily use the existing Vuetify parameters to change the style and behaviour of their form widgets. Again, no wasted effort. &lt;/p>
&lt;p>We&amp;rsquo;re lucky to have an active community - &lt;a href="https://github.com/kchobantonov" target="_blank">@kchobantonov&lt;/a> continues to make great contributions and push the library forward in unexpected ways - and the library is gaining popularity, with an average of a few hundred downloads per day. &lt;/p>
&lt;p>Some of our funder members have already seen this work in action, and given their feedback on early iterations of the user interface that supports registering grant records. We&amp;rsquo;ll be releasing this publicly very soon to get feedback from members - and then using that feedback to iterate on the grants registration form, and look towards extending it to other record types. &lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="open-source-positivity">Open source POSItivity&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>A continuous theme throughout this project has been the willingness of people working on these open source projects to be generous with their time and experience. Whether it has been form generation libraries, the &lt;a href="https://json-schema.org/" target="_blank">JSON Schema project&lt;/a> or maintainers of &lt;a href="https://fluent-vue.demivan.me/" target="_blank">localisation plug-ins&lt;/a> - help, advice and encouragement have never been far away. And that&amp;rsquo;s appreciated. But it&amp;rsquo;s not something that we, or any other organisation who relies on the software they produce, should take for granted. Open source software helps everyone who uses it, and there&amp;rsquo;s a real opportunity within our community to make meaningful steps towards supporting its sustainability. Ironically, it&amp;rsquo;s often the most-used general purpose tools that get the least attention. We can change that.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="look-out-for-more">Look out for more&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Look out for more posts from the &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/categories/engineering/">engineering&lt;/a> team, coming soon!&lt;/p>
&lt;h3 id="references">References&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>&lt;a href="https://www.jviotti.com/dissertation.pdf" target="_blank">JSON Binpack: A space-efficient schema-driven and schema-less binary serialization specification based on JSON Schema&lt;/a> (Chapter 3.2.1 History and Relevance)&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071026190426/http://www.json.com/2007/09/27/json-schema-proposal-collaboration/" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20071026190426/http://www.json.com/2007/09/27/json-schema-proposal-collaboration/&lt;/a>&lt;/p></description></item><item><title>Accessibility for Crossref DOI Links: Call for comments on proposed new guidelines</title><link>https://www.crossref.org/blog/accessibility-for-crossref-doi-links-call-for-comments-on-proposed-new-guidelines/</link><pubDate>Tue, 06 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><author>Jennifer Kemp</author><guid>https://www.crossref.org/blog/accessibility-for-crossref-doi-links-call-for-comments-on-proposed-new-guidelines/</guid><description>&lt;p>Our entire community &amp;ndash; members, metadata users, service providers, community organisations and researchers &amp;ndash; &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/member-setup/constructing-your-dois/" target="_blank">create&lt;/a> and/or &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/services/metadata-retrieval/" target="_blank">use&lt;/a> DOIs in some way so making them more accessible is a worthy and overdue effort.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>For the first time in five years and only the second time ever, we are recommending some changes to our &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/display-guidelines/" target="_blank">DOI display guidelines&lt;/a> (the changes aren’t really for display but more on that below). We don’t take such changes lightly, because we know it means updating established workflows. We appreciate the questions that prompted us to make this recommendation and we know it’s critical that we get community input on the proposed updates.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="tldr">TL;DR&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Here is a quick overview:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>DOIs and URLs themselves don’t really tell readers much. People with visual impairments rely on screen readers to read out loud the contents of a page. We’re asking for the title of each DOI to be added, in an &lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/" target="_blank">ARIA&lt;/a> (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attribute, so these users understand what these links are for.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>Accessible text, as this kind of description is known, should be included for all links, but at this time, we’re specifically recommending it for landing pages of newly registered records.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>It’s not required, yet. We’re proposing a 2 year recommendation period and we want your feedback on the particulars, including timing and how we can help. Please take a &lt;a href="https://forms.gle/K6zWQ3f1dmYUkj9T6" target="_blank">short survey&lt;/a> and/or &lt;a href="mailto:feedback@crossref.org">get in touch&lt;/a> and share your thoughts.&lt;/li>
