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One of the basic premises of open education is access. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) believes:
…that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue. Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.[1]
Access in this context refers to the ability for students, instructors, and others to obtain access to education. Releasing textbooks and other educational resources with open-copyright licences is a big step toward removing barriers, as it makes these materials free of cost and free to use, distribute, and change. But there is more that goes into accessing a resource than it just being free and online.
For a textbook to be truly accessible, people of all abilities need to be able to access the content. This means designing a textbook that accommodates people with diverse learning styles and ensuring the content can be accessed by all, regardless of disability. It also means creating materials that include diverse viewpoints and voices. As you plan your textbook, contemplate how to design it so it is accessible, diverse, and inclusive.
Read what your colleagues are saying about Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Open Education [New Tab].
Accessibility
As an open textbook author and publisher, it’s important to consider the social-justice side of open education. Listed below are some of the barriers students face during their education, as well as some solutions and examples.
| Barrier Type | Challenge | Solution | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physical Impairments | Low vision or blindness | Use alternative text (alt-text) to describe an image’s content or function that can be read by a screen reader. | All images in Introduction to Psychology – 1st Canadian Edition [New Tab] have alt-text. |
| Hearing impairment or deafness | Add transcripts and captions to all audio content. | The instructional videos [YouTube – New Tab] created for Concepts of Biology-1st Canadian Edition [New Tab] are all captioned. | |
| Motor-skill impairment, immobility | Provide file formats that can be uploaded into a variety of mobile devices. | Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality in BC [New Tab] has a number of file types available. | |
| Learning Disabilities | Difficulty absorbing information via reading or difficulty concentrating (ADHD) | Add audio clips to printed text that student can listen to while reading along. | Common Core Trade series [New tab] (23 books) has audio files that accompany the text content. |
| Language Comprehension | Low literacy: adult basic education (ABE) student or English language learners (ELL) | Provide a print copy with increased font size or provide formats that allow the font size to be adjusted. | The PDF of BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental English –