Making Accessible OER

Photo by Yomex Owo on Unsplash

Before you create a new OER, or a new edition of an existing OER, plan on addressing the accessibility of your material. It is much more work to make a non-accessible OER accessible than it is to just create an accessible OER at the start. For assistance, you can email UNCG’s Accessibility Coordinator Melanie Eley at accessibility@uncg.edu and consult the  Accessibility website. MERLOT also has an OER and Accessibility community with its own Authoring Accessible OER page. 

Keep these factors in mind:

Will the software used to view the OER disable the accessibility features of the computer’s operating system (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux)?

For varied reasons, some software disables operating system accessibility features, such as zoom, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text. Accessible OERs must avoid this software.

Is the software used to view the OER compatible with most assistive devices?

There are computer peripherals, especially for the paralyzed, that function in ways outside of the normal keyboard and mouse.

Is there text identification of non-text elements?

Text-to-speech screen readers for the blind can read alternative descriptions of items like images. For example, if you are making an OER using HTML, be sure to include the descriptions for images.

Is all text in the OER recognizable to a computer as text?

For PDFs, accurate optical character recognition (OCR) is often required to make text understandable to a computer. Screen-readers and highlighters require textual information, like OCR, for all text displayed.

Is the OER accessible by the colorblind?

If you have color-dependent information, be sure that either alternative methods of recognition (such as differing patterns) are present, or that the color and contrast can be fully adjusted for the colorblind.

Is the OER available in accessibility-focused formats?

While not completely required due to the functionality of assistive devices and screen readers, editions of the OER translated to Braille or converted to the DAISY accessible format would help more people in understanding the resource.

This information is adapted from:

Affordable Learning Georgia, Help with Creating OER, Making Accessible OER Materials

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