#15: Go on a treasure hunt →

From Emma:

I think this one is useful for pretty much anyone. Libraries tend to hoard, so if you take a look in your supply closet you’re almost guaranteed to find something that isn’t being used to its full potential, even if that thing isn’t exclusively accessibility-related. My most regular find is a new keyboard, with nice, legible letters on each key. I understand why extra keyboards are kept in storage—it’s good to have one you can swap out to troubleshoot problems and identify which hardware is the problem—but to me it always makes sense to keep the worst, most worn keyboard in storage and leave the best ones out on the floor for patrons to use.

The best thing I ever found wasn’t technically in storage, but it was very neglected. It was in the microfilm room and it was sitting on a table all by itself with no signage or instruction manual, not even a chair. It was a SARA (Scanning and Reading Appliance). You use a SARA by setting any page of printed text on the camera bed. The machine uses OCR to ‘read’ the words, and a synthesized voice reads the text aloud. It’s a $2,000 piece of technology, and only one of my colleagues knew we had it and had a vague idea of what it was. I cleaned it up, found its instruction manual online and played around with it to learn how it worked, got it a pair of headphones, and repositioned it out on a public area with signage explaining what it did and how to use it. The whole thing took about two hours, and at the end everyone on staff knew what it was and were able to direct patrons to it.

If your library has $2,000 lying around(ha!) and you don’t find a SARA lurking in your back room, you might want to take a look at the latest model here and consider adding it to your accessibility tools.