Checking In: OER Accessibility as a Journey, not a Destination

Since its inception in 2018, the UTA Libraries OER publishing program has centered accessibility as a core principle. Mavs Open Press has established award-winning accessibility statements and workflows to ensure our resources are accessible to and usable for all readers. However, after exploring SiteImprove, a new accessibility tool that we hoped would streamline our processes, we found that we were still missing the mark in many ways—not only did we discover a number of issues that had been either introduced since or missed by our initial accessibility checks, but we also found that even our newer resources were subject to link rot. We assure our authors that their OER will be living documents that can continue to grow and develop over time, but our accessibility standards still reflected a traditional model where a resource could be considered “finished” upon publication. Beginning this summer, we will begin piloting a new model of continuing quality control for our published resources in order to maintain our high standards over time. This presentation will discuss the existing Mavs Open Press accessibility requirements, introduce this new quality control model, and consider possible challenges for implementation and scalability.