Overview
This open educational resource (OER) Accessibility Across the Curriculum has been created to increase accessibility awareness, knowledge and everyday inclusion in the world by teaching accessibility in classes, across the curriculum. Introducing accessibility considerations and topics into all subjects being taught, will help students and by extension the world, think about making sure the world is accessible and not off-limits and out of reach to so many because accessibility has not been taken into consideration.
Description
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) stated “The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge” (W3C, 2016 – w3c mission). In 2012, Norman Youngblood, co-director of Auburn University’s Laboratory for Usability, Communication, Interaction, and Accessibility, discussed how students in an interactive media curriculum course not only needed to understand accessibility on a legal level but also on an ethical level.
In their 2018 “Experiential Learning and Open Education: Partnering with Students to Evaluate OER Accessibility” Reed and Turner wrote about using experiential learning, which they defined as “learning by doing”. In 1994 Wayne Hodgins defined a learning object as “any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning” (Rodriquez et al., 2016).
Accessibility Across the Curriculum is an OER learning object and a repository of learning objects, where issues of accessibility will be addressed. The OER combines information on the history of accessibility, the legal fights for accessibility, accessibility laws and current activities around accessibility. It will explain how everyone can benefit when accessibility is taken into consideration while also providing technical, how-to information on how to produce accessible content. The repository will provide access to learning objects/assignments on accessibility for teachers who want to teach accessibility in their courses but are unsure how to incorporate accessibility into their courses.
OER Goals
Learning about accessibility, learning by doing, becoming aware of how accessibility issues and opportunities can be added into numerous fields, can lead to increased accessibility. By incorporating accessibility into all subjects and teaching students to always consider accessibility, their knowledge of accessibility will increase, which they can take with them out into the workforce. The regular teaching of accessibility, making accessibility considerations something everyone thinks about in their various fields each and every day will lead to increased accessibility universally.
How was this OER created?
As Norman Youngblood said in 2018 “Accessibility cannot be an afterthought. It needs to be part of the creative process.” I took this to heart and every decision I made in the creation of Accessibility Across the Curriculum was informed by accessibility. Read a narrative about the decisions I made, why I made them, how they benefit accessibility and how I evaluated my capstone OER site to make sure it was as accessible as possible. Read about my theoretical framework and methodology used to create this OER. You can download my white paper from the CUNY Libraries Academic Works.
Future
Accessibility Across the Curriculum is a live, on-going OER site which will continue to grow as new learning objects/assignments are added. If you have any learning objects you think should be added to this OER please contact me. — Amy Wolfe
Contact Information: Email Amy Wolfe at amy [at] awolfeworks [dot] com
Want to use this OER?
Fantastic! Reusing, revising, remixing, and redistributing is all a part of OER. All I ask is you follow the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and to give proper attribution by using the recommended citation for this OER (listed below and in the footer)
Recommended Citation
Wolfe, Amy (2020). Accessibility Across the Curriculum – Learn Accessibility and Share Lessons in All Courses [Open Educational Resource, OER]. A Wolfe Works. Retrieved from: https://accessibilityacrosscurriculum.awolfeworks.com/ License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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