Lessons learned in accessibility through the BC Open Textbook Project  | BCcampus OpenEd Resources

"BCcampus is excited to share with you the amazing work that has been happening in the area of accessibility and open textbooks. Back in 2014, Amanda Coolidge, Senior Manager, Open Education, BCcampus, Sue Doner, Faculty, Instructional Designer, eLearning, Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Camosun College and Tara Robertson, Accessibility Librarian and Coordinator, Centre for Accessible Post-secondary Education Resources BC (CAPER_BC), created the BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit. The purpose of the toolkit is to help instructional designers and faculty have a better understanding of how to make educational materials accessible.

Early in 2015, we conducted user testing with students who have a range of visual disabilities, from that testing we identified how to make changes to ensure all of our open textbooks are accessible. We were able to work on a few of the books, but because of our small team, we had to put that project on hold until this fall when we hired Josie Gray, a History Major from the University of Victoria. Josie has been instrumental in researching best practices in accessibility and in implementing many changes throughout the open textbooks to comply with accessibility standards. In this post, we will outline the lessons learned with regards to accessibility and guide you through changes you can make to your own educational materials.The practices described will help improve accessibility for people who access BCcampus’ textbooks in all types of formats, including on the web, PDF, Mobi, epub, and word files.The gold standard for accessibility are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), a set of guidelines which describe the minimum standards a web page must adhere to for it to be considered accessible. The WCAG site is a useful starting point for anyone who wants to start learning how to make their digital content more accessible. There are three levels, which range from 'A' as the lowest standard to 'AAA' being the highest. For BCcampus’ textbooks, we decided that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines level 'AA' would be the standard we would conform to."