Information is inherently valuable. Access to it, or lack of access, has the potential to affect the quality of one’s life. In this lesson, students will learn how access to information shapes people’s lives and how they can make informed decisions related to access to information in their lives and in their communities.

Questions about access to scholarship go back farther than recent debates over subscription prices, rights, and electronic archives suggest. The great libraries of the past—from the fabled collection at Alexandria to the early public libraries of nineteenth-century America—stood as arguments for increasing access. In The Access Principle, John Willinsky describes the latest chapter in this ongoing story—online open access publishing by scholarly journals—and makes a case for open access as a public good.

A commitment to scholarly work, writes Willinsky, carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible: this is the access principle. In the digital age, that responsibility includes exploring new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. Wide circulation adds value to published work; it is a significant aspect of its claim to be knowledge. The right to know and the right to be known are inextricably mixed. Open access, argues Willinsky, can benefit both a researcher-author working at the best-equipped lab at a leading research university and a teacher struggling to find resources in an impoverished high school.

Willinsky describes different types of access—the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, grants open access to issues six months after initial publication, and First Monday forgoes a print edition and makes its contents immediately accessible at no cost. He discusses the contradictions of copyright law, the reading of research, and the economic viability of open access. He also considers broader themes of public access to knowledge, human rights issues, lessons from publishing history, and "epistemological vanities." The debate over open access, writes Willinsky, raises crucial questions about the place of scholarly work in a larger world—and about the future of knowledge.

In this short module, you will learn about the importance of designing accessibility and how to ensure your documents are accessible to all. Not all people have the same degree of ability which is why it is important to consider when creating and sharing information with others. For instance, people with visual impairments and people with auditory impairments have to navigate documents differently than their able-bodied peers. This is why you should be thinking about how you can make your documents more accessible so that everyone can interact with it not just those who are able-bodied.

This is a treasure hunt game that simulates various disabilities and gives a sense of how frustrating non-accessible content can be for people with disabilities. Suitable for a general audience, no programming experience necessary.
An editable copy is also given, along with ideas about how to make it more accessible.

This activity guides students through the evaluation of a website that they have created to see if it is accessible for users with disabilities. Students will simulate a number of different disabilities (e.g. visual impairments, color blindness, auditory impairments, motor impairments) to see if their website is accessible; they will also use automated W3 and WAVE tools to evaluate their sites. Students will consider the needs of users with disabilities by creating a persona and scenario of a user with disabilities interacting with their site. Finally, students will write up recommendations to change their site and implement the changes.

Comments
Although this activity can be used in isolation, it is intended to be part of a series guiding students towards the creation of a front-end of a website. The series (all published as OER) consist of:

a) Needfinding
b) Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards
c) Front-end Website Design and Development
d) Accessibility Evaluation

A comprehensive collection of documents originally created to assist human services professonals and regional training academies with creating accessible content, including guides, walkthrough videos, checklists and practice documents.Navigate between sections using the dropdown menu at the top of the page!

Join Aujalee Moore (ODE), Debra Fitzgibbons (OTAP), Linda Brown (ODE), and Michael Cantino (BVIS) for shared learning about accessibility and instructional materials in Oregon K-12 schools.

This animation seeks to lead students to a deeper understanding of the challenges that come with online learning for those with disabilities, and a newfound or renewed sense of empathy towards others.

Music by VYEN.

"Accessibility Considerations for Different Multimedia Formats" is a component of Unit 6, titled "Accessible Digital Content," within the course "An Introduction to ICT Accessibility and Inclusive Design" developed by MADA Center in Qatar.
This section covers accessibility best practices when working with various multimedia formats including audio, video, images, text, and animations. The goal is to teach principles of accessible and inclusive design to create digital content and websites that are usable for everyone, including people with disabilities. It outlines important considerations for making different media formats accessible based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

This resource will contain all of the links and resources from the Accessibility in OER - IHE Spring 2023 Cohort webinar series. 

In this section, you and your team will engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports that can guide your work to support Accessibility in OER. You may or may not answer all of these questions, but this is an offering.

This resource contains all of links and materials for the Accessibility in OER Webinar Five that is co-facilitated by CAST and ISKME.

This presentation introduces Computer Science students to the notion of accessibility: developing software for people with disabilities. This lesson provides a discussion of why accessibility is important (including the legal, societal and ethical benefits) as well as an overview of different types of impairments (visual, auditory, motor, neurological/cognitive) and how developers can make their software accessible to users with those disabilities. This lesson includes videos and links to readings and tutorials for students.

Comments
These slides use Poll Everywhere polls; to use them, create your own Poll Everywhere account and duplicate the polls.

Think about the diverse learners in your classroom. How do we engage ALL learners in the curriculum content?  In the Accessible Content for All modules, you will learn about Accessible Educational Material (AEM) and tech tools that are hidden in plain sight in your schools.  You will hear teacher accounts of using tools like read-aloud, closed captioning, and translation to increase student engagement.  These modules are self-paced and cover ways to create accessibility within Google, Microsoft, and IOS.  Peruse the modules and explore the topics you want to learn more about.  Create your own learning journey toward building accessibility, equity, and engagement in your classroom.

This best practice report pertains to exploring the challenges and processes surrounding to support organizations in promoting inclusion through ICT by ensuring the procurement of accessible platforms that will support the access needs of PWD within the environment.

The resource introduces the audience to the OER Service as well as the university’s efforts to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of its resources. By looking at and together analysing three already published OER (all listed below), learners are taught what points to keep in mind as they are creating their own resources. The resource is available as a video and in transcript format with PowerPoint slides embedded.

This resource is a collaborative effort and was created for Geoscience Outreach students to practice considering the accessibility, inclusivity, and OER suitability of their created resources. It was originally run as a workshop by Open Content Curator Interns Molly Wickett and Alyssa Heggison in 2022, and has now been adapted for sustainable use as a video with accompanying transcript by an Intern August Enger in 2023.

This is the third and last part of a webinar series on InterPro which is held between May 6th 2020 and May 20th 2020.

InterPro is a database that helps users to understand the possible functions of proteins sequence by identifying what family it belongs to or what domains and motifs it contains. To deal with the growing volume of protein sequence data and an increasing demand to retrieve subsets of the data, often via programmatic access, the InterPro website has been entirely redesigned. It provides additional features and more flexibility in querying, presenting and retrieving data. The website relies on an Application Programming Interface (API) which can also be utilised by users for direct access to the data.

This webinar describes how the InterPro data is structured in the API, and how it could be accessed programmatically for further bioinformatics analyses.

You can access the slides via GitHub.

Who is this course for?
This webinar is aimed at scientists and bioinformaticians, with basic programming knowledge, who are interested in accessing the InterPro database programmatically.

This Module highlights classroom considerations that promote access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities (est. completion time: 1.5 hours).