 Hello. Welcome to my recorded presentation on creating accessible open educational resources. During 2020, as we made the shift to virtual learning, OER became increasingly important for creating immersive and engaging course materials. However, students with physical and mental disabilities, academic and emotional challenges and marginalized communities have faced significant obstacles over the past year due to the lack of accessibility of these new course materials. Because of the need to create materials quickly, there was insufficient time to conduct adequate research on how to create accessible content. Now that we are entering year two of remote learning, it is a good time to learn the best practice standards for creating inclusive and engaging open education materials. To begin, let me explain exactly what I mean when I say accessible. The term accessibility refers to being in compliance with the principles of universal design. Universal design means to create a resource that can be assessed, understood, and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age disability, race, or culture. Simply put, universal design means that it can be used by everyone. When creating OER, it is important to remember that not everyone experiences digital content the same way. With this presentation, I hope to spread awareness of some of the ways individuals engage with digital content and recommend some tools for creating accessible OER. All of the tools I mentioned as well as several others will be included in the accompanying documentation for this presentation. The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials defines four critical areas for making certain content comprised of universal design. Perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. So let's break those down one at a time. Number one, perceivable content makes it possible for all users to see and hear the information. In addition to providing for the needs of neurotypical learners, it is also necessary to take into account the thousands of individuals using screen readers either because of a visual or cognitive impairment. For these learners, listening is an easier, sometimes the only option for understanding digital materials. Screen readers use text-to-speech software to translate the information on the screen into speech. However, when a screen reader parses a document or a webpage, there is some content that is left out or is read as a long string of HTML code that comes off as gibberish. There are a few things you can do to make sure that this doesn't happen to your content. Alt text or alternative text refers to the written description of an image. When a screen reader sees an image in a document or webpage, if no alt text is present, it assumes that the image is purely decorative and skips the element completely. In most programs, you can add alt text by right-clicking your image and selecting the option to edit alt text, as you can see from the image on the right. Closed captioning is the visual display of the audio component of the video, which allows people to read spoken dialogue as well as non-speech information like music or sound effects. Closed means the captions only appear when activated by the viewer. By including closed captions and a transcript of the video, you make the content available to people with disabilities and non-native speakers who may find it easier to read the information than hear it. When thinking about the visual images, background, and text colors, it's important to use high-contrast color combinations. For example, a yellow font on a white backdrop can cross eye strain for many people with vision loss, as well as many able-bodied people. The website ColorSafe allows you to mix and match color combinations and tells you the accessibility ratio of each. A good accessibility score would be anything over 3.0, but the higher the number, the better. For more information about color contrast ratios, Katie Riley's 2019 article provides a great overview. It's recommended that you also use a large and bold font and not to clutter pages. Information that is too small or cluttered will be difficult to read and cause eye strain. The tool previously mentioned, ColorSafe, will also allow any user to test the size and font of the text. Operable content will provide options to learners for how they can navigate and interact with the content, with a mouse, keyboard, or even voice commands. For example, learners with visual impairments may not be able to use a mouse to select options on the screen, but they can use keyboard shortcuts or touch gestures to navigate the content by heading or link. Others such as programmers and power users may just prefer the keyboard because they are able to navigate faster with it. Here are some tips for making your content operable. Organize the content into sections and start with descriptive headings to help improve navigation for everyone. This will also assist users who move around on screen entirely with the keyboard because the tab button will neatly jump from one heading to the next. Include descriptive links. On most screen readers, keyboard shortcut or touch gesture can be used to bring up a list of links. It will be difficult for someone to determine their desired option if every item on the list reads click here or learn more. For clarity purposes, each link should be unique and descriptive. For all learners, flashing and moving images can distract from the rest of the content. For some though, it can actually trigger a seizure that requires some time off before they can return to the content. For these reasons, one should avoid animations or other images with rapidly flashing or moving content. Anything that flashes more than three times per minute can lead to an onset of a seizure. Learners who rely on assistive technology may also take longer to complete the same interactions as others. If timed performance is not essential to the goal of an activity, consider disabling the time limit or at least giving the option for additional time. Number three, understandable content allows users to focus more of their effort on understanding the information rather than working around barriers in the design. Providing clear instructions written in plain language and consistent formatting will assist users in comprehending the material. For example, if bullet points are used in one area, learners' comprehension is improved if they are used throughout the entire document. If materials include more than one language, including programming languages, the authors should identify when they are switching between them. This will ensure assistive technology learners will better comprehend the information. One way to do this is to use parentheses to specify the translation of foreign words. For example, in the sentence, hey amigo, let's go to the beach. Right now, I have hey amigo, parentheses, friend, and parentheses. Let's go to the beach. In this situation, I'm using italics as a visual indicator that there is a foreign word, but also parentheses as a non-visual indicator. Number four, robust content works for learners in a variety of web browsers and devices, including tablets and smartphones. Robust content is also tested before it is distributed to ensure that it meets accessibility guidelines and can be assessed by everyone. Fortunately, there are a couple of tools to help check the accessibility of your OER content. First, there is a browser extension called Funkify, which simulates how people with various physical and mental disabilities will interact with any web page. Funkify also has a feature called Robot Robin, which allows the user to simulate how a screen reader would interact with the page and highlight the potential accessibility issues. Site-improves accessibility checker is another great resource for identifying the accessibility issues of a page. Both of these tools will help identify accessibility issues and offer solutions. Thank you for taking the time to watch this presentation. I hope it's helped you learn how to make accessible open educational resources. Please check out the accompanying presentation materials for a list of tools to help make accessible content. And feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, or suggestions. I am very accessible.