This presentation focuses on accessibility issues in the context of Open Educational Resources. The research project was made possible thanks to funding from SCORE (Open University Support Centre for Open Resources in Education).

1. Fellowship report -
OERs and accessibility issues
Anna Gruszczynska
Sheffield Hallam University

2. The story so far...
- Started off with the aim of exploring the visual aspects of
OERs - changed track and became much more interested in
accessibility issues
- The revised project examines approaches to accessibility
within UKOER programme as well as barriers and
enablers to embedding accessibility within OERs
- Accessibility refers to the ability of web-based resources to
be viewed, navigated and read by everyone, including
learners with additional needs, which may be due to auditory,
visual, mobility, and/or cognitive impairments
- The ethos of open education and open access emphasises
the need to widen access and remove educational barriers,
including any barriers related to accessibility

3. Good intentions
Scoping exercise: review of UKOER1 (29 projects)
and UKOER2 (23 projects) plans and final reports
– accessibility was rarely mentioned or
incorporated within the project workflow, usually
as an afterthought, resulting in costly
retrofitting
– if addressed at all, accessibility was frequently
positioned within the realm of good intentions
which were frequently thwarted by lack of
necessary resources in terms of staff time or
project funding

4. Expert interviews
- "perfectly accessible" resource does not
exist - necessary to negotiate learner
expectations and provide for user preferences as
much as possible
- bottom-up approach preferable to the
impossible task of controlling resources centrally
- there is a need to ensure that creators are
using metadata accurately so that it is easy to
locate accessible practices
- another solution would be to rely on social
networking tools to flag up resources which are
accessible
- "openness allows you to find something that
isn't inaccessible"

5. Accessibility and OERs survey
- Targeted education professionals - 94
respondents
- Majority based in the UK and involved in
teaching and research within higher education
sector
- Approximately half have worked on an OER
project in the past three years
- Full report available from
http://oeraccessibility.pbworks.com

7. Embedding accessibility within
OER initiatives (2)
– Lack of tech support for faculty to make online
content accessible
– Accessibility issues can be very differently
prioritised in resource challenged environments
such as sub Saharan Africa
– Our requests for a more accessible interface to the
repository delayed the project significantly as
despite having produced many repositories it
appeared that the developers had not considered
accessibility in any depth. Our original plans to
include an audio-recorded commentary with each
resource deposited were not taken up by the
resource providers.

8. Importance of accessibility features
When searching for Factors influencing the
resources choice of resource
1. easily available 1. clear description which
alternative file formats indicated accessibility
2. ability to customise features
settings 2. recommendation from
3. transcript colleague
When designing resources 3. endorsement by a
1. transcript specialist body (such as
JISC TechDis)
2. ability to customise
settings
3. easily available
alternative file formats

9. Conclusions (1)
- There are a number of relatively simple
strategies that could greatly enhance the
accessibility of OERs
- There is a need to address accessibility
features of platforms where OERs are
deposited
- Resource creators should use metadata
accurately so that it is easy to locate accessible
practices

10. Conclusions (2)
- Responsibility for ensuring the accessibility of
OERs should not be seen solely as that of
resource creators - there is a need to provide
adequate support and resources
- Accessibility issues are complex and should
not be discussed in isolation from other OER-
related issues such as copyright or academic
practices related to sharing resources
- Accessibility issues should be explicitly
addressed within UKOER projects

11. Comments? Questions?
- You can contact me at
a.gruszczynska@shu.ac.uk
- For more information, please visit
http://oeraccessibility.pbworks.com/
- And finally, watch out for the ACTOER
(Accessibility Challenges and Techniques for
Open Educational Resources) JISCTechDis
project http://actoer.referata.com