People have worked and studied from home for several years. It is not a new concept, but it has evolved. e-commerce has become online shopping, and e-learning has become online learning. Living life online during COVID times has become the new normal. It’s likely that online learning will continue to evolve and that means open education resources need to keep up.
Most people were not taught digital accessibility in school. Consequently, it likely it comes as an afterthought to designing open education resources. Similarly to a building, it takes far more effort to make it accessible after it is built. This point is made by Josie Gray from BCcampus in Canada.
Gray’s presentation slides and speaking notes explains how to create inclusive open education resources (OER). First she takes you through the basics of UDL and some digital information. Subsequent slides explain the best ways to make links, data tables, audio, and video. Colour contrast, images, text descriptions and displaying image captions are also covered.
The last part of the presentation discusses the “average” student, social model of disability, and other factors affecting accessibility. This is a useful document for anyone producing online educational material.
As these are speaking notes together with presentation slides, it makes for easy reading and understanding. A good example of document presentation style for others to follow.
The title of the presentation is Accessible and Universal Design for Learning in OER. The presentation slides are available separately. The slides are free to use, modify, or distribute with attribution.