Paywalls are Not the Only Barriers to Access: Accessibility is Critical to Equitable Access - The Scholarly Kitchen

"The community of proponents of open access to content has for many years been focused on the availability of content to the public. In large part, these efforts have been centered around removing paywall barriers to access content. To be sure, paywalls haven’t been the only focus, as reusability via license assignment has been another concern. It has taken years to settle on a rainbow of colors that describe the various approaches to describing how open an item is, in what ways the openness is achieved, and the timing of the content’s release into the open world. Despite some naysayers, the progress toward a more open ecosystem has been undeniable. However, one significant gap in this march toward openness is the comparative lack of attention to the accessibility of content. Content that is inaccessible is no more open to those who need supportive reading functionality than content that is behind a paywall. Access without accessibility doesn’t serve the goal of providing federally funded resources to the public...."