Not open for all: accessibility of open textbooks

Elena Azadbakht; Teresa Schultz; Jennifer Arellano

doi:10.1629/uksg.557

Abstract

In order for open educational resources (OERs) to be truly open to all, they must be accessible to learners with disabilities, including those with visual, auditory, physical and cognitive disabilities. This study sought to determine the accessibility of a randomly selected sample of 355 open textbooks using a custom rubric based upon the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), version 2.1, primarily at the Levels A and AA. Included books fell into one of four format types: HTML files/websites, PDFs, Microsoft Word documents and EPUBs. The average number of ‘fails’ – instances in which they ran afoul of a rubric category – across the whole sample was 5.93 and the median was 6, out of a total of 14 or 15 categories, depending on the format type. Overall, most of the books did not meet basic accessibility requirements, such as including alternative text for any images, properly coding/tagging any tables and following a logical heading order structure.

References

1Sarah Roslyn Lambert, “Changing Our (Dis)Course: A Distinctive Social Justice Aligned Definition of Open Education,” Journal of Learning for Development 5, no. 3 (2018), https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/290 (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
2Maha Bali, Catherine Cronin, and Rajiv S. Jhangiani, “Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective,” Journal of Interactive Media in Education 2020, no. 1 (May 11, 2020): 10, DOI: 10.5334/jime.565 (accessed 6 August 2021); Julie Willems and Carina Bossu, “Equity considerations for open educational resources in the glocalization of education,” Distance Education 33, no. 2 (August 1, 2012): 185–99, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.692051 (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
3“Introduction to Web Accessibility,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), para. 6, https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/ (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
4United Nations. “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” 2006, https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/rights/convtexte.htm (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
5“Web Accessibility Laws & Policies,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), June 8, 2021, https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/ (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
6“Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on the Accessibility of the Websites and Mobile Applications of Public Sector Bodies,” EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/2102/oj (accessed 6 August 2021); “Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the Accessibility Requirements for Products and Services,” Pub. L. No. 32019L0882, OJ L 151 (2019), data.europa.eu, http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj/eng (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
7“A Guide to the EU Directives on Digital Accessibility,” Siteimprove, https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/eu-web-accessibility-directive/ (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
8“Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, AS AMENDED with ADA Amendments Act of 2008,” Pub. L. No. 101–336, § 12101, 42 U.S.C. (1990), https://www.ada.gov/pubs/adastatute08.htm (accessed 6 August 2021); “The Rehabilitation Act of 1973,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/rehabilitation-act-1973 (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
9Lindsay McKenzie, “Fifty Colleges Sued in Barrage of Ada Lawsuits Over Web Accessibility,” Inside Higher Ed, 2018, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/10/fifty-colleges-sued-barrage-ada-lawsuits-over-web-accessibility (accessed 6 August 2021); Abigail Hess, “Students are suing their colleges for coronavirus-related refunds,” CNBC Make it, April 13, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/13/students-are-suing-their-colleges-for-coronavirus-related-refunds.html (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
10Raizel Liebler and Gregory Cunningham, “Can Accessibility Liberate The ‘Lost Ark’ of Scholarly Work?: University Library Institutional Repositories Are ‘Places of Public Accommodation’,” The John Marshall Law Review 52, no. 2 (2019): 31, https://repository.law.uic.edu/lawreview/vol52/iss2/2/ (accessed 19 August 2021).
Back to article
11“Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 2020, https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
12“EPUB Accessibility,” DAISY Consortium, https://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/conformance/epub.html (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
13Amy Kazuye Kimura, “Defining, evaluating, and achieving accessible library resources: A review of theories and methods,” Reference Services Review 46, no. 3 (January 1, 2018): 425–38, DOI: 10.1108/RSR-03-2018-0040 (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
14Jeffrey P. Bigham et al., “An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren’t Accessible,” in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2016): 621–631, DOI: 10.1145/2851581.2892588 (accessed 6 August 2021); Gian Wild and Daniel Craddock, “Are PDFs an Accessible Solution?,” in Computers Helping People with Special Needs, ed. Klaus Miesenberger, Christian Bühler, and Petr Penaz, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016), 355–58, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41264-1_48 (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
15“It’s Time to Use the Modern Digital Publishing Format for Your Organization’s Documents,” DAISY Consortium, https://daisy.org/info-help/time-to-use-the-modern-digital-publishing-format/ (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
