Student Creator Responsibilities

Not only do you have rights as a creator, but you also have responsibilities. Whether you decide to share your work publicly or not, it should still be built on principles of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning.

Accessibility

Accessibility can be viewed as the “ability to access” something.[1] For our purposes, we typically think of accessibility in terms of Web accessibility.

“More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.”[2]

Making something accessible also means making it readily available and easily understood. When you begin creating content, it is important to keep in mind accessible design so that anyone could access your work as intended.

Important Accessibility Features

  • Using Heading levels
  • Ensuring that all images have alt text and captions
  • Color contrast and Font choices
  • Descriptive text for Links/URLs

There are many sites that walk you through not only accessibility principles but also provide checks on your work to ensure it is accessible. Check out the following sites for more information:

Experte Accessibility Checker and Experte Accessibility Checker Mobile

WebAIM – Contrast Checker Tool

WCAG – more guidelines on web accessibility

FLOE – Flexible Learning for Open Education

Watch the video Creating Accessible OER for Student Authors by Abbey Elder (both closed captioned and with a transcript on YouTube) which sums up all this information about accessibility in a quick and easily digestible way:

Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning is another concept that helps to ensure that your work is accessed easily, readily, and as intended.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL), is “a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn”.[3]

UDL moves beyond accessibility standards to create learning resources that meet the needs of all users regardless of ability. For example, while providing a transcript for a video is important because it can help users who may be hard of hearing, it can also help people who are visual learners. As a visual learner being able to read a transcript might help you understand the material more quickly and effectively then listening to a video.

UDL works to design resources in a variety of ways so that users can engage with the material in a process that works best for them.

Understanding and implementing accessibility and Universal Design for Learning into your work ensures that you are fulfilling your responsibilities as a creator.
This page is adapted from the chapter “Accessibility and Usability” – The OER Starter Kit by Abbey Elder at Iowa State University. Licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License.
  1. “Accessibility” (2023). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility ↵
  2. W3 Schools. “Web accessibility.” Accessed Sept. 14 2023. https://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/soc.html#of ↵
  3. CAST. “About universal design for learning.” Accessed Sept 14, 2023. http://www.cast.org/our-work/about-udl.html ↵

Student Creator Responsibilities from The Open Pedagogy Student Toolkit Copyright © 2023 by The Open Education Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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Environmental Justice Copyright © by Deron Carter, Colleen Sanders, and Environmental Justice Students is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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