&lt;li>We’ll finalize these recommendations after assessing the feedback. Please check back for updates.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h2 id="what-is-changing-when-and-why">What is changing, when and why&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>The proposed updates are meant to improve overall usability, particularly for people with visual impairments, by aligning our guidelines with modern accessibility requirements such as the new &lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/2021/09/UX-Guide-metadata-1.0/principles/" target="_blank">W3C recommendations&lt;/a> and the &lt;a href="https://inclusivepublishing.org/blog/what-does-the-european-accessibility-act-mean-for-global-publishing/" target="_blank">European Accessibility Act&lt;/a>. This means that assistive technologies such as screen readers can interpret DOI links.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>Why are changes being recommended?&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>DOIs are &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/member-setup/constructing-your-dois/#whyopaque" target="_blank">unique&lt;/a> and persistent links to items in the scholarly record so it makes sense that they link to the full URLs for the associated content –for example, a journal article. The issue for people who rely on screen readers is that a DOI link doesn’t provide title or other information to give that link context. Users of screen readers need to know what the destination of a link is.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>These users often lack the context that other users have; in fact, they may be presented with links in a document as a list. That&amp;rsquo;s why all links, not just DOI links, need what is called &amp;ldquo;accessible text.” Providing additional information for links requires &lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/" target="_blank">ARIA&lt;/a> (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) techniques. This speaks to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the standard guidelines for accessibility across the web, specifically &lt;a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/link-purpose-in-context" target="_blank">success criterion 2.4.4&lt;/a> - Link Purpose (In Context), which aims to ‘help users understand the purpose of each link so they can decide whether they want to follow the link.’&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>For your feedback: recommended draft changes&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>We recommend the addition of an &lt;em>aria-label&lt;/em> attribute for DOI links, containing as its value the descriptive title of the content represented by the DOI, so that screen readers can interpret DOI links. This means that, &lt;em>while the DOI display itself doesn’t actually change&lt;/em>, the link is enhanced with additional, contextual information for the user of assistive technology, in one of two ways, either:&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>an aria-label attribute&lt;/strong>, described as ‘a way to place a descriptive text label on an object,’ identifying the destination, or&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;strong>an aria-describedby attribute&lt;/strong> pointing to where the destination is identified in the surrounding text.&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;p>The updated HTML for a journal article*, for example, would be:&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;code>&amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://doi.org/10.5555/12345678&amp;quot; aria-label=&amp;quot;DOI for Toward a Unified Theory of High-Energy Metaphysics: Silly String Theory&amp;quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.5555/12345678&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/code>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Here the aria-label has been set to the value of the ‘title’ property as retrieved from the Crossref REST API at &lt;a href="https://api.crossref.org/v1/works/10.5555/12345678" target="_blank">https://api.crossref.org/v1/works/10.5555/12345678&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>*Note that fields may vary slightly for different &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/documentation/research-nexus/" target="_blank">record types&lt;/a>.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>This proposed solution allows screen readers to read aloud to users the value of the aria-label attribute, instead of the full DOI in the link text.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;em>At this time, we are recommending the change for landing pages in particular&lt;/em>, but it can and should be applied to wherever DOI links appear, whenever feasible (more on this below).&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Our guidelines will continue to state that the DOI should always be displayed as a full URL link&amp;ndash;that will not change. Neither will &lt;a href="https://www.crossref.org/services/content-registration/">content registration&lt;/a>&amp;ndash;we are not asking for additional information in your deposits.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>It’s not perfect, but it’s very worthwhile&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>This recommendation has some limitations worth noting but it must be said that there is no perfect solution.