ISKME created a guide for our open education community to get started with your accessibility review, starting with reviewing and, if necessary, remediating your OER and Hubs; encouraging engagement with your user community; and a list of web accessibility resources.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Resource Review and Remediation
- Encourage users to flag accessibility issues
- Create an OER Accessibility Team
- Share and Celebrate Accessibility Work
More Web Accessibility Resources
Resource Review and Remediation
Open Author Resources
Open Author resources are OER that have been created and published within the OER Commons platform authoring tool. Built into the Open Author editor is an accessibility checker tool that allows OER creators and remixers to perform a check on their content and remediate as they go through the creation process. This does rely on authors to have an understanding of digital accessibility to know how to fix errors.
Open Author accessibility functionality
Open Author requires that all embedded images include Alt-Text.
All videos uploaded to an Open Author resource are auto-captioned by ISKME’s video service.
When an author attaches a file to their Open Author resource, the author needs to ensure that their attachments have been built with accessibility requirements in mind.
It is the responsibility of the author and user of any resources on OER Commons to ensure the resource has met accessibility requirements.
To that end, a checkbox acknowledging the resource meets accessibility requirements is provided for all Open Author submissions.
Guidance for Remediating an Open Author Resource
Each Open Author resource is unique. We’ve developed tools and guides to help you look for accessibility issues and address them. Use the help articles linked below for detailed information.
Open Author Accessibility Best Practices Support: ISKME’s OER Commons Help Article on Open Author accessibility best practices highlights the features built into our OER authoring tool, Open Author, that can support authors in creating accessible OER.
Characteristics of Accessibility Tool: ISKME’s Characteristics of Accessibility Tool was developed for our community to evaluate OER for key features related to accessibility, to identify the strengths and areas of improvement of a resource.
Ask Authors to Help You Review and Remediate Open Author OER
It is the responsibility of the author and user of any resources on OER Commons to ensure the OER they publish meets accessibility requirements. Hub and Microsite administrators are encouraged to reach out to the authors to ask them to review and remediate their published OER.
How to identify Open Author resources
Use this help article to help you filter your search to identify Open Author resources (for users and administrators).
How to export author contact information (Administrators Only): For Hub and Microsite administrators, ISKME has updated Open Author .csv data exports with relevant contact information. The help article outlines the process.
Template: draft email to authors: You are welcome to use this document to prepare emails to authors of Open Author resources on your site. The link goes to a Google Doc that is set up like a mail merge template, with [brackets] to indicate where specific. The document is in view mode; please copy the document and proceed to remix based on your audience.
Submit from Web Resources
The majority of resources indexed on OER Commons and ISKME partner Microsites are resources hosted by external content providers.
How To Identify Resources Submitted from the Web
Use this help article to help you filter your search to identify externally-hosted OER submitted from the Web (for users and administrators).
How To Identify Resources With Accessibility Statements
Review Content Provider accessibility statements in this OER Commons Help Article.
Find the "Provider Accessibility Statement Available" collection: ISKME has curated a collection of resources by providers that have made an accessibility statement.
Accessibility Guidance For New Submit From Web OER
The resources submitted from the web on your site are records that index to external websites. The owners of those websites are responsible for the accessibility of their content. Since ISKME (and, presumably, your team) does not own the content for the resource, we cannot remediate the resources submitted from the web from our platform.
We recommend preparing for new OER submitted from the Web by taking the following steps:
Build accessibility review into your publishing workflow.
Review content provider accessibility statements.
Find a Provider Accessibility Statement: ISKME has identified resource providers who have made accessibility statements for the materials they host.
"Provider Accessibility Statement Available" collection: ISKME has curated a collection of resources by providers that have made an accessibility statement.
Join the Accessibility in Hub on OER Commons.
Build accessibility practice into your training on OER production, curation, and publishing.
Contact ISKME if you’d like to design a training.
Manual Hub Check
Use our checklist to manually review and remediate your Hubs.
ISKME’s software engineers audit all sites for accessibility issues and remediate as they are discovered. However, if you find an accessibility issue on your site that you are not able to resolve as an Hub or Microsite Admin, please flag it for us.
For OER Commons Hub Administrators: Email info@oercommons.org or use the support widget on OER Commons and select “accessibility issue” with your request. Please include the name of your Hub in your request.
For Microsite Administrators: Email info@oercommons.org, cc lea@iskme.org with your request. Please include the name of your Microsite in your request.
Encourage Engagement
Web accessibility is the responsibility of everyone who publishes open educational resources online. We encourage you to engage your users and OER community members to help you; all of us will benefit when we work together and support each other’s efforts.
Encourage users to flag accessibility issues
Provide easy-to-use ways for your users to alert you to accessibility issues. Be as clear and transparent as possible about how your team will respond to issues as they arise.
Help article: How to Flag an Accessibility Issue
Create an OER Accessibility Team
Identify the people in your organization who can help you implement and champion accessibility work. With your OER Accessibility Team, you might:
Standardize accessibility practice across your organization.
Cross-train and cross-pollinate across teams.
Provide training on accessibility practices.
Create a plan for reviewing and remediating resources.
Develop an outreach strategy for future publishing and curation campaigns.
Start a group on your Hub or Microsite to facilitate this work. You are welcome to join one of our accessibility-focused groups on OER Commons: ISKME Accessibil-a-buddies (partner-facing) or a11y allies (open to any user).
Share and Celebrate Accessibility Work
Showcase the accessibility efforts of your users and team in your outreach efforts such as conference presentations, trainings, email, and social media.
Invite your users to subscribe to your email list.
Use the announcement feature on your Hub email members.
Share announcements on your social media sites.
Share your stories with ISKME.
We may publish your story in our partner newsletter or OER Commons newsletter, The Remix.
We can boost your stories via Bluesky.
More Web Accessibility Resources
Please contact ISKME with any questions or suggestions at info@oercommons.org.
Accessibility @ OER Commons: Find links to ISKME’s Accessibility Statement and OER Commons Policy, help articles, and OER.
Open Author Accessibility Best Practices Support: ISKME’s OER Commons Help Article on Open Author accessibility best practices highlights the features built into our OER authoring tool, Open Author, that can support authors in creating accessible OER.
Guidance for creating accessible web content: We recommend reviewing the guidance created by our partners at NCADEMI.
Accessibility in OER Hub on OER Commons: Find OER from content providers with accessibility statements, resources that support accessibility work, information about the ADA Title II Web Requirements, and groups where you can connect and support fellow accessibility practitioners working in open education.
Contact ISKME at info@oercommons.org if you need further support. Thank you for your support of web accessibility in open education and OER. We are grateful for all you do.