OER and Accessibility: What You Need to Know: Home

This library guide will cover OER accessibility best practices, various OER platform accessibility instructions (LibGuides, WordPress), how to create accessible content (word, PDFs, videos, audio, math equations), and how to select accessible OER content to reuse and remix in courses. The material provided here were collected for a workshop given on October 22, 2019 by the CUNY Accessibility Librarian, Amy Wolfe, titled "OER and Accessibility: What You Need to Know."

• Open Educational Resources (OER): 
  "Open Educational Resources is a term given to educational content and materials which are made available at little or no cost, generally for use in not-for-profit education." -- (Williams, P. (2010). Beyond Control: Will Blended Learning Subvert National Curricula? In E. M. W. Ng (Ed.), Comparative Blended Learning Practices and Environments (pp. 1-19). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Retrieved from Gale Ebooks)
• Accessibility: 
  "The concept of accessible environments is used to describe environments that are approachable, obtainable, or attainable. Often this means that the environment can be altered to enhance the individual's probability to participate in that environment in a way that is meaningful to the individual. Such environments are thus viewed as accessible." -- (Brown, S. C. (2006). Accessibility. In G. L. Albrecht (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Disability (Vol. 1, pp. 9-13). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference. Retrieved from Gale Ebooks)
• Accessibility Codes and Standards: 
  "Accessibility standards and codes have been developed to provide architects and other designers with clear guidance about how to implement accessible design. Accessibility codes are regulations promulgated by governments to implement laws that mandate accessibility. ." -- (Steinfeld, E., & Salmen, J. P. S. (2006). Accessibility Codes and Standards. In G. L. Albrecht (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Disability (Vol. 1, pp. 13-16). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference. Retrieved from Gale Ebooks)

According to the CUNY Accessibility Librarian, Amy Wolfe:

"The web's importance in our daily lives continues to grow. The internet is the new public square. It is a place where ideas, information, education, entertainment, and commerce are taking place. OER are definitely part of this new public square. OER is about building and sharing knowledge with as many people as possible. Accessibility is part of that mission and means making your OER usable by people of all abilities."