LibGuides: Open Educational Resources @ The University of Baltimore: OER and Accessibility

OER & Accessibility

Just like traditional textbooks, open educational materials must be accessible to all students. Below are resources that help with accessibility standards for OER. These resources may be helpful when considering adopting or adapting OER for your courses.

Learn More about Accessibility

Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online
An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education which describes how college websites and online courses do not account for students with disabilities.
Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind
In this video, students share their personal experiences with web accessibility issues.
National Center on Accessible Educational Materials
From the website: We provide resources and technical assistance for educators, parents, students, publishers, conversion houses, accessible media producers, and others interested in learning more about AEM (Accessible Educational Materials) and implementing AEM and the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS).
Open Education Consortium - Addressing Accessibility Issues
This site provides resources and helpful hints for making sure that your materials are accessible.
Web Accessibility Standards
This site from the W3 organization provides an overview of web accessibility standards and why it's important for equal access.

Create Accessible Materials

BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit
A resource from BCCampus about creating open and accessible textbooks.
floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook
From the website: The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook is a free Open Educational Resource (OER) designed to assist teachers, content creators, Web developers, and others in creating adaptable and personalizable educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning styles and individual needs.
Merlot II: OER and Accessibility
Resources about accessibility from MERLOT.
WebAim: Designing for Screen Reader Comnpatibility
This page provides technical information for ensuring that online content is adapted for screen readers.
Introduction to Screen Readers
This is a YouTube video from 2013 created by the Technology Accessibility Program at UW-Madison.

Check for Accessibility

Cielo24 | 10 Document and Web Accessibility Checkers to Get You Started
Includes a list of accessibility checkers for documents and websites.
Microsoft Office | Using the Accessibility Checker
Provides steps for checking for accessibility issues in MS Office products.
WAVE Web Accessibility Tool
Use this page to test the accessibility of your website.

Helping Students Use OER Text Materials

Your students may need help figuring out how to adapt to all online materials. Some will want to download and print them. Here are links to some instructions and tools that will make it easy for them to adapt to your materials.

Here are short videos showing how to highlight and make notes on the digital copy of your text materials by using Adobe Reader DC (for PCs) or Preview (for Macs) or Notable PDF (Chrome.)

Attribution

This LibGuide is a derivative of the Austin Community College Library Services Guide on Open Educational Resources created by Carrie Gits and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.