OERs and accessibility – what’s the issue?

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The big picture

»Some 50-60% of your students who had support via Disabled Student Allowances will no longer get it.

» Statutory Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations “where a provision, criterion or practice places a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, and this relates to the provision of information, …it is reasonable to …ensure that the information is provided in an accessible format (p 102).

So OERs are…helpful

»“ensure that the information is provided in an accessible format”

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My text rich

resource

Her image rich

resource

His video rich

resource

Their audio rich

resourceBlind? Dyslexic?

Deaf?

Or OER’s might be helpful if - 1

The resources you link to (or create) allow for

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Text magnification ……………………………………… with reflow

Or OER’s might be helpful if - 2

Not this …… but this ……

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Or OER’s might be helpful if - 3

Not this …… but this ……

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Or OER’s might be helpful if - 4

Not this …… but this ……

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Or OER’s might be helpful if – 5

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https://diagram.herokuapp.com/training/when_to_describe

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So the content creation tool really matters

» Open source, locally hosted, secure and future proofed» Licence-free so access to all staff AND all learners» Device independent – author/consume on tablets, Mac, Pc, phone.» Built in (and continuing) accessibility» Easy to use, familiar editing options» Template driven for sophisticated

interactivities» Collaborative, RSS export feeds

and inbuilt CC options

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An open source contender» Xerte toolkits

Inbuilt accessibility – keyboard accessible (creating and consuming), tab order, colour changing, link to accessibility guidance.Browser based accessibility.Easy navigation

Multimedia

Mobile accessibility

» tinyurl.com/xerte2016

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Find out more…

Alistair McNaughtSubject Matter Specialist Alistair.McNaught@jisc.ac.ukjisc.ac.uk07443 984111

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND

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Creating Accessible Open Education Resources

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OER Accessibility double whammy - 1

»Unknown audience› how will your materials be

repurposed?› how will your materials be

accessed and by whom?

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OER Accessibility double whammy - 2

»Unknown platform»Unknown support»Unknown liability

Explicitly stating how accessible your resources are & what standards you have worked helps authors and students.

Deaf group sues Harvard, MIT

over online courses

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Accessibility & Usability interconnected

Universal

Usable

Accessible

Accessible to all including those with disabilities

Usable by all including those with disabilities

Designed for all users

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Reusable or repurposed?

»Demonstrating…› Coastal erosion› Fair weather cloud

formations› Photographic

composition»Use appropriate caption

to give contextalt="Shore, Sandy Beach, Cloudy, Ocean, Sea, Beach, Seascape"

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Creating an accessible MOOC, lessons learnt!

»Creating courses for FutureLearn platform since 2013»Designing accessible content requires planning &

commitment› Captions and transcripts for videos are vital but time

consuming to create well. › Platform neutral PDF formats need checking and tagging› STEM content requires particular attention to be made

accessible to all … animations, graphs, tables, equations

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Tools to help with accessibility

Magnification Screen reading Text to speech with highlightingAlternative input Speech recognition

Free Document Accessibility Checkers

»Structured Word document (using heading and styles e.g. Microsoft Accessibility Checker)

»Accessible PDFs - free checker PAC 2 or online PAVE

»Calibre to convert to ePub and many other formats

»Accessible ebook checker (ePub) from International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)

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Check external resources – Web2Access

» Integrating external resources can bring accessibility and usability challenges

»Web2Access reviews accessibility top 100 e-learning resources

»web2access.org.uk

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Accessibility Tools for authors & learners

»ATbar: open source browser toolbar.

»www.atbar.org

»Marketplace allows for customisation e.g.› Moodle› WordPress

»ATbar for Windows: text to speech & colour overlay for windows

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Making STEM accessible» Use LaTeX or MathML not images» STEMReader plug-in for ATbar allows maths to be read & checked» www.stemreader.org.uk

open bracket, 4 x minus 3 y, close

bracket, plus 7 open bracket, x plus y, close

bracket.

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Looking forward… OER brings• Wide range of expertise –

learning from each other and spreading this knowledge out to stakeholders

• Crossing boundaries between accessibility, usability and personalisation.

• Opening the subject of digital accessibility out beyond the gatekeepers

Using Open Education to develop accessibility skills

Stepwise Approach

Each week is made up of activities broken down into small steps

representing the type of contentEach step is timed,

checked for accessibility with named author

Copyright and legal requirements signed

off even for OER!

A record of all the steps is kept for reference – useful when

advising about ease of access

for all stakeholders

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Free Accessibility Courses – Developing technical skills

» Facebook accessibility tutorial – 20 minutes› H stands for headings and

semantic markup.› I stands for images and labels.› K stands for keyboard

navigation.› E asks for you to ACT with a

little extra love with ARIA, Colour and Text

http://accessibility.parseapp.com/

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SlideWiki www.slidewiki.org

»Accessible platform for creating, editing & sharing OER› SlideWiki 2.0 being developed as part of

Horizon2020 project› Collaborative authoring platform › Interesting in trialling from 2017?

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Contact details

Abi James a.james@soton.ac.uk EA Draffan ead@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Accessibility TeamWeb and Internet ScienceUniversity of Southampton https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/