Columbia University Libraries is one of the foremost academic research library systems in the world, housing rare archives, special collections, and digital research tools used by students, faculty, and scholars globally. When Columbia launched a university-wide digital accessibility directive, the Libraries system was among the departments tasked with bringing their digital properties into compliance — a mandate that carried both legal weight and deep institutional meaning.


The challenge was specific but significant: two critical platforms needed to be addressed. The first was the researcher and student portal — the primary gateway through which scholars access the Libraries' digital holdings. The second was the digital archives and special collections interface, where unique and often irreplaceable materials are made available online.


For a research library, inaccessibility isn't an abstract compliance risk — it's a barrier to scholarship. A graduate student using a screen reader who cannot navigate the archives interface is not just inconvenienced; they are excluded from research that their peers can access freely. Columbia Libraries needed a partner who understood both the technical demands of accessibility and the academic context in which these tools operate.