Accessibility in Open Educational Resources

Great Opportunity for Librarians and Educators!

This is a series of three no-cost academies designed to build capacity in educator teams.

ISKME and CAST’s National AEM Center invite teams of educators to learn how to use accessible Open Educational Resources (OER) to make learning more equitable and bust the barriers to learning that millions of learners experience every day. This opportunity is free to educators.

Our joint Accessible OER Academy series is provided at no-cost to educators and will introduce district cohorts to how openly licensed resources can be key levers for both adapting existing resources to increase accessibility and using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to design resources that are accessible for learners with disabilities from the start. The resources and engagement will occur on OER Commons and all resources will be organized into collections that can be posted to UEN’s eMedia.

We invite educators from the same district to form a cohort that will join experts in OER and accessibility. Throughout the six-week Academy series, district cohorts will receive access to a curated set of high-quality resources to review and adapt for use in their own settings. District cohorts that complete all six sessions will be invited to present at a national summit alongside CAST and ISKME. Each individual participant of the Academy will receive a certificate of completion. Each team will submit one application.

We encourage multidisciplinary cohorts of 3-5 educators that represent a diversity of lived experiences, classroom expertise, and current educational roles. Consider representatives from general ed, special ed, ed tech, assistive technology, library media, and administration. Your team will produce resources that can be used with and to benefit all learners, so consider building a team that can collaborate for instructional purposes. These resources might include student-facing assignments, newsletters to families or other instructional materials.

As a result of participating in the Academy series, educators will be able to:

• Understand the fundamentals of both accessibility and OER, and why synergy between the two matters for learners with disabilities.
• Apply best practices to ensure OER are created with accessibility from the start.
• Evaluate the accessibility of curated OER based on the principles of accessible design.

The series will consist of six 90-minute webinars with activities between each. The series is split into three levels that have two sessions per level. Each of the six sessions will feature Accessibility and OER experts, resources and group breakout work time.

• 101 – Fundamentals of Accessibility and OER on Sept. 27th and October 4th – 5:00 PM MT
• 201 – Adapting and Creating Accessible OER on Oct. 11th and October 18th – 5:00 PM MT
• 301 – Curating and Evaluating OER for Accessibility on Oct. 25th and Nov. 1st – 5:00 PM MT

Apply as a team by September 13th. If you have any questions, please contact Katie Garrett at katie@uen.org.