Open Educational Resources (OER) remove the financial barriers to education, but some OER may present other barriers for students. When adapting or adopting OER, it is important to also adapt to create accessible OER that support learners in a variety of ways. Below are some starting points for adopting and adapting accessible OERs.
The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges hosts the Open Washington website. Features:
The list of resources below include information, toolkits, and checklists for adopting and adapting open educational resources.
Check to ensure that images have alternative text if needed.
To determine need: What purpose does the image serve? Does the image convey important information, explain a process, or contextualize text?
If yes, then use Alt Text - add an alternative text description to convey the image's content or function.
If no / if the image is decorative, then add "null" alt text so that assistive technology ignores decorative images.
Tips:
Text should be organized sequentially and include structural elements so assistive technology can navigate a webpage or text document.
Tips:
Just like images and text, videos need additional information to be accessible.
Captions are text versions of the audio and are synced to the video presentation.
Transcripts are also text versions of the audio, but capture additional non-verbal descriptions of visual information.
Tips: