INF2165H Team 5: Annie McCarron, Leora Bromberg, Mona Farzami, Priscilla Carmini & Rebecca LaFrance. December 6, 2020
Table of Contents:
This design challenge report considers the Libby for OverDrive app, developed by Rakuten, from an accessibility and inclusive design standpoint. According to OverDrive, 90% of public libraries in North America use OverDrive as a digital books platform (OverDrive, n.d.-a). Public libraries serve diverse populations, the demographics of which vary from location to location. While ebook and audiobook users represent only a subset of the total population of library users and are not likely a representative sample, this group is growing. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic online services have become a major focus of public libraries worldwide due to temporary closures of physical library spaces, meaning many library users only had access to digital content (American Libraries Magazine, 2020). With the right technology, anyone can access digital library content, but for users with perceptual disabilities (as defined in the Canadian Copyright Act, Section 32(1) ebooks and audiobooks offer an accessible alternative to print books. For the purposes of this assignment, our team will focus on users who are dependent on screen readers or other assistive technologies that rely on tags and labels for full compatibility, as we feel they are most impacted by accessibility barriers when it comes to using Libby, and in order to make our scope manageable for us. Our group brings a unique perspective to this redesign, as four of the five of us are Master of Information students who currently work in libraries. At first glance, Libby appears aesthetically pleasing, and to an able-bodied user its shortcomings are not initially apparent. Through our own trial of the app with a screen reader, our secondary research and an interview with a primary user, and comparisons to successful screen reader apps, we realized that Libby has many problems that cannot be simply addressed through fixing certain aspects, but would be most inclusive and improved through a total redesign. This report breaks down our cycle of exclusion, suggested redesign process and suggested methods for evaluation to build in inclusion from the start.
See our proposal, here:
Design Challenge Proposal: Libby for OverDrive
Meet Libby: the world’s most popular library app. Libby allows library users to access and download library content – ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines – directly to their devices. It is compatible with iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS. By the end of 2019, library users had used Libby to check out digital content more than 174 million times, including more than six million downloads from the Toronto Public Library (Sockel, 2020).
Libby was developed by OverDrive, an Ohio-based distributor of digital library content, in 2017 as a replacement for their original app, simply called “OverDrive.” This classic app is much simpler in design compared to Libby, which uses more colours, menus, and icons to convey meaning (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). While the OverDrive app is still available for download, it is not supported by all platforms, including the current version of MacOS. It also does not allow for easy reading between devices. Loans downloaded to an ereader device or to the OverDrive app can be opened in the Libby app, but in the OverDrive app, loans downloaded elsewhere result in an “eBook Already Fulfilled.” error.
Figure 1: Libby interface
Figure 2: OverDrive interface
Libby has been touted as easy and intuitive to use, and has received praise from news outlets like Forbes, BookRiot, and Times. It is unsurprising then that Libby is the app of choice for the 50,000 libraries that use OverDrive to host their digital content (OverDrive, n.d.-b) and is promoted by OverDrive as the “primary and recommended app for OverDrive library users” (OverDrive, n.d.-a). When using the classic OverDrive app to download content, users even receive ads for Libby, both in banners at the top of the screen and ads within the library search interface describing the newer app as a “fresh and easy way to borrow and read from your library.” Many users seem to agree: Libby has a 4.8 star App Store rating based on 1.2 million ratings.
However, while users online praise the app for making books and libraries more accessible, this is not the case for all users. For some users with disabilities, the app is basically unusable, despite the fact that they could benefit most from access to alternative formats of library content.
As a public library app, Libby aims to make content available to public library users – but who are these users? Public libraries serve diverse populations, with users of varying abilities. Anyone with a library card and some sort of electronic device like a smartphone, tablet, or personal computer, is welcome to use the Libby app to access library content. While some user groups are excluded from this – such as seniors without the requisite technology, or homeless individuals who are unable to get a library card without a home address – Libby’s pool of potential users is vast. With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of many physical library spaces and checkout abilities in March 2020, digital content quickly became the only alternative for most library users, and libraries are reporting record digital checkout rates (“Hamilton Public Library”, 2020).
For users without disabilities, Libby offers an alternative to borrowing physical library content. The app supports nine different languages which are automatically applied based on device settings ("Changing the app language", n.d., and users can filter library content by language; at the Toronto Public Library, for example, there are nearly 40 different language options in the library search function. Library content can also be sorted by age group, narrowing content into “Juvenile,” “Young Adult,” “General Content” and “Mature Content.”
However, while Libby strives for inclusivity for users of different languages and age groups, its efforts towards accessibility for users with perceptual disabilities (also known as print disabilities) feel token at best. The Canadian Copyright Act defines a perceptual disability as:
"a disability that prevents or inhibits a person from reading or hearing a literary, musical, dramatic or artistic work in its original format, and includes such a disability resulting from (a) severe or total impairment of sight or hearing or the inability to focus or move one’s eyes, (b) the inability to hold or manipulate a book, or (c) an impairment relating to comprehension"
For many users that have perceptual disabilities, reading physical books is not possible. Alternative formats, like audiobooks, ebooks, or large print formats are a necessary alternative. Libraries often have these alternatives available in a physical format, such as audiobook CDs or large print books, but these collections may be just a fraction of the digital content available online. Consider the Toronto Public Library system; TPL offers just 36,000 large print or audiobook CDs compared to an online digital collection of 163,000 ebooks and audiobooks (numbers calculated from online catalogue results). The number of available physical items is reduced even further when considering that these items are distributed across TPL’s 100 total branches, although inter-library loans may be available.