Satisfying the Accessibility Requirements
The California State University and MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) developed a set of accessibility “checkpoints” to help evaluate the accessibility of Open Educational Resources (OER) contributions to the SkillsCommons repository, SkillsCommons. CAST, and the CSU Accessible Technology Initiative contributed the references and support resources helping others learn how best to design, evaluate, and remediate their Open Educational Resources (OER) to maximize the accessibility of the learning resources for all.
Find more information about SkillsCommons’ VPAT and accessibility strategy at Accessibility and SkillsCommons.
Accessibility Checkpoints and Instruction Guide
The Accessibility Checkpoints 
Listen
These checkpoints are meant to guide your team in their evaluation of the accessibility of the educational materials your institution produced. Once completed, this document should be uploaded to the repository along with the corresponding material.
Instruction Guide for Completing the Accessibility Checkpoints Listen
This instruction guide provides “reference materials” for each criteria which should help your team reliably learn and apply the checkpoints for your contributions to the SkillsCommons repository.
Accessibility Evaluation Manuals
The Accessibility Evaluation Manuals
The accessibility evaluation manuals address how to evaluate three different formats of digital materials: HTML, PDF, and Word. There are sections in each manual that contain short descriptions of each checkpoint, what components of the materials the evaluators should focus on, and how the evaluators should use the tools and materials provided to evaluate each checkpoint. View the Accessibility Evaluation Manuals.
Additional Accessibility Guides & Resources
The additional resources, guides and websites listed below provide you some basic support for addressing the accessibility requirements of commonly used file formats.
- Creating Accessible Word Documents Listen
- Creating Accessible PowerPoint Documents Listen
- Creating Accessible PDF Documents Listen
- An overview of accessibility and other resource documents for instructional materials
- Orientation to Universal Design for Learning: Meeting TAACCCT Requirements (3/30/2015) [ Webinar ]
- Looking for accessibility experts and expert accessibility organizations that can help you design in and evaluate the accessibility of your grant-produced materials?
- CAST’s Universal Design for Learning Accessibility Website
- SkillsCommons Accessibility Support Strategy
How Your Efforts Benefit Others
Lana’s Story – “From Where I Sit” Video
Lana finds herself in college at age 40 after Retinitus Pigmentosa takes away her sight, her career, and her future. She decided to return to college but it meant she had to learn many new skills. In this video she demonstrates her accessibility tools and describes how she manages her course work and her relationships with professors. Video Transcript