Developing a Fully Accessible Digital Archive

NEH funding helped the American Foundation for the Blind produce the Helen Keller Archive, a groundbreaking online archive. Image courtesy of the Helen Keller Archive.

With funding from the NEH, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) created the Helen Keller Archive, an online digital archive that chronicles Keller’s life through its collection of photographs, letters, speeches, press clippings, audio recordings, film, and other artifacts. Containing approximately 80,000 items, many bequeathed to AFB by Keller herself, the archive is the largest repository of materials about Keller’s life in the world; it is also the first digital archive to be made fully accessible to blind, deaf, deafblind, and visually impaired audiences. As such, the pioneering digital archive is of immeasurable value to both researchers and the public worldwide.

The Helen Keller Archive is a treasure trove for anyone interested in Keller’s life; her work as an activist, writer, or public figure; as well as twentieth-century history more broadly. Visitors to the website can read letters between Keller and Mark Twain and see images from her travels and films of her speaking. The archive documents her life in ways both large and small. Making this range of materials fully accessible required painstaking work that would not have been possible without NEH funding. To make the archive accessible, the website required a great deal of customization. Usability tests with eighteen participants ensured that people with a broad range of access methods, and representing a wide range of ages and backgrounds, would be able to access the website. And more than 40 volunteer transcribers made handwritten documents accessible to assistive technologies.

The American Foundation for the Blind also insisted that the website be accessible to people who were unfamiliar with archives. The website includes instructions for how to browse the digital collection, as well as a specially-curated section for children that includes resources for teenagers competing in National History Day. Ultimately, the Foundation’s goal extends beyond illuminating Keller’s life: operating from the assumption that everyone should be able to access their past, the website shows that it is possible to make archives accessible while serving as a model for others.