Welcome to the Accessible Services Blog!
Welcome to the Toronto Public Library’s blog for Accessible Services! With this blog we want to provide information about programs and services as well as get feedback from the public. We also hope that this will create an online community for individuals and families who use our accessible facilities and technologies.
We hope that you will check back frequently and let us know how we’re doing. We look forward to getting to know all of you a bit better and hope that we can do the same for you.
6 thoughts on “Welcome to the Accessible Services Blog!”
Cool! This site is certainly something I’d use! Ya!
How odd that this blog went on-line, the same day I put in several request forms for a sign language interpreter for several various seminars!
I’ve requested an ASL interpreter for a TPL seminar last fall and I was pretty surprised how smooth everything went. So happily I’ve found a few more interesting seminars and found the library staff kindly helpful when I dropped off my forms.
Other than that, how do I look up for seminars that have already-provided-for ASL interpreter services?
Glad to hear you’re excited about the blog – we’re very excited, too!
In response to your question re: seminars with interpreter services, we do not usually have programs with interpreters that are pre-booked. The service is based on people requesting sign language interpretation before the program, so if there is a seminar you are interested in attending, be sure to submit an interpreter request (which it sounds like you are well familiar with doing). Hope that helps!
Hi Nancy-Anne,
I was wondering if this Access blog would willing to take the initiative to educate the public about People First Language or provide links and resources to helpful websites and materials.
We’re hoping to provide as much information and educational resources to the public as we can, ranging from posts about accessibility issues, services and technologies to any news, helpful websites and materials that come our way about goings-on in the community. Obviously our aim is to promote a culture of understanding and equality, and this blog is a great tool for that; however I think that doing a post on People First Language is an excellent idea, so thank you! We’ll definitely try to keep it in mind for the future, as it’s an area in which I think some people don’t even realize they’re not as well-versed or sensitive as they could be.
Hello. I’ve been looking for an appropriate way to send feedback about accessibility services for blind people at the Metro Reference Library. I hope this is a good place for it.
There is at least one computer at Metro Reference which has the JAWS for Windows screen reading software installed on it. Blind people need screen reading software to use Windows computers, as you probably know.
The version of JAWS running at Metro Reference is 6.1. The most recent JAWS version is 13, so 6.1 is about ten years out-of-date. It doesn’t work well with the other software on the computer, unsurprisingly.
The JAWS version installed there is also running in a demonstration mode, which means that it hasn’t been payed for. The software’s manufacturer allows JAWS to be used for 40 minutes at a time as a free demo, and then the computer has to be restarted. It’s surprising to me that the accessibility center there didn’t purchase its copy of JAWS. But even if the library wishes to use the software without paying for it, there is no reason not to install an up-to-date version. It would be equally free to run JAWS 13 in demonstration mode as JAWS 6.1, and would make the computer there much more accessible to blind people.
Thank you so much for your feedback about JAWS software in the Centre for People with Disabilities at the Toronto Reference Library. I have sent your feedback to our IT department who will hopefully be able to resolve the issue. I will email you with any updates as I have them and will post on the blog when it is working again.
Thanks again for providing feedback to help us to improve our accessible services.