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Accessibility and OER
Accessibility is a challenging issue for open educaitonal resources. Because OER are often not part of accredited programs but rather derivatives thereof, they are not held to the same accessibility standards as online course materials (at least in the US). Nonetheless, producers of OER are acutely aware that OER can present unique opportunities for persons with disabilities to access educational materials otherwise unavailable to them.
I’ve yet to meet a producer of OER who didn’t want to meet the maximum possible standard of accessibility that was practical given the costs of doing so. As with everything else, meeting accessibility standards becomes a tradeoff between format and volume. Projects can publish at higher volume with less accessability, and in meeting higher standards of accessibility, end up publishing at lower volume. This is a difficult tradeoff, especially knowing that materials that don’t meet the highest standards of accessibility often cannot be easily imported into the LMS systems of schools providing for-credit instruction.
