🌐Overview

Ensuring accessibility is a continuous commitment to equity and inclusion. When authors create open educational resources, they should include accessibility from the beginning. They also need to check it often during the project to catch missed issues, reinforce habits, and maintain quality. This section covers important steps for accessibility review. It also introduces tools and checklists for evaluation. Plus, it links accessibility to broader ideas like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the POUR principles. These practices make sure content is compliant, usable, inclusive, and effective for all learners.

📖 Table of Contents

Ongoing Accessibility Checks
- Accessibility Checkers
Accessibility ≠ Usability
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
Universal Design for Learning
- UDL Guidelines

✔️ Ongoing Accessibility Checks

Authors received training on accessibility at the project's start. They have used accessibility best practices during writing. However, the content must get regular accessibility reviews. Ideally, these reviews occur at two separate times

Once the authors finish their first chapter or section. This helps catch any basic issues a specific author might have. Finding common errors makes it easier for authors to create them correctly in later chapters.
At the end of the project. Even the best authors will occasionally miss some accessibility requirements. Conducting a final accessibility check helps find those missing features.

📌 Accessibility Checkers

Most platforms have built-in accessibility checkers.

Canvas has a built-in checker (which is not very powerful). Fortunately, the CCC Accessibility Center provides the PopeTech Accessibility Checker to colleges for use with Canvas.
LibreTexts also has a built-in accessibility checker, but you must activate it first.
Checking content in Google Drive requires downloading Grackle because Google does not have a built-in checker.
Any online content can be checked using the WAVE Accessibility Checker.

Automated checkers are essential to finding errors, but they are not sufficient! Some issues (such as color for context and meaningful alt text) can only be confirmed by humans.

🛠️Toolkit: The ASCCC OERI has developed an Accessibility Checklist to help you identify what you need to check. This checklist also has links to our Accessibility Basics Class, where you can learn more about each item.

For detailed information about accessibility requirements, refer to the WCAG Standards. To learn more, the CCC Accessibility Center has a variety of training and tools.

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✔️ Accessibility ≠ Usability

Another consideration for accessibility was developed as part of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The POUR acronym is easy to remember and focuses on creating material that is both designed for technical accessibility and also for usability. It is easy to make design errors when we don't understand the access issues caused by poor design. We need to know how our students perceive the world to better understand what they may experience. Here's a quick overview of the guidelines behind POUR.

📌 Perceivable

Material should be presented in ways that are perceivable to all users. For example, if information is shown in ways that sighted people can see, like text, it must also be available in ways that visually impaired people can understand.

📌 Operable

We should also consider the equipment our students will use to interact with the content. Students with mobility impairments may use special keyboards. This helps them move through the course. However, it can take them longer to navigate and interact with on-screen elements. Care should be taken to ensure that any timed activities can be modified for students who need more time.

When adding multimedia, be sure that the media is not set to play automatically, and that the player can be controlled via keyboard commands. Additionally, part of being operable involves navigation. Most platforms like Canvas, LibreTexts, and PowerPoint help with navigation. Your job is to give content clear and meaningful names. Also, make sure the names are unique and not repeated. To avoid duplicate titles or headings, remember that users often scan resources this way. By preventing duplication, you can also improve learning for all students.

📌Understandable

Material should be designed in ways that are understandable to a wide range of users. Predictable patterns should be repeated and maintained whenever possible, especially in linked material.

If the content is in a foreign language, this should be clear to the student so they can set their assistive technology accordingly. Some pages may contain English, others your target language, and some may even have both. Even academic language could seem "foreign" to students. Make sure to write in a way that everyone can understand. Also, define or explain key terms in the text around them.

📌 Robust

Design the content to provide equal access and an equivalent experience to various users. For example, not all students may use the same browser or have the same functionality installed on their devices. Students may be working on a phone or a laptop and may have variable data or connectivity abilities. It is important to use content that is operable by a variety of different assistive technologies.

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✔️ Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework. It helps remove barriers in learning so we can meet the needs of all learners. It's human nature for instructors to design courses in the way they like to learn. Keeping UDL principles in mind can help us move beyond this natural inclination.

UDL can be used as an underlying principle to reduce barriers to learning by ensuring accessibility is built into your courses. The Center for Universal Design (CUD) defines the term as "a design concept that recognizes, respects, values and attempts to accommodate the broadest possible spectrum of human ability in the design of all products, environments and information systems." They identify seven components of Universal Design

Equitable. The design is equally useful to people with diverse abilities.
Flexible. The design supports differing abilities.
Simple. The design is intuitive.
Perceptible. The design offers material in multiple modalities.
Tolerance for error. The design minimizes possibilities for predictable errors.
Effortless. The design minimizes repetitive actions.
Spacious. The design includes appropriate room for users.

📌 UDL Guidelines

CAST(formerly known as the Center for Applied Special Technology) is a nonprofit education research and development organization that works to expand learning opportunities for all individuals through Universal Design for Learning. In a nutshell, UDL guidelines include

Multiple means of representation. Give students the same information through different formats (visual, auditory, or textual) to ensure that key information will be equally perceptible to all.
Multiple means of action and expression. Give students plenty of options for expressing what they know, and provide models, feedback, and supports for their different levels of proficiency.
Multiple means of engagement. What excites one student may bore another. To spark their interests and autonomy, give students choices (e.g., working independently vs. collaboratively, the sequence or timing of tasks, the level of challenge).

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💡Quote: “The purpose of education is not to make information accessible, but rather to teach learners how to transform accessible information into usable knowledge.” - Introduction to the UDL Guidelines (CAST, 2012)