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JSTOR is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for persons with disabilities. We apply WCAG and Section 508 standards to improve the user experience for everyone.
You can find a copy of our latest Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and an overview of measures we have implemented to support accessibility on our Accessibility policies page.
Support for accessibility
We have a single point of contact on our platform, which helps us to increase speed and turnaround time with support requests from all our users. Accessibility tickets are prioritized in this system and put to the top of our workflow.
Please contact us if you need content in an alternative format, find an accessibility issue with the website, or need general assistance. You can do this via phone, chat, or email.
Phone: (888) 388-3574
Email: support@jstor.org
Chat: JSTOR Support homepage
Support Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM - 5:00PM Eastern Time
Content formats
Content is available as scanned images and as PDFs. A subset of the content is available in HTML format. JSTOR does not have any form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) on the content on the platform. You have the ability to copy and print content without such controls using the functionality on the JSTOR platform. Details on the scope of rights, use, copying, and printing is available on the JSTOR Terms and Conditions of Use page. To open PDF files, you will need a PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (see Adobe’s Accessibility Conformance Report).
You have multiple reading options on the platform. Content can be read online by navigating through page scans, viewing the content in a full screen view window and zooming on any portion of the content. You can also download content in PDF format where your permissions provide the right to do so and view it using any features available in your preferred PDF viewer.
PDF accessibility
We have made every effort to ensure that our image-based PDF files are accessible and can be read with screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver. These files are tagged at a high level using an automated process. While this method is not exact, it significantly increases the accessibility of files as compared to an untagged version. We are happy to provide files in either PDF or Word (.docx) format upon request.
To request a PDF or Word (.docx) version of an article, please contact us and include citations for any requested articles.
Screenreading errors
If you encounter an error in an article’s OCR or tagging that impacts screenreading, you can report that to us and we will take the following steps to address the issue.
When a screenreading error is reported:
- If you would like to receive a Word (.docx) version of the article, we are happy to provide one. We are typically able to complete the request within one business day.
- If you would prefer a PDF, we will request reprocessing of the PDF content. This is an automated process that involves recapturing the OCR. We will then apply tagging and reading order using an automated process in Adobe. This process typically takes a minimum of three business days.
At this time we are unable to provide manual tagging services. If you have questions about this process, please contact us and we are happy to assist.
Disability Resource/Accessibility Offices
We are able to provide PDFs and Word (.docx) versions of articles in the manner described above. If the reprocessed PDF is not sufficient, a participant’s Disability Resource/Accessibility Office is welcome to provide additional tagging or custom remediation to provide to their users.
Alternative text for images on JSTOR
JSTOR includes high-resolution images for education and research. These images are contributed to JSTOR by third parties, and the quality of the text alternatives will vary, depending on the contributing source.
All images have informational text alternatives (usually a “title” and “creator” or “author”) which conveys descriptive information about the image. Some images have additional descriptive text (e.g. a “description” metadata field), however, we cannot guarantee that all images have been given descriptive alt text.