A note from the Rebus Community
We are working to create a new, collaborative model for publishing open textbooks. Critical to our success in reaching this goal is to ensure that all books produced using that model meet the needs of all students who will one day use them. To us, open means inclusive, so for a book to be open, it must also be accessible.
As a result, we are working with accessibility experts and others in the OER community to develop best practices for creating accessible open textbooks, and are building those practices into the Rebus model of publishing. By doing this, we hope to ensure that all books produced using the Rebus Community are accessible by default, and require an absolute minimum of remediation or adaptation to meet any individual student’s needs.
While we work on developing guidelines and implementing support for authoring accessible content, we are making a good faith effort to ensure that books produced with our support meet accessibility standards wherever possible, and to highlight areas where we know there is work to do. It is our hope that by being transparent on our current books, we can begin the process of making sure accessibility is top of mind for all authors, adopters, students and contributors of all kinds on all our open textbook projects.
Below is a short assessment of eight key areas that have been assessed during the production process. The checklist has been drawn from the BCcampus Open Education Accessibility Toolkit. While a checklist such as this is just one part of a holistic approach to accessibility, it is one way to begin our work on embedded good accessibility practices in the books we support.
Wherever possible, we have identified ways in which anyone may contribute their expertise to improve the accessibility of this text.
We also welcome any feedback from students, instructors or others who encounter the book and identify an issue that needs resolving. This book is an ongoing project and will be updated as needed. If you would like to submit a correction or suggestion, please do so in the Rebus Community forum.
Accessibility Checklist
| Category | Item | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Organizing Content | Content is organized under headings and subheadings | X |
| Organizing Content | Headings and subheadings are used sequentially (e.g. Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) as well as logically (if the title is Heading 1 then there should be no other Heading 1 styles as the title is the uppermost level) | X |
| Images | Images that convey information include Alternative Text (alt-text) descriptions of the image’s content or function | X |
| Images | Graphs, charts, and maps also include contextual or supporting details in the text surrounding the image | X |
| Images | Images, diagrams, or charts do not rely only on colour to convey important information | X |
| Images | Images that are purely decorative contain empty alternative text descriptions. (Descriptive text is unnecessary if the image doesn’t convey contextual content information) | X |
| Tables | Tables include column headers, and row headers where appropriate | X |
| Tables | Tables include a title or caption | X |
| Tables | Tables do not have merged or split cells | X |
| Tables | Tables have adequate cell padding | X |
| Weblinks | The weblink is meaningful in context, and does not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more” | X |
| Weblinks | Weblinks do not open new windows or tabs | X |
| Weblinks | If weblinks must open in a new window, a textual reference is included in the link information | X |
| Embedded Multimedia | A transcript has been made available for a multimedia resource that includes audio narration or instruction | X |
| Embedded Multimedia | Captions of all speech content and relevant non-speech content are included in the multimedia resource that includes audio synchronized with a video presentation | X |
| Embedded Multimedia | Audio descriptions of contextual visuals (graphs, charts, etc.) are included in the multimedia resource | — |
| Formulas | Formulas have been created using MathML | — |
| Formulas | Formulas are images with alternative text descriptions, if MathML is not an option | — |
| Font Size | Font size is 12 point or higher for body text | X |
| Font Size | Font size is 9 point for footnotes or endnotes | X |
| Font Size | Font size can be zoomed to 200% | X |
