Since 2019, Cline Library and Disability Resources at Northern Arizona University (NAU) have been participating in “Educational Materials Made Accessible/ Federated Repositories of Accessible Materials for Higher Education”, a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The EMMA/FRAME project, which is based at the University of Virginia, aims to increase sharing between institutions and organizations that remediate educational materials for disabled students, reducing costs and making a wider range of accessible materials available to all students.
NAU was an early partner in this multi-million-dollar effort. Kelly Phillips, Cline Library’s Archivist for Digital Programs, worked with Morgan Mason at Disability Resources to provide the bulk of materials available to the project team for initial development and testing of the EMMA shared repository software; the NAU team also provided valuable feedback during the creation of the metadata schema that supports sharing between FRAME institutions. NAU will continue to contribute as the EMMA/FRAME project enters a new phase of development, refining its tools and moving to an institutional membership model for future sustainability. For more information on the EMMA/FRAME project, visit the “Introduction to EMMA” on the EMMA Help page.