Disability Library Support Services and Resources : Databases Accessibility

Closed captioning is available for most of the titles in the library Films on Demand and Alexander Street Press Database. To turn on Closed Captioning:

1. Hover the mouse over the video player on the View Video page.
2. When available the "Captions" button will appear in the upper right corner of the video player.
3. Select "English" from the drop down menu to display English subtitles

While most Films on Deman videos are captioned, there are a few exceptions. Newly added titles sometimes take one to two weeks before captionining is visible and videos in languages other than English are currently not supported by Films on Demand's closed captioning

Resources in EBSCO and Gale Databases provide a read aloud and download mp3 feature.

1. Select the HTML Full Text link
2. Click the orange play icon (appearing just under the article's title) to start audio
3. You can select from up to three accents from the drop down box
4. Click the download icon to download an mp3 file of the audio

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat both have a read aloud feature. This feature will allow pdfs that are ADA accesible to be read out loud for patrons.

In Windows OS to turn the read aloud feature on:

• open the pdf
• go to the View option at the top of the screen and select Read Out Loud and then scroll down to the last option listed called, Activate Read Out Loud
• click on the screen to begin reading

To pause, select a specific section, or, read to the end of the document, select view, the read out loud option, and then the appropriate option (pause, etc.)

In Mac OS to turn the read aloud feature on:

• open the pdf
• go to the Edit option at the top of the screen and select Speech and then select the option, Start Speaking
• reader will start automatically

To stop, select Edit at the top of the screen, then select Speech, and last select the option, Stop Speaking

Fulltext - Some of the subscription databases contain citations and abstracts of articles in addition to the full text of articles.  To make sure that you access complete articles, click the fulltext box on your search screen.  You may have to use the Advanced Search option or click More Search Options to display this box. 

Scholarly Journals - Your assignments may require you to read articles from scholarly science journals as opposed to popular magazines.  See the link below to learn about the differences between the types of publications.  Subscription databases often allow you to limit your search results to scholarly journals (also known as peer-reviewed or academic journals).  Look for a box that allows you to limit results to scholarly journals.  You may have to use the Advanced Search option or click More Search Options to display this box.