Accessibility Is For Everyone

When you create or revise course materials to improve accessibility, you expand the universe of learners who are welcome and included in higher education. Although 1 in every 5 college students report having a disability, people with disabilities are often overlooked in discussions of DEIA. When course materials are accessible to students with disabilities, you affirm that diverse ways of learning, experiencing, and expressing knowledge are not only accepted or tolerated but are valid and valuable.

Designing for accessibility aligns with antiracist and queer-inclusive design. Students with disabilities carry diverse experiences of race and sexuality. For example, people with disabilities who are queer women of color bring strategies and claims on disability identity, community, and inclusion that are distinct from their white and straight disabled peers. Digital accessibility increases the dynamic exchange of knowledge, expertise, and problem solving in learning spaces. When course materials are accessible, they protect not only access to information but the opportunity to create knowledge itself.

Accessibility also aligns with ensuring multiple means of representation, a foundational principle of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), to which you were introduced in Chapter 4. Providing multiple means of representation means planning for learner variability or anticipating that your students will need more than one way to receive information. For example, to ensure access to information for blind or low vision students, images include alternative text as well as image descriptions when images are complex. To ensure all users can navigate between tabs with ease, links describe their destination and format rather than listing a URL alone. Audio/visual media includes media captions and transcripts so that users who are hard of hearing or Deaf have equitable access to media information.

In the video below, students who use accessible technology describe what it means to them. As you watch or read the transcript, take note of what students care about the most. What quotes stand out to you? What phrases do you want to remember as you revise this textbook for accessibility?

Fig. 3.1 In this 2021 YouTube Video from the National Center on Accessible Course Materials, students describe what accessible technology means to them.

Accessibility Is the Law

Besides supporting all learners, as of June 24, 2024, by law, public institutions from early childhood through postsecondary are required to ensure their digital learning resources are accessible to students with disabilities. This final rule [Website] handed down in April 2024 by the United States Department of Justice stems from the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). The ruling outlines the technical standards (WCAG 2.1 Level AA)[Website] that these resources must adhere to and establishes a compliance deadline between 2026 and 2027, depending on specific population criteria.

Accessibility Is Possible

Whether you have zero or a great deal of experience with making digital learning materials accessible, anyone can learn how to make learning materials accessible. You do not need to be a technology wizard or know coding. As with anything new, with guidance and a little practice (both of which are built into this project), you can learn and master this skill. Accessibility skills are also increasingly in demand, particularly in education fields. So, learning these skills not only will benefit your students but strengthen your CV as well.

Improving the accessibility of course materials is a collaborative process. No one person can do it alone. Our OERFSJ support team will offer guided workshops and office hours this fall to support making your OER accessible. We will also ensure that your OER meets several accessibility standards in our final review of the textbook.

Consider others who can help you to meet accessibility standards in your content creation or revision. This could include:

• • dividing the work between members of your team
  • hiring students as co-creators
  • using AI tools to generate accessibility pieces (using a human to review what the AI generates)

Even with help, however, there are accessibility standards that depend on your role as a subject matter expert. Some of these tasks must be completed by a creating or revising author with expert knowledge of, for example, the purpose of an image, link, or media feature.

Your team can use this Accessibility-Checklist [Docx}to track your progress in making your OER accessible.

This chapter will take you step-by-step through each of the standards. We will show you how to find and alter each of these accessibility pieces in Pressbooks and give you a chance to practice working with all of them in your own Pressbook or the OERFSJ Pressbooks Sandbox. As always, you can contact us for one-on-one guidance.