Introduction

Anna Flak and Katie Harding participated in McMaster University’s inaugural Accessible Education Fellows program in 2023-2024. We were interested in exploring accessibility in library settings and found that there was not much information about the library-specific ways that we teach and engage with students. In a desire to address this gap, we proposed a library strategic initiative for accessible library teaching for 2024-2025.

The result of that strategic initiative is this Pressbook. This strategic initiative was meant as an opportunity for library team members with all levels of experience to engage with and learn about topics related to accessible library teaching. We wanted this resource to be used within our library to help make our teaching practices more accessible but also hoped that it could benefit library workers seeking to engage in accessible library teaching outside of our institution. The authors chose to explore accessibility in library teaching topics that were of interest to them and their work. As a result, this book does not provide a comprehensive discussion of accessibility in all possible modes of library teaching.

Although we aimed to maintain a similar organizational style through all of our chapters we did allow for flexibility in the structuring. Our intent behind this resource was also to be more practical than scholarly and this is reflected in our approach and writing style.

If you have any questions or comments about this book, please contact Anna Flak (flaka1@mcmaster.ca) and Katie Harding (kharding@mcmaster.ca).