We’re All in This Together? A Brief Exploration of Accessibility in Libraries

Introduction

The need for accessibility in public spaces, such as libraries, is well established. However, shifting demographics have led to greater accessibility becoming a more pressing need. This article briefly reviews the current state of accessibility in library spaces and then continues to describe cultural accessibility considerations more broadly before concluding with some considerations on advocacy.

Literature review and efforts at disability accessibility

Libraries have a long history of working towards incorporating accessibility into their services. Notable examples include the establishment of the American Library Association’s (ALA) first committee for services to people with disabilities in 1906¹ and library resistance to the “ugly laws” that banned those who were deemed too unsightly from appearing in public.² Libraries have also focused on making their websites accessible in digital spaces, with some measure of success; a 2012 meta-analysis of web accessibility studies found “the highest average levels of accessibility of websites was found in libraries.”³

Tendencies towards inclusion continue in library policy. The ALA’s first “Library Services for People with Disabilities Policy” was in 1961,⁴ and its 2018 Services to People with Disabilities: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, held that “people with disabilities are a significant and vibrant part of society.⁵ Libraries should be fully inclusive and work to remove barriers to access.” Most public library mission statements also explicitly include people with disabilities among those who deserve equal access.⁶

Today libraries continue to work to provide access to those with disabilities through library outreach, programming, and collection development. Such work is both vital and challenging as it can require libraries to work around limitations on budgets, training, and knowledge of what visitors with disabilities may need in order to effectively utilize the library.⁷ Addressing these barriers has led libraries to seek additional knowledge and insight into how to approach increasing accessibility: for example, as of October 2025, the Library of Virginia offers at least twenty webinars and multiple webinar pathways dedicated to helping inform librarians and library staff about services to patrons who are blind, deaf, or otherwise have disabilities through Niche Academy.

It is commendable that libraries still work to meet their commitment to accessibility, despite the continual effort it can require. Libraries that are able to successfully embed some accessibility principles for disability are then further positioned to work towards a larger goal of cultural accessibility.

What is Cultural Accessibility?

Emerging from disability advocacy, cultural accessibility “involves removing physical, financial and social barriers that keep certain persons from participating fully” in everyday life.⁸ In a library setting, cultural accessibility is thus geared towards ensuring more individuals are able to utilize and access the collections, regardless of their backgrounds, by focusing on multiple aspects of a person’s engagement with the space of a library.

Addressing cultural accessibility requires libraries to think holistically about their visitors– asking both what obstacles hinder access to collections and what supports are currently lacking. In other words, libraries must consider both what barriers limit participation by people with disabilities in the library and what absent resources or opportunities reduce their engagement. Some solutions could include:

• Making room layout maps or photo image tours of the library available online, which can help individuals better prepare in advance to visit the library, such as those on the autism spectrum.⁹

• Posting expectations of library behavior in multiple languages at the front of the library or similarly trafficked library locations, which can help those who have never visited/are unfamiliar with US libraries understand unspoken expectations around library etiquette and usage.¹⁰

• Making signs that include visual icons alongside written languages, which can help those who do not have strong English literacy or have intellectual disabilities to navigate the space of the library.¹¹

• Offering domestic and international movie programming with closed captions and audio description turned on by default, which can help those from multiple cultural backgrounds explore each other’s visual heritage as well as gain the benefits of captioning broadly (e.g. “Captions are particularly beneficial to persons watching videos in their non-native language, children and adults learning to read, and persons who are D/deaf or hard of hearing.”)¹²

• Establishing internship and volunteer opportunities for those from disenfranchised backgrounds, allowing more individuals from wider backgrounds to be proactively involved in and exposed to a library setting (e.g “Internships and fellowships shape the ability of libraries and archives to engage diverse communities.”)¹³

• Creating specialized displays for different demographics, as well as more casually incorporating works of interest to those groups into preexisting ones, year-round rather than just on holidays– both of which help more potential visitors see their culture reflected and welcomed in library collections.¹⁴

• Designating quiet rooms, lactation rooms,¹⁵ and prayer rooms¹⁶ can provide vital support for individuals who need such spaces (e.g. “quiet rooms in institutional contexts [serve] an essential access point by providing safe spaces for individuals who experience sensory overload connected with diverse bodies and minds.”)¹⁷

All of these help to lower barriers to coming and engaging with a library’s collection, as well as help address unspoken assumptions about what an individual visitor may know about how their community expects them to behave in a library, making the cultural resources of the library significantly more available to those in the local area.

Some Final Considerations

Libraries continue to develop the capacity to address accessibility concerns through increasing training for library staff and developing more representative and accessible collections. This enables libraries to be positioned to address broader concerns about cultural accessibility, an ongoing and developing area for most library systems. Yet a question remains as to why: what encourages libraries to continue developing accessibility?

Broadly speaking, there are three factors. First, there is the general service orientation of the profession. That librarianship is a service profession isn’t controversial: the ALA lists providing “the highest service levels to create informed, connected, educated, and empowered communities” among its core values as a public good,¹⁸ and librarians list it as among the compelling aspects of the profession (e.g. “Our work matters because the services we provide make a difference to the patrons that receive them.”)¹⁹ Having a service orientation suggests librarians should continue to develop accessible services, as otherwise, they run the risk of either poorly or not serving those with disabilities in the community, which would be fundamentally at odds with the profession’s core values.

There are also the economics of such service. “Households containing an adult with a work-disability require, on average, 28 percent more income (or an additional $17,690 a year) for a household at the median income level.”²⁰ The financial pressure put on individuals with disabilities tends to lead to organizations that consistently and reliably provide them service being heavily utilized and positively viewed by such individuals. Libraries often have to advocate for additional resources and funding. Having a dedicated user base strongly incentivized to speak on their behalf is incredibly important, especially when that user base is between 6–33% of their pre-existent community, as is often the case in Virginia.²¹ Failing to provide service would mean significantly reducing the pool of library users while further causing financial harm, a decidedly unfavorable outcome.

There also is one, last compelling reason: practical reality. The simple truth is every single individual who could utilize a library will face accessibility concerns, a reality encompassed in the popular statement that the disability community is “the only one that anyone can join, at any time: at birth, in the split second of an accident, through illness, or during the aging process.”²² Even if library staff were to ignore being of service, and were willing to inflict economic harm, it is unlikely they want to actively sabotage their lives by making it impossible to gain resources they themselves are likely to want.

Combined, these factors make it likely that libraries will continue to develop accessible resources and services. The only question is who they will make it for, and on what terms.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.