About This Toolkit

Welcome to BCcampus Open Education’s Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition. This support resource was written for open textbook authors—and others involved in writing and publishing—to create a truly open and accessible textbook.

BCcampus Open Education began in 2012 as the B.C. Open Textbook Project with the goal of making post-secondary education in British Columbia more accessible by reducing student costs through the use of openly licensed textbooks and other OER. BCcampus supports the post-secondary institutions of British Columbia as they adapt and evolve their teaching and learning practices to enable powerful learning opportunities for the students of B.C. BCcampus Open Education is funded by the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills & Training, and the Hewlett Foundation.

Open educational resources (OER) are defined as teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by the copyright holder, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them. We consider this publication — along with our guides, slide decks, and other support materials –as a type of OER that trains faculty, staff, and students how to build, customize, and use open textbooks.

This toolkit does not come with an index. Instead, use the search field located in the top-right of each page in the online version to locate a specific topic.

The BCcampus Writing Guidelines for Articles and Web Content and BCcampus Open Education Style Guide, along with the attached style sheet [Word file], were referenced during the copy editing and proofreading phases of this toolkit.

For more information about open education in British Columbia, please visit the BCcampus Open Education website.