This post is inspired by Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). To respond to the Twitter buzz around #GAAD, I began compiling resources that are useful to creators of OER in a very immediate and practical way. The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) suggests that creators, and specifically project leads, start thinking about accessibility and inclusivity early in the textbook creation process. Doing so will limit remediation and adjustments after release. It’ll also make your textbook as useful as it can be to as many students as possible as soon as your book is released.
So far I’ve found the following resources. Please reply with your resources so that the list itself can be as accessible and inclusive as possible.
Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCADU
Several projects that check accessibility of websites, provide guidance for how to comply with accessibility standards (in Ontario), and more. Browse IDRC’s ongoing projects here.
BC Campus Open Education Accessibility Toolkit
Resources for educators and educational content creators that guide accessible OER content creation. Read the kit here.
Recordings and PowerPoint slides for webinars on the following topics: Introduction to Inclusive Design by Jess Mitchell, Accessible Presentations, Accessibility in Pressbooks, and Expanding Understandings of Inaccessibility. You can find all of these things here: Inclusive Design Webinar Series recordings and PowerPoint slides
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
An accessibility checker that can be installed as a browser plugin or accessed through the website. It makes visible the html of a webpage in an easy-to-read way and makes it easy to evaluate heading levels, alt tags, table structure and more. It will flag accessibility issues. You can access it here: WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
A guide developed by Supada Amornchat for making complex visual content accessible. It includes an introduction to describing images as well as strategies for how to describe different types of complex images such as different types of charts and graphs. You can find the resource here: Complex Images for All Learners [PDF]
Hi! I’m Baldur, one of Rebus’s web developers. I thought I’d add a link here to a really nice colour accessibility tool:
It’s has a useful graphical overview of what the AA/AAA/Headline/Text boundaries are in the current colour space with the given foreground or background.
DIAGRAM Center’s Image Description Guidelines
For each type of graphic (bar graph, scatter plot, flow chart, etc.), this detailed set of image description guidelines helps you consider “what information does this image depict? should its text description be a table or a list? how should that be formatted?” And because these guidelines are organized around each type of image’s informational content instead of starting from less familiar web development / technology concepts, the authors I’ve worked with seem to find them very approachable and useful.
This is very helpful. I’ve often found myself asking those questions when formatting books, as I’m sure have many creators. The examples in the guidelines you shared are very clear, and easy to understand. Thanks for sharing!
Katy Anastasi’s Improving the Digital Accessibility of OER: A Reflective Guide is a new resources I’ve come across. Not only does Katy tackle common questions when approaching accessibility of OER or their remediation, she also shares her detailed workflow, and accompanies this with a her experience of going through what she describes as a “iterative, messy, non-linear process.” Thanks @hofera for bringing it to my attention, and Katy for writing!
