University of Idaho Library’s website is built using modern static web technologies following the Lib-Static methodology. Our development stack is powered by open source tools and libraries, including Jekyll static generator, Bootstrap, FontAwesome, DataTables, lazysizes, and many others. Project code is managed on GitHub.

Our site content is created using plain text files and data spreadsheets, which are rendered into the final web pages using modular template elements. Everything is hosted on a basic server with no databases or server-side language, a simple and sustainable infrastructure that still provides high performance access to users.

The Lib-Static methodology enables more agile and responsive development of our website, involving librarians at every level of design and deployment.

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Web Accessibility

The University of Idaho Library strives to make all of its online content accessible to all users.

We are informed by the philosophy that accessibility is essential to useability which impacts the core mission of libraries to provide access to information. Any improvements we make to better structure and markup information are intended to positively impact access for all users, on all devices, and to enable preservation for future users. Following accessibility guidelines improves usability for everyone.

To do this, we carry out accessibility audits as part of our regular design process, using Lighthouse and other accessibility and performance audit services to assess our site in an ongoing manner. The relative simplicity of our static web approach and semantic markup lends itself to good accessibility and the ability to quickly fix issues.

The library also makes available subscription content from numerous vendors using technology outside of our management. To evaluate those platforms’ accessibility, we review their VPAT information. Please visit our VPATs and Accessibility Statements guide for more information.

For campus wide information, please see University of Idaho Web Accessibility.

Here are some accessibility resources relevant to library websites that we use as guides for our development:

• Accessibility Fundamentals, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
• “An Introduction to Accessibility” and Accessibility for Teams at Digital.gov
• Accessibility Developer Guide
• MDN Webdocs Docs: Handling common accessibility problems
• ARL Web Accessibility Toolkit: Standards & Best Practices
• Useability.gov

If you encounter any issues, please don’t hesitate to contact us!