HathiTrust Digital Library is committed to making our interface as accessible as possible. We have incorporated special markup throughout the site but have focused special attention on the PageTurner (the part of the site that displays images & text of materials in the digital library). The HathiTrust PageTurner currently passes section 508 requirements.
We welcome any comments or suggestions that will help us improve it further. Please use the feedback link at the top of any page.
Services for Users Who Have Disabilities
Through a designated Proxy, Eligible Patrons at HathiTrust partner institutions can receive special access to in-copyright materials in HathiTrust. The materials must be held currently or have been held previously by the institution’s library, as indicated through print holdings information submitted to HathiTrust. See HathiTrust Print Disabilities Access: Service Description and Requirements for more information (view for United States institutions; view for International institutions). Specific terms of access are available at http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#ic-access.
How Access Works
We will be making improvements to this procedure as time goes on.
- For users
- The first step is to login. To do this, go to any HathiTrust web page, click "Login", and select your institution from the drop-down menu. You will be directed to your own institution to login, and then referred back to HathiTrust.
- Once you are logged in, when you navigate to the advanced full-text search, there is an option to limit the search to items held at your institution (the option is only available in the advanced full-text search at this time; it is not available for catalog searches). Any item you find with this option checked, though it may be labeled as "Limited (search-only)", will be available to you through your institutional Proxy. Once you identify a volume or volumes, you may send a request to access the volumes to your Proxy (see the list of institutional contacts; note that contacts are still being assembled. If no contact is listed for your institution, contact your local office that provides services for users who have print disabilities for more information). If you are not logged in, the option to limit a search to volumes at your institution will not be available and you will not be able to tell which "Limited (search-only)" volumes should be available to you. You can nevertheless send a request to your Proxy, who will indicate whether or not the volumes are available.
- For Proxies
- As above, the first step is to login.
- Once logged in, when you perform a full-text search of fully-viewable materials (this is the default on the home page), in-copyright works that are available to your institution's users will appear as "Full view". You can also use the advanced search checkbox option described above. If the work requested by the user does not appear as "Full view", it is not available to you (or to them).
- Note: Works that are available to you will NOT appear as "Full view" in Catalog search results. The Catalog has not been configured for this functionality. If you were, however, to de-select the "Full view" default to include "Limited (search-only)" results and you clicked to view a "Limited (search-only)" catalog record, items on the record may show as "Full view" and be available (the record view indicates what is available appropriately, but Catalog search results do not).
- Navigate to the volume or volumes indicated by the user (users may contact you through the public address you gave us in the registration form, or through local-institution channels).
- When you have located a volume that is available, you may download it and provide it to the user in accordance with the terms of access in the initial registration form: HathiTrust Print Disabilities Access: Service Description and Requirements.
Access Keys
We have added access keys to the PageTurner to help navigate the page.
How to use access keys
Access keys allow you to use the keyboard to skip to different sections of the page and switch book views. Each browser uses a different combination of keys to activate an access key. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_key for browser-specific instructions.
Access Keys assigned in HathiTrust Digital Library Pageturner
- Access Key 2: Skip site navigation
- Access Key 5: Switch to full text OCR for current book
- Access Key f: Go to first page in book
- Access Key p: Go to previous page in book
- Access Key n: Go to next page in book
- Access Key l: Go to last page in book