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 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 using the Rebus Community Accessibility Suggestions form.
| Area of focus | Requirements | Pass? |
|---|---|---|
| Organizing Content | Contents is organized under headings and subheadings | Yes |
| Headings and subheadings are used sequentially (e.g. Heading 1, heading 2, etc | Yes | |
| Images | Images that convey information include Alternative Text (alt-text) descriptions of the image’s content or function [Ed note: Most images contained extensive alt text originally. Alt text was added to remaining images in May 2020.] | Yes |
| Graphs, Charts, and Maps also include contextual or supporting details in the text surrounding the image | Yes | |
| Images do not rely on colour to convey information | No | |
| Images that are purely decorative contain empty alternative text descriptions. (Descriptive text is unnecessary if the image doesn’t convey contextual content information) | Yes | |
| Tables | Tables include row and column headers [updated May 2020] | Yes |
| Table includes title or caption [updated May 2020] | Yes | |
| Table does not have merged or split cells | Yes | |
| Table has adequate cell padding | Yes | |
| Weblinks | The weblink is meaningful in context, does not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more” | Yes |
| Weblinks do not open new windows or tabs | Yes | |
| If weblink must open in a new window, a textual reference is included in the link information | n/a | |
| Embedded Multimedia | A transcript has been made available for a multimedia resource that includes audio narration or instruction* | n/a |
| Captions of all speech content and relevant non-speech content are included in the multimedia resource that includes audio synchronized with a video presentation | n/a | |
| Audio descriptions of contextual visuals (graphs, charts, etc) are included in the multimedia resource | n/a | |
| Formulas | Formulas have been created using MathML | n/a |
| Formulas are images with alternative text descriptions, if MathML is not an option | n/a | |
| Font Size | Font size is 12 point or higher for body text | Yes |
| Font size is 9 point for footnotes or endnotes | Yes | |
| Font size can be zoomed to 200% | Yes |
*Transcript includes:
- Speaker’s name
- All speech content
- Relevant descriptions of speech
- Descriptions of relevant non-speech audio
- Headings and subheadings
Help Needed
- Some tables throughout text need to be converted from images to HTML tables
- One image requires alt-text in the Customer Discovery chapter
- Alt-text for the Kickstarter statistics image in the Crowdfunding chapter can be refined
- Alt-text for images in the Entrepreneurship Abroad chapter can be refined
- Tables, figures, and headings need numbering.
Please comment on the project homepage if you are able to contribute to these improvements.
