Lyman Beecher Brooks Library: Open Educational Resources (OER): OER and Accessibility

Open Educational Resources (OER) should be designed with accessibility in mind so that the materials area available to all students and learners.

Use the resources below to learn about accessible design and evaluate the accessibility of resources that you are considering adopting.

Using these design principles will make your OER better for all users and, with OER, you have the opportunity to revise and improve the materials of others when you adapt them for your own courses.

Frameworks for Accessibility

CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology)
CAST is a multifaceted organization with a singular ambition: Bust the barriers to learning that millions of people experience every day. We do this by helping educators and organizations apply insights from the learning sciences and leading-edge practices to educational design and implementation.
CAST | About Universal Design for Learning
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.
CAST | The UDL Guidelines
The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
W3C Standards and Drafts - Accessibility
WebAIM (Web Accessibiliety in Mind)
WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) has provided comprehensive web accessibility solutions since 1999. These years of experience have made WebAIM one of the leading providers of web accessibility expertise internationally. WebAIM is a non-profit organization based at the Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice at Utah State University.
WebAIM | Constructing a POUR Website - Putting People at the Center of the Process
This article discusses best-practices for developing accessible materials using the POUR framework: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust

Books on OER Accessibility

BCcampus | Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition
The goal of the Accessibility Toolkit - 2nd Edition is to provide resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook—one that is free and accessible for all students. This is a collaboration between BCcampus, Camosun College, and CAPER-BC.