Accessible Content
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Accessibility is often a balance between contrary tensions and accessibility can only be properly judged at the point of delivery. Understanding the delivery is therefore crucial. Content designed for online consumption by unsupported / remote learners needs different accessibility approaches than content designed to be delivered face to face with a known group. JISC Techdis describes this as the Holistic Approach.
JISC Techdis attempt to shift the debate on accessibility away from ‘Accessible’ and ‘Inaccessible’ content to a more nuanced understanding. All resources have some degree of inaccessibility to some users and the key objective in teaching / training should be to add value by any means possible, even through partially accessible resources.
Creating accessible content is a large part of many sector initiatives that JISC Techdis has supported, Open Educational Resources (OER) for example being an example of a large programme with national and international projects.
A major source of educational content comes from commercial publishers and so JISC Techdis works closely with the Publishers Association, Publishers Licensing Society, Editeur and the Right to Read alliance to help publishers improve the accessibility of their digital resources, example PDF files and e-book platforms.
