Equity in OER Publishing by Josie Gray
OER Design
Josie Gray
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Topics covered in this section
In this section, I will be talking about accessible and inclusive design in the context of OER. I will talk about the social model of disability, a need to balance print and digital design considerations as OER become increasingly multimodal, and how OER publishing tools can help make accessible authoring easier. I hope you enjoy.
Resource design is the area that I have the most experience in and have been thinking about the longest.
Accessible but not accessible
People who advocate for OER often talk about “access.” They argue that OER improve access to education because they are available for free online, or they say a resource is “freely accessible online.” But this word accessible is also used to signify that something is accessible for disabled people. And unfortunately, many OER that exist today are inaccessible.
Digital formats have the potential to really increase the accessibility of educational materials. They are more flexible, and people can use assistive technologies interact with the content in different ways. For example, text can be enlarged on the screen or text-to-speech technology can read the content aloud. This allows people to access the content in a way that works best for them.
But accessible digital content does not happen on its own. It requires an intentional approach. There are guidelines. The W3C maintains the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provides instructions on how to design and structure web content so it is accessible to people with a range of disabilities.
But it is also not as simple as following a set of guidelines.
Social model of disability and spectrums of access
An idea I would like to introduce here is the social model of disability. I first encountered this idea when listening to Jess Mitchell present about inclusive design, but it is an idea that has a long history in the disability rights movement.
The social model of disability offers an alternative to the individual model of disability that currently dominates our society. The individual model sees disability as grounded in the individual, a personal deficit that needs a cure or accommodation. We see this model in universities, where students need to provide documentation of a diagnosed disability to be eligible for accommodation.
In contrast, the social model looks at external factors that create barriers. It sees disability as emerging when there is a mismatch between a person, their environment, and the tools they have access to. This model looks at how accessible and inclusive design can reduce or eliminate unnecessary barriers and, in doing so, make things better for everyone.
The classic example is the curb cut. A curb cut is where the sidewalk slopes down to meet the road at intersections. So rather than having to step o