Open Educational Resources (OER)

Introduction

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SNHU is committed to an equitable and inclusive environment that welcomes all learners. 
Any OER that is being used at SNHU should meet the University's standards for Accessibility. 

This document highlights a few key Accessibility concepts to be aware of when selecting OER and other 
openly licensed materials.

Guidelines

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General Document Guidelines

• Content must be free from major issues, and minor ones should be able to be fixed.
• Content is structured with sequential headings and subheadings.

Font & Typeface

• Font size is 12 points or higher for body text.
• Font size is 9 points for footnotes or endnotes.
• Font size can be zoomed to 200% without becoming blurry, distorted, or cut-off/obscured/overlapped by other content.
• Text does not rely on color alone to convey information.
• Light gray fonts should be avoided.
• Sans Serif fonts (Calibri, Arial, Verdana, etc.) are considered to be more accessible.

Images

• Images, charts, and graphs are completely described using alternative text when appropriate.
  • If the information in the images, charts, and graphs display limited detail, an alternative presentation of the detailed information, such as a table or a link to a longer text description, would be needed.
• Decorative Images
  • Do not have alt text descriptions
  • Are marked as Decorative or have Null alt text
  • Descriptive text is unnecessary if the image doesn’t convey contextual content information.
• Graphs, charts, and maps include contextual or supporting details in the text surrounding the image.
• Images do not rely on color to convey information.

Tables

• Tables include row and column headers.
• Tables include a caption.
• Tables avoid merged or split cells.
• Tables have adequate cell padding.
• Row and column headers have the correct scope assigned.
  • Including the scope allows assistive technology to interpret the logical relationship between the rows and columns.

Links

• The link text describes the destination of the link and does not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more.”
• If a link will open or download a file (like a PDF or Excel file), a textual reference is included in the link information (e.g., [PDF]).
• Links do not open in new windows or tabs.
• If a link must open in a new window or tab, a textual reference is included in the link information (e.g., [New Tab]).
• Link text is clearly differentiated visually from regular text using both underline and a different color from the body text.

Multimedia

• A transcript is available for each audio resource including relevant non-speech content.
• Transcript includes:
  • speaker’s name
  • all speech content
  • relevant descriptions of speech
  • descriptions of relevant non-speech audio
  • headings and subheadings
• Videos have accurate captions of all speech content and relevant non-speech content.
• Videos include audio descriptions of contextual visuals (e.g., graphs, charts).
• Math videos include adequate description of visuals (e.g., include numbers when describing a chart).

Formulas

• Simple equations use symbols that will be correctly interpreted by screen readers:
  • Example: Minus signs and not hyphens.
• Complex equations are written in or translatable to MathML
  • Example: Written in LaTeX and rendered with MathJax.
• Equations are images with alternative text descriptions if MathML is not an option.

Accessibility Checklist by SNHU is adapted from the Accessibility Toolkit (2nd ed.) by BCcampus, licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. This adaptation is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. Prepared March 2024 by the Office of Knowledge Management and Information Science.