16Carlos Alberto Silva et al., “Types of problems encountered by automated tool accessibility assessments, expert inspections and user testing: a systematic literature mapping,” in Proceedings of the 18th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, IHC ’19 (Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil: Association for Computing Machinery, 2019), 1–11, DOI: 10.1145/3357155.3358479 (accessed 6 August 2021).
Back to article
17Kazuye Kimura, “Defining, Evaluating, and Achieving Accessible Library Resources.”
Back to article
18Barbara Blummer and Jeffrey M. Kenton, “A Systematic Review of E-Books in Academic Libraries: Access, Advantages, and Usage,” New Review of Academic Librarianship 20, no. 1 (October 12, 2018): 79–109, DOI: 10.1080/13614533.2018.1524390 (accessed 11 August 2021); Frederick I. Bowes, “An Overview of Content Accessibility Issues Experienced by Educational Publishers,” Learned Publishing 31, no. 1 (January 2018): 35–38, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1145 (accessed 11 August 2021); V. J. Dobson and A. McNaught, “Crowdsourcing e-Book accessibility information and the impact on staff development,” Insights 30, no. 2 (July 10, 2017): 61–70, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.358 (accessed 11 August 2021); Michael Fernandez, “How Accessible Is Our Collection? Performing an E-Resources Accessibility Review,” The Serials Librarian 74, no. 1–4 (May 31, 2018): 81–86, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2018.1430424 (accessed 11 August 2021); Adina Mulliken, “Eighteen Blind Library Users’ Experiences with Library Websites and Search Tools in U.S. Academic Libraries: A Qualitative Study,” College & Research Libraries 80, no. 2 (2019): 152–68, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.2.152 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
19Nidia Moreno, Edmundo Tovar Caro, and Rosa Cabedo, “Systematic Review: OER and Disability,” in 2018 IEEE 5th International Congress on Information Science and Technology (CiSt), 2018, 428–31, DOI: 10.1109/CIST.2018.8596659 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
20Xiangling Zhang et al., “Accessibility within open educational resources and practices for disabled learners: a systematic literature review,” Smart Learning Environments 7, no. 1 (January 3, 2020), DOI: 10.1186/s40561-019-0113-2 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
21Cecilia Avila et al., “ATCE: an analytics tool to trace the creation and evaluation of inclusive and accessible open educational resources,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference, LAK ’17 (New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2017), 183–87, DOI: 10.1145/3027385.3027413 (accessed 11 August 2021); Silvia Margarita Baldiris Navarro et al., “A Technological Infrastructure to Create, Publish and Recommend Accessible Open Educational Resources,” May 2018, https://dugi-doc.udg.edu/handle/10256/16994 (accessed 1 August 2021); Catherine Mulwa et al., “EnhAnced government learning portal: Production of universally accessible open educational resources,” in 2016 Future Technologies Conference (FTC), 2016, 375–84, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/FTC.2016.7821637 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
22Rosa Navarrete and Sergio Luján-Mora, “Bridging the accessibility gap in open educational resources,” Universal Access in the Information Society 17, no. 4 (November 1, 2018): 755–74, DOI: 10.1007/s10209-017-0529-9 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
23Navarrete and Luján-Mora, “Bridging the Accessibility Gap, 755–74;”; Cecilia Ávila Garzón, “Tracing the creation and evaluation of accessible open educational resources through learning analytics,” TDX (Tesis Doctorals En Xarxa), June 12, 2018, https://dugi-doc.udg.edu/handle/10256/15837 (accessed 11 August 2021). DOI: 10.1007/s10209-017-0529-9
Back to article
24Germania Rodríguez et al., “A framework for improving web accessibility and usability of open course ware sites,” Computers & Education 109 (June 1, 2017): 197–215, DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2017.02.013 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
25Rosa Navarrete and Sergio Luján-Mora, “User Experience for Disabled Users in Open Educational Resources Websites,” Latin American Journal of Computing 2, no. 3 (January 12, 2015), https://lajc.epn.edu.ec/index.php/LAJC/article/view/93 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
26Navarrete and Luján-Mora, “User Experience for Disabled Users in Open Educational Resources,” 30.
Back to article
27Silvia Da Rosa and Regina Motz, “Do we have accessible oer repositories?,” in 2016 International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE) (2016): 1–6, DOI: 10.1109/SIIE.2016.7751867 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
28Michelle Reed and Ciara Turner, “Experiential Learning and Open Education: Partnering with Students to Evaluate OER Accessibility,” in OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians, eds. Andrew Wesolek, Jonathan Lashley, and Anne Langley (Forest Grove, OR: Pacific University Press, 2018), https://rc.library.uta.edu/uta-ir/handle/10106/27656 (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
29Reed and Turner, “Experiential Learning and Open Education,” 108.
Back to article
30Gudrun Gustafsdottir, “Accessibility: Bold vs. Strong and Italic vs. Emphasis,” Siteimprove Help Center, https://support.siteimprove.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115002726312-Accessibility-Bold-vs-Strong-and-Italic-vs-Emphasis (accessed 11 August 2021).
Back to article
31Silva et al., “Types of Problems Encountered by Automated Tool Accessibility Assessments, Expert Inspections and User Testing.”
Back to article

Not open for all: accessibility of open textbooks

Abstract

Paradigm

My account