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>DOI links appear in lots of places - PDFs for one notable example. We reviewed and tested the recommendation with Bill Kasdorf, Principal, Kasdorf &amp;amp; Associates, LLC, Richard Orme, CEO, DAISY Consortium, and George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium-Senior Officer, Global Literacy, Benetech, who graciously provided their time and expertise. EPUBs and websites proved to be easy to update; other formats, notably PDFs, less so. Widespread adoption of accessible DOIs is so important and we don’t want confusion or frustration to get in the way of making progress. We support and welcome efforts to include an ARIA attribute wherever DOI links appear, but we recommend focusing on landing pages, for now.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Patrick Vale, Crossref Senior Front End Developer, explains that:&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>”DOI links serve a very specific purpose: to provide the persistent link to an item in the scholarly record. And as such, they present an unusual set of requirements when balancing accurately presenting the information they encode - the persistent link - and making that link accessible, and understandable. With these proposed changes, we hope to strike this balance.“&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>We know it will be a challenge (more on that below) but we think it’s absolutely a worthwhile effort. Indeed, we are undertaking a project to update our own website to meet these recommendations and to review overall accessibility.&lt;/p>
&lt;p>As Bill Kasdorf notes:&lt;/p>
&lt;blockquote>
&lt;p>“Most people have no idea how many people with visual impairments there are. Not only is it unfair to those people not to provide accessible text for links, the authors and publishers of the linked resource are missing a lot of readers. This update is a great move by Crossref, and every bit aligned with its mission to make scholarly content discoverable and consumable.”&lt;/p>
&lt;/blockquote>
&lt;p>&lt;strong>We propose the following timeline, also for your feedback&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;p>Once finalized, following community feedback, the updated guidelines will be issued as a recommendation for a suggested period of two years starting next year, 2023. Beginning in 2025, the changes will be required for landing pages of newly registered content (and strongly recommended for existing registered content). Feedback on this approach and timeline is also encouraged.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="help-us-help-you">Help us help you&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>We are conscious that adding descriptive information to DOI links places a significant responsibility on the members and Service Providers creating and hosting these links. Therefore, we are also considering the creation of a tool to help with implementation. Initial discussions suggest this could be a JavaScript helper tool, which could be included on member websites. We also welcome feedback as to how such a tool might be implemented, and how it would best integrate with existing sites and workflows.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="call-for-comments---by-1st-november">Call for comments - by 1st November&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>We hope that this proposal is a welcome one and that the timing is good for moving forward together toward greater accessibility of the scholarly record.
&lt;strong>We welcome questions, feedback and suggestions through 1st November via the &lt;a href="https://forms.gle/7diHy46Cu5J52q417" target="_blank">survey&lt;/a> below or by email to &lt;a href="mailto:feedback@crossref.org">feedback@crossref.org&lt;/a>&lt;/strong>&lt;/p>
&lt;iframe src="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqLWIycofCUbGXxZRcOjkDM43zsIsfLdO2ZqhVVHiwDQUSeQ/viewform" width="760" height="500" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" >Loading...&lt;/iframe>
&lt;h2 id="small-changes-big-impact">Small changes, big impact&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>We’re excited to make changes that improve accessibility and we look forward to the community’s response to our proposal. We will share aggregated feedback in an updated post later this year.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="a-note-on-language">A note on language&lt;/h2>
&lt;p>Multiple sources were consulted to find the most appropriate and inclusive term(s) for users of screen readers in this context. “Print disabled,” for example, seemed to be a good candidate but was ultimately deemed likely to be confusing to a very global publishing audience, who often don’t physically print anything. Sources differ slightly, for example between the US and UK and of course, this English text may well be translated into other languages. Feedback on the terms used here is also very welcome.&lt;/p>
&lt;h2 id="additional-resources">Additional resources&lt;/h2>
&lt;ul>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="https://inclusivepublishing.org/about-the-inclusive-publishing-hub/" target="_blank">The Inclusive Publishing Hub&lt;/a> (DAISY Consortium)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="https://ncdj.org/style-guide/" target="_blank">National Center on Disability and Journalism&lt;/a> (Arizona State University, US)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-communication/inclusive-language-words-to-use-and-avoid-when-writing-about-disability" target="_blank">Inclusive Language guidance&lt;/a> (UK government)&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/disability" target="_blank">The American Psychological Association (APA) Bias-Free Language Disability Guide&lt;/a>&lt;/li>
&lt;li>&lt;a href="https://hcommons.org/groups/open-access-books-network/forum/topic/accessibility-of-oa-books/?view=all#post-57431" target="_blank">The Open Access Books Network&lt;/a> (OABN)&lt;/li>
&lt;/ul></description></item></channel></rss>