OPEN PRINCIPLES AND EQUALITY
Imagine2030
Annual report 2024-25
Communicating Ideas and Research Project
The Communicating Ideas and Research Project is an initiative led by the Library Student Team aimed at making assessment and research processes more accessible to all students. It promotes inclusivity in assessment and helps make research more understandable to wider audiences.
Inspired by the experience of a neurodivergent postgraduate researcher who found traditional written assignments challenging, the project began with a blog post exploring how academic ideas can be presented visually. It has since grown in scope and impact, leading to the successful planning and delivery of two workshops this year supporting students in exploring alternative formats for presenting academic work and communicating their research more clearly and confidently.
The project was showcased at The University of Manchester Institute for Teaching and Learning Conference 2025, and has benefited from collaboration across the University. Contributors include the University Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Lead for Disability, and colleagues from the School of Environment, Education and Development (Faculty of Humanities), the Department of Computer Science (Faculty of Science and Engineering), and the central Research Strategy Team.
Looking ahead, the project aims to engage further with academic colleagues to explore more inclusive assessment options across all disciplines.
Accessibility
The Digital Development Team leveraged the power of AI to improve digital inclusion and enhance accessibility for our Library community. Work focused on practical applications that directly benefited both colleagues and the wider University.
Video Accessibility
We used OpenAI Whisper to generate more accurate subtitles, captions, and transcripts for our internal YouTube videos, including All-Staff Meetings. This work ensured that our key communications were accessible and easy to follow. Similarly, we used the live subtitle features in Microsoft PowerPoint to create a more inclusive environment for attendees at our events and meetings, providing an alternative way to engage with spoken content.
Powerpoint Live captions in use during Together25
Powerpoint Live captions in use during Together25
Accessible web interfaces
AI tools like CoPilot helped us identify and fix accessibility issues with our web interfaces. These tools improved our digital presence, strengthened our Web Content Access Guidelines (WCAG) compliance and enhanced our team's skills in accessible web design.
Beyond code, we developed custom Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) that also supported us in reviewing web content and documents. Unlike traditional checkers, the GPTs highlighted crucial elements not typically picked up, like language clarity, cognitive load, and barriers for neurodivergent users. We also developed a bespoke GPT that created high-quality, consistent ALT text for images, incorporating the University's brand, tone and style. We’ve found over time that the outputs of our ALT text GPT have proven more effective and consistent than manually created descriptions.
Partnership working
The Special Collections Directorate worked with Faith Network for Manchester to explore the role of libraries and archives in conserving, interpreting, and sharing sacred texts across faith traditions. ‘Faith in the Arts’ was a series of four workshops at the Rylands.
Each session shared faith collections bringing together curators and community voices to experience sacred texts not just as historical artefacts, but as living sources of meaning and dialogue across cultures and faiths.
Across Borders - a creative partnership, sharing poetry and writing with Sri Lankan connections
The RACE Centre and Education Trust continued to deliver engagement activities working with Global Majority communities. Across Borders – Tales of Sri-Lankan Women Poets was a collaboration with Sri Lankan academic and poet Sumethreyi (Sumi) Sivapalan.
Two creative writing workshops used digital technology to connect Sri Lankan women writers from the diaspora living in the UK to Sri Lankan women living and writing from Sri Lanka itself. These cross-border connections established new networks between the RACE Centre and Education Trust and Sri Lankan heritage writers, in addition to supporting Sumi to build her confidence to plan, facilitate and deliver creative workshops and develop her practice when working with community.
“Lovely to spend time with people who are part of your own heritage. And because it was online, to share time with poets from Sri Lanka. It was great to cross boundaries and barriers.”
This was followed by a co-produced sharing event which showcased poetry from the workshops and featured a conversation between Sumi and Professor Minoli Salgado from Manchester Metropolitan University. Through this event the audience learnt about Sri Lankan literature, heritage and culture and the RACE Centre and Education Trust was able to expand its knowledge and resources and identify new books for its library collection.
Our learn-by-doing partnership with Venture Arts
The RACE Centre and Education Trust engaged in an important new learn-by-doing initiative with Venture Arts. Through three co-designed archive exploration sessions, Centre and Trust staff offered relaxed archive engagement and drew valuable learning on how to make collections engagement more accessible to people with learning disabilities and neurodiversity.
The sessions bought Venture Arts artists – all learning-disabled and/or neurodivergent – to explore creative responses to RACE Centre collections. The aim was to create a space of shared learning and artistic expression.
Through these workshops, staff developed their engagement skills, learning how to select archive items that would be enjoyed by the artists, and what kinds of activities would work best, making the sessions as participant-focused as possible. Sessions were designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing participants to drive activities rather than insisting on following a predetermined session plan. Activities were deeply collaborative; at times Centre and Trust staff were more participating than ‘leading’! The sessions were also great opportunities to focus on the joy and celebrations in the collections, and the conversations with the artists really brought items to life.
The artists expressed a desire for the collaboration to continue, leading us to visit their venue, where we witnessed the joy, pride and confidence they showed in welcoming us and sharing their work. Their enthusiasm for continuing the collaboration was deeply affirming.
Inclusive access to collections
The Library has made significant progress in enhancing inclusive access across our collections. A key initiative this year was the launch of the Managing and presenting our collections webpages in March 2025, offering transparent guidance on collection management and communication. These resources prioritise accessibility, representation and user engagement, ensuring that collections are both discoverable and meaningful.
A key development was the establishment of the Library Content Warning Working Group. This group oversees the consistent application of content warnings, balancing contextual awareness with academic freedom. The adopted methodology empowers users to make informed choices while safeguarding the integrity of the collections.
Inclusive cataloguing principles underpin a broader framework and policy that re-evaluate descriptive practices. By embedding equity and representation into metadata creation, the Library evaluates legacy biases and promotes respectful, accurate, and inclusive descriptions. This work is supported by cross-directorate collaboration and aligns with strategic priorities.
All initiatives have been shaped through extensive consultation, including discussions within the Library Collections Group and engagement with governance and technical feasibility. Collectively, these efforts form a cohesive, responsive approach to inclusive access - reflecting institutional values and evolving through ongoing reflection and practice. The Library continues to review cataloguing workflows to ensure these principles are fully embedded.
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