Accessibility in Scientific Journals: approaches, technologies and applications

ABSTRACT

Introduction:  Scientific journals play a crucial role in the advancement of science, serving as spaces for communication, access and dissemination of scientific information. Aligned with the principles of Open Access and Open Science, they must be available to everyone, without barriers, including People with Disabilities.

Objective:  Analyze the approaches, resources and tools used to promote accessibility for People with Disabilities in scientific journals.

Methodology:  This is descriptive research, of a bibliographic nature, which adopts a mixed analysis method, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research was based on the analysis of scientific production related to the accessibility of journals in multidisciplinary databases.

Results:  Few publications addressing the topic were found, predominantly focused on specific issues, such as assessing the accessibility of websites or reports on practices adopted by journals, often aimed at specific disabilities. The accessibility assessments performed were mostly manual or mixed, with the automatic ones being conducted by tools that verify compliance with the W3C accessibility criteria. No widely preferred assessment tool was identified in the studies analyzed.

Conclusion.  The limited number of contributions on the topic and their limited scope highlight the need for further research. Furthermore, the importance of including web accessibility in discussions on Open Access is highlighted, considering its compatibility with the principles of promoting universal access to scientific information

KEYWORDS:
Eletronic journals; Accessibility; Open access; Eletronic publications