Accessibility within open educational resources and practices for disabled learners: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The number of disabled students is rapidly increasing worldwide, but many schools and universities have failed to keep up with their learning needs. Consequently, large numbers of disabled students are dropping out of school or university. Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) contain several relevant features, including the possibility of reusing and remixing, which have led researchers to consider using OER and OEP to facilitate meeting the needs of disabled and functional-diverse students in order to increase their accessibility and e-inclusion capabilities in educational settings. The very limited research to date, however, has provided a limited holistic understanding of accessibility within OER and OEP in order to aid researchers in pursuing future directions in this field. Therefore, this paper systematically reviewed 31 papers to provide insights about functional diversity within OER and OEP. The results obtained highlighted that accessibility is still in its infancy within OER and that researchers should focus more on considering the four accessibility principlesperceivable, operable, understandable and robustwhen providing OER. Additionally, while several researchers have focused on several issues related to accessibility within OER, limited focus has been given to assistive technologies using OER. Finally, this paper provides several recommendations to increase accessibility within OER and help design more accessible OER for students with functional diversity.

A Case Study of Applying Open Educational Practices in Higher Education during COVID-19: Impacts on Learning Motivation and Perceptions

“…The term "Open Educational Resources" (OER) was first coined at UNESCO's 2002 Forum on Open Courseware, and it was recently defined by UNESCO [1] as "learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others." Several research studies have highlighted that OER have several advantages, as they facilitate knowledge sharing, reduce learning costs, and ensure inclusive learning [2,3]. Due to these advantages, several universities have started adopting OER worldwide.…”

“…For example, teachers can enhance learners' engagement in open collaboration via technology, such as social networks. [2,3]. Due to these advantages, several universities have started adopting OER worldwide.…”

“…As for the advantages and challenges of OEP, most relevant papers have been analyzed from the theoretical perspective of academic research [3,41]. However, this study analyzes the advantages and challenges of OEP from a practical perspective, i.e., after using the OEP-based course.…”

Current state of open educational resources in the Arab region: an investigation in 22 countries

“…Furthermore, to increase accessibility to education, ALECSO in collaboration with the secretary Clinton launched in 2013 . Besides, despite the growing number of OER (Hoosen & Butcher, 2019) and the policy attention devoted to OER accessibility, as demonstrated by the presence of guidelines to increase the accessibility of OER within the Ljubljana OER action Action Plan (UNESCO, 2017a, b), the extent to which OER are actually accessible is currently being questioned (Zhang et al, 2020). This is further seen in the Arab region where 68% of the participants reported that there is no OER for learners with disabilities.…”

“…This is further seen in the Arab region where 68% of the participants reported that there is no OER for learners with disabilities. Particularly, from a literature review conducted by Zhang et al (2020) about OER and disability, only one study is found from Tunisia which discussed the accessibility of MOOCs for learners with disabilities, conducted by Brahim, Khribi, and Jemni (2017). Therefore, much attention should be put to provide accessible OER for learners with disabilities.…”