It has been one year since the DRI launched its inaugural Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Policy. There are five strands to our EDI policy: 1. Openness and inclusion; 2. Ensuring an intersectional and equitable approach to staffing and governance; 3. Removing barriers to engagement with the DRI; 4. Making events and training, communications, and collaboration accessible; 5. Prioritising equity and inclusion in all actions. We would like to take this opportunity to share some of the progress we have made over the last twelve months against implementing our EDI actions.
1. Openness and inclusion
- DRI is working with téarma.ie (the National Terminology Database for Irish), and a wider expert advisory group, to compile a standardised set of Irish language terms relating to digital preservation. We aim to share the outputs of this project by the end of 2024 (1.1 on our EDI action list).
- We published our first collection concerned with the lives, experiences, and folklore of the Mincéirí (Traveller) community ‘A Bird in the House, God Bless Her’ thanks to the work of Folklore.ie and DRI Community Archive Scheme winner Mick Fortune (1.1 on our EDI action list).
- We are working to promote the ‘A Bird in the House, God Bless Her’ collection, and seeking new opportunities to engage with Mincéirí (Traveller) communities. We are running an event for the Dublin Festival of History that will include a discussion by Mick Fortune on his work and that will include songs, stories, and Traveller voices (1.2 on our EDI action list).
- We have prioritised educating our members about the need for a more inclusive and respectful approach to creating metadata for digital collections through our training events and through sharing resources. Our upcoming ‘Creating Inclusive Digital Collections’ online event on 26 Nov 2024 will focus on inclusive approaches to describing digital cultural heritage collections. All are welcome to attend (1.3 on our EDI action list).
2. Ensuring an intersectional and equitable approach to staffing and governance
- We have appointed an early career professional to our Board: (2.1 on the EDI action list).
- We have appointed one more community archivist to our Expert Advisory Group (EAG) (2.2 on the EDI action list).
- We are working to include representation from Mincéirí (Traveller) communities on our EAG.
- We have undertaken a review of the members who make up our staff and governance (2.2 on the EDI action list. This action will be undertaken again in 2026).
- We have undertaken research on how to encourage EDI through a job advertisement and identified job vacancy outlets that will allow us to reach a diverse range of candidates for positions that arise within DRI (2.3 on the EDI action list.).
3. Removing barriers to engagement with the DRI
- We have a remuneration practice in place where we pay all community archives, artists and writers who contribute to our engagement programme (action 3.2 on the EDI action list).
- We have created a venue accessibility checklist for all in-person DRI events (3.2 on the EDI action list).
- We have undertaken a range of actions to improve the quality of our services in Irish, including implementing Irish language translation on our website, undertaking Irish language training for DRI staff, and integrating Irish into our communications content and publications.
- We have continued to support community-based approaches to archives through our DRI Community Archive Scheme Scheme, which provides free DRI associate membership and bespoke digital preservation training and support to community archivists and underfunded community groups. The Scheme is now in its sixth year and has supported numerous community archives and community groups to safeguard their digitised and born-digital data in the DRI repository. This collaboration between DRI and community groups was recently awarded an Ireland eGovernment Award 2024 in the Open Data Category, which recognises initiatives that demonstrate comprehensive data accessibility, usability, and societal impact.
- We have developed the application process for the DRI Community Archive Scheme by implementing an oral interview application option as an alternative to a written application. The DRI Community Archive Scheme offers free digital preservation training and DRI membership to underfunded community groups.
- We have taken steps throughout 2024 to better support the digital preservation and research data management needs of the Irish research community by extending our services and launching a timely and ambitious ‘Legacy Research Data Preservation Pilot’ in collaboration with Sonraí, the Irish Data Stewardship Network. The aim of this exciting initiative is to support researchers in preserving their legacy research data – such as research project websites, digitised texts, recordings and photographs – by providing an alternative access route to depositing in DRI, at no financial cost to the researcher.
4. Making events and training, communications, and collaboration accessible
- We have improved the accessibility of our events and used an Irish Sign Language (ISL) interpreter at our Community Archives Webinar.
- The DRI website (dri.ie) has been redeveloped to ensure that it complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 level A.A.
- We have improved the accessibility of the DRI repository (https://repository.dri.ie/) and we are monitoring the emergence of new standards (action 4.1 on the EDI action list).
- We carried out the following improvements to the DRI Repository (https://repository.dri.ie/) in 2024 to comply with WCAG 2.1 level AA standards:
- Improved overall colour contrast to at least 4.5:1.
- Font Size increased to minimum of 12 pixels or 16 CSS pixels
- Element Size at least 44 x 44 pixels, buttons or logos or clickable elements.
- Hover and focus interactions to better highlight the front-end interactions.
- Added ARIA LABEL tags for screen readers to better describe the visual elements.
- Reviewed and adjusted HTML elements hierarchy for users that navigate only via keyboard.
- Through this blog post, and other news stories on our website, we are working to update our communities, members, and funders on the progress we are making to achieving our EDI goals (action 4.2 on the EDI action list).
- We have created a venue accessibility checklist for all in-person DRI events (4.6 on the EDI action list).
- All DRI staff members involved in communications have had the opportunity to undertake internal and external digital accessibility training (action 4.5 on the EDI action list).
- DRI staff members follow a clear and actionable checklist of website and social media accessibility guidelines to ensure that our content is accessible to readers of all abilities.
5. Prioritising equity and inclusion in all actions
- We have made the EDI policy a key document in our Strategic Plan 2025-2029 (forthcoming) and worked to embed its principles in each priority of the plan (action 5.1 on the EDI action list).
- We sought input from as wide a range of groups as possible when we ran community workshops to input into our Strategic Plan (action 5.2 on the EDI action list).
- We reported against this plan to our funders in our annual report for 2023, we included actions in our work plan for 2024, and we are reviewing how these actions are being implemented at our monthly staff meetings (action 5.4 on the EDI action list).
DRI staff members have a personal commitment to our organisational EDI policy and actively seek out continuing professional development on diversity and inclusion – in recent months staff have attended training on topics such as inclusive and respectful approaches to metadata description and on trans-inclusive culture. DRI welcomes suggestions on other events that staff might attend. We are happy to publicise such events to our members, where there is an archival or repository relevance.
You can find more details about DRI’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy in the ‘About DRI’ section of our website. If you have any feedback you would like to share with us please email dri@ria.ie
Resources
The Digital Repository of Ireland Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy, Digital Repository of Ireland [Distributor], Digital Repository of Ireland [Depositing Institution], https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.p841pf82d
The Digital Repository of Ireland Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy 2023-2025: Actions and Implementation, Digital Repository of Ireland [Distributor], Digital Repository of Ireland [Depositing Institution], https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.pr76tx021
