Open educational resources provide the opportunity to modify learning materials to best meet the needs of learners within a given context. For example:

An open textbook created in New York, can be modified to change examples to be more relevant to learners in Saskatchewan
An OER written in French can be translated into Spanish, or English, or Cree
An open pedagogy assignment may include students interviewing family members about their lives as a way of bringing in the voices of people often left out of commercial learning materials

With these opportunities come responsibilities:

Do the images in the open textbook you're using include alt tags so that a learner using a screen readers will know what the image is?
Does the OER you're using for your history class include Indigenous people, people of colour, 2SLGBTQ people, and others often left our of commercial history books?
Does the open pedagogy activity your including create opportunities for students to contribute the perspectives of under represented groups?

Accessibility and inclusivity aren't "nice to have" elements in learning materials or activities. They are "need to have" and because open resources can be modified, because open pedagogy gives instructors and learners greater flexibility, the ability to include these elements is there.

BCcampus has created an excellent resource to aid those choosing, creating, and adapting OER to help you make sure that their OER is accessible. The Accessibility Toolkit (2nd Edition) provides users with an easy to use reference for making sure the OER they are working with is accessible for learners. Below is a checklist for accessibility from within that guide.

Please refer to the guide when creating or modifying the OER artifact you will submit for Assignment 7.

Checklist for Accessibility

Organizing content

Content is organized under headings and subheadings.
Headings and subheadings are used sequentially (e.g., Heading 1, Heading 2).

Images

Images that convey information include alternative text (alt text) descriptions of the image’s content or function.
Graphs, charts, and maps also include contextual or supporting details in the text surrounding the image.
Images do not rely on colour to convey information.
Images that are purely decorative do not have alt text descriptions. (Descriptive text is unnecessary if the image doesn’t convey contextual content information).

Links

The link text describes the destination of the link and does not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more.”
If a link will open or download a file (like a PDF or Excel file), a textual reference is included in the link information (e.g., [PDF]).
Links do not open in new windows or tabs.
If a link must open in a new window or tab, a textual reference is included in the link information (e.g., [NewTab]).

Tables

Tables include row and column headers.
Row and column headers have the correct scope assigned.
Tables include a caption.
Tables avoid merged or split cells.
Tables have adequate cell padding.

Multimedia

A transcript is available for each audio resource including relevant non-speech content.
- Transcript includes:
  - speaker’s name
  - all speech content
  - relevant descriptions of speech
  - descriptions of relevant non-speech audio
  - headings and subheadings
Videos have captions of all speech content and relevant non-speech content.
Videos include audio descriptions of contextual visuals (e.g., graphs, charts).

Formulas

Simple equations use symbols that will be correctly interpreted by screen readers (for example, minus signs and not hyphens).
Complex equations are written in MathML or written in such a way they can be translated into MathML (for example, written in LaTeX and rendered with MathJax).
Equations are images with alternative text descriptions if MathML is not an option.

Font size

Font size is 12 point or higher for body text.
Font size is 9 point for footnotes or endnotes.
Font size can be zoomed to 200%.