Day 1 - Icon Help with that: Using Resource Icons to Put Instructional Content at the point of need

Springy_Will · 2022-06-21T22:04:14+00:00

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Session information: https://buzz.springshare.com/springycamp/2022/icon-help-with-that

Online learning librarian (and the LibApps admin) at a small university, Aimee Gee, works with a growing number of remote students. After she created a resource icon for trial resources that links to a LibWizard form for collecting feedback, it suddenly occurred to her that resource icons might help promote instructional content, too. She is excited about the possibilities for embedding instruction into our guides at the point of need.

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mmussuto

Have you seen a change in usage of the resources because of the icons?

mmussuto

Are icons OK regarding accessibility?

aimeegee

@mmussuto I'm still working on gathering usage data, since I just started using the resource icons a couple of months ago. Hopefully, I'll be able to share an update about the results at a future SpringyCamp (or at least here in the Lounge).

Although icons are primarily a visual cue for users, I believe they meet current guidelines because they include descriptive text. It's still a good idea to consider visual aspects like sufficient color contrast.

Springshare offers training sessions on accessibility from time to time. (I just attended one by Springy Jen last week!) And there are recorded sessions on the training site.

aimeegee

Just to clarify something I saw in the chat after my talk, the image files themselves can vary in size, but the icons will display uniformly. I mentioned that the images I'm using are between 16 and 144 pixels. However, all of the the icons are displayed in LibGuides at the default size unless you use CSS to change that attribute. You won't get giant icons and tiny icons simply because the image files are different sizes.

I hope this helps!