Our Commitment to Accessibility

Creating accessible Open Educational Resources (OER) is essential to ensuring that education is truly open, inclusive, and equitable. Accessibility enables people with diverse abilities, learning preferences, and technical circumstances to participate fully in educational opportunities and to access, use, and benefit from open resources without unnecessary barriers.

We are dedicated to ensuring that our educational materials are accessible to all learners, regardless of ability or technology. We continuously design, format, and structure our e-textbooks to comply with standard accessibility guidelines to provide an inclusive learning experience.

Key Accessibility Features

• Accessing Your Course Materials: Course materials are provided as Google Docs or Google Slides in View-Only mode. You can read them directly in your web browser or customize how you view them.
  • You have the flexibility to:
    • Download: Save the file to your device in your preferred format (such as PDF, EPUB, or Microsoft Word/PowerPoint).
    • Print: Print a physical copy directly from your browser.
    • Adjust View & Screen Readers: Use built-in browser zoom, text-to-speech tools, or your preferred screen reader to navigate the document smoothly.
• Visual & Formatting Standards:
  • Alternative Text (Alt Text): Meaningful images and visual elements include descriptive alternative text (Alt Text).
    • Expanded alternative text for visual elements that may lack alt text in the primary e-textbook platform can be found in this document: Accessibility Companion
  • Text Formatting & Links: Hyperlinks are the only text styled with underlines to prevent confusion for assistive technologies. Text emphasis is achieved exclusively through bold or italic formatting.
    • For consistent screen reader navigation, links will open in the same browser window.
      • If you want to keep this page open: Right-click the link and select “Open link in new tab” (or hold Ctrl / Cmd while clicking).
      • If you follow a link directly: You can easily return to this page at any time using your browser’s Back button.
  • Tables: Tables are properly formatted with designated column/row headers and appropriate data markup to ensure screen readers interpret them correctly.
• Multimedia & Audio:
  • Video Captions: Videos are used as listening activities specifically designed to test and build visual/auditory comprehension skills. For this reason, captions have not been vetted.
  • Audio & Listening Activities: Listening comprehension activities intentionally omit transcripts/captions where text would interfere with the learning objective of practicing listening skills.