Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI) guide to accessibility and universal design

The goal of the Accessibility Toolkit - 2nd Edition is to provide resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook—one that is free and accessible for all students.

The POUR principles are a great place to start. These principles define four qualities of an accessible experience and they are at the foundation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) an international standard for making web content accessible.

The ASCCC OERI has developed two self-paced OER courses. At the end of OER Basics successful participants will be able to:
1) Properly identify the creative commons (CC) license on a resource and describe how this resource can and cannot be used.
2) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of open resources using current research in the field as evidence.
3) Research, analyze and review repositories of open resources.
4) Effectively search for open resources and post reviews in an OER repository.
5) Create an open resource by remixing multiple existing resources and designate a license to this new resource based on the licenses of multiple resources used.
Accessibility Basics provides an overview of accessibility not limited the context of OER.

The checklist is organized into five key categories, building on the Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust (POUR) Framework for understanding the four principles of accessibility, developed by W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and translated into the questions below. The STEM OER Accessibility Framework adds a fifth principle and question to ensure that the unique components of Science Technology, Engineering and Math course materials are accessible.