1) The document discusses whether open education is truly inclusive for all learners, especially those with disabilities, who represent 15% of the world's population. 2) The International Association of Universities partnered on a project to develop guidelines to help education content producers create accessible information from the start for learners with disabilities. 3) The guidelines were created through an international collaboration, trialled by universities, and are available online under open licensing to promote more inclusive and accessible open education information going forward.

1. Is Open Education Inclusive?
Isabelle Turmaine
International Association of Universities
OE Global 2016, Krakow (Poland)

2. International Association of
Universities (IAU)
• Isabelle Turmaine, Director for Information
Projects and Services at IAU,
• A Worldwide association of higher education
institutions and organisations representing 120
countries,
• Created in 1950 by universities under the
auspices of UNESCO and still in official
partnership (Associate Status) with UNESCO.

3. Is Open Education Inclusive?
My presentation will:
• Somehow question the inclusiveness of open
education;
• Expose IAU’s reasons for joining the ICT for
Information Accessibility in Learning Project;
• Briefly describe the main result of the project:
Guidelines for accessible information for learning;
• Look at possible impacts;
• Open the subject for discussion.

4. Is Open Education Inclusive?
Not so long ago I would have said: YES!
The Open education movement and Open education
resources because they offer freely usable and
adaptable learning content are considered a
solution to reach out, especially when online.
And they are.
BUT do they reach out to all possible learners?
What about people with a disability?
Yet, according to WHO, they represent 15% of the
world’s population.

6. ICT for Information Accessibility in
Learning (ICT4IAL)
Context: More an more information for learning
is created in an electronic format. Why not take
advantage of this possibility to reach out to
pwd? Rules and directives exist but they often
are too complicated for non-computer scientists.
Aim: To develop guidelines for practitioners
(including one of the main information for
learning producers: universities (students,
faculty and staff) to help them produce content
that can be accessible to people with a disability
as from its creation

7. IAU’s reasons for partnering
1. The right to education is a human right.
Universities are doing a lot:
Disability services; one of the missions of open
universities; high-level position in charge of pwd;
research and study programmes.
But at times of financial constraints, support is
receeding.

8. IAU’s reasons for partnering
2. Access to higher education for people with a
disability is asked by government, regional and
international organisations.
• UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Education)
adopted by the UN General Assembly in
September 2015: Ensure inclusive and
equitable quality education and promote
life-long learning opportunities for all
(including at HE level);
• UNESCO New Delhi Declaration on Inclusive ICTs
for Persons with Disabilities acknowledges the
right of pwd to access information and
knowledge.

9. IAU’s reasons for partnering
3. IAU Policy Statement on Equitable Access,
Success and Quality in Higher Education
comprises the following key principle:
• Access to higher learning should be made
possible to all regardless of race, ethnicity,
gender, economic or social class, age, language,
religion, location or [dis]abilities.
It recommends that HEIs:
• Facilitate access to learning, respond to diverse
learning needs and increase outreach by the
appropriate and effective use of a variety of
delivery modes.

10. IAU’s reasons for partnering
4. To increase the number of people with a disability
at higher education level (student and faculty).
– Disability Statistics managed by Cornell
University : in the year 2013 only 13.5% of
non-institutionalized persons aged 21 to 64
with a disability in the US have an educational
attainment of a BA degree or higher, compared
to 32.1 % for persons without a disability.
– in the UK, according to the Higher Education
Statistics Agency (HESA), in 2013/2014, only
3.4% of full-time academic staff had a
disability.

11. Partners
• Technical organisations:
– Daisy Consortium
– G3ICT
• Professional organisations:
– European Agency for Special Needs and
Inclusive Education
– European Schoolnet
– International Association of Universities
• UNESCO

12. IAU’s role in the project
– To involve the higher education sector in the
project and in the development and validation
of the Guidelines
• Some 15 IAU Member Universities in Porto
(development) and in Riga (validation)
– To trial the Guidelines
• At the organization’s level on portals and
published and e-publications
• At a university’s level (IAU Member) on
online courses
– Open University of Catalonia, Spain

13. IAU’s feedback on the guidelines
Comments for improvement
BUT
Easier to use and implement than thought
Less time consuming than expected
– this should become more and more true with
experience
Very rewarding
– At a time when higher education is expected to
reach out to more students, of open societies
and lifelong learning

14. How are the Guidelines organized
• 2 steps for action:
– Step one looks at types of information;
– Step two at the medium used.
• Three levels of difficulty:
– Easy: actions that can be completed with a
general knowledge of common software
programmes;
– Advanced;
– Professional.
• Checklists.

15. Examples of guidelines
• Basic features are easy to implement and can
rapidly become automatic.
• No obligation to implement all from first try but
an incrementing process has been observed.
• Of course, it produces less sexy documents.
• Point size of minimum 12.
• Language of the document must be specified.
• The size of images must be scalable as needed.
• Alternate texts descriptions should be included.

16. Looking at the future
The Guidelines were launched in June 2015 in
English and made available in 25 other languages in
December 2015.
They are available online and licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.
They are in an accessible format (applying the
Guidelines).
Future adaptations and additional translations are
welcome and looked forward.

17. Looking at the future
Aim: Systematic use.
Barriers: Not yet known, Could be seen as
additional task, Lifespan by definition short.
Need for dissemination, awareness raising, political
support (and will), training, technical support,
adaptation, sharing, community building, and
cultural change.

18. Possible impacts
• ICT companies are looking at the market offered
by people with a disability. There might soon be
no need for Guidelines. Yet, these new tools
would come at a cost, and training would be
needed that might not be available to all pwd.
• Could increase quality of information provision for
learning, less design offers more time for
focusing on content.
• Changes benefiting pwd are benefiting all and not
only at a time of lifelong learning (ageing
students), temporary disabled persons, and
marginalized populations.

19. Conclusion
• Open education is not always open to everyone.
• ICT allows to provide more accessible content for
learning, but often taken care on an individual
basis for some already available docuemnt only.
• Creating accessible documents from inception
would be cheaper, more equitable and fair
(economic and social justice).
• This can only be done if this can be done easily
by the growing community of information
producers: hence the Guidelines.
• I hope this presentation would be the beginning
of more open accessible information for learning!

20. Let’s start the discussion
• Have you ever tested your open education
production on people with a disability?
• Would you look at the Guidelines once back home
and try to implement them in your daily
production of content for learning?
• Do you think the Guidelines are timely, how else
would you describe them?
• What additional support/ incentives would you
need to systematically implement the Guidelines
in your work?

21. Thank you
Isabelle Turmaine
International Association of
Universities (IAU)
i.turmaine@iau-aiu.net
www.iau-aiu.net
ICT4IAL
ICT for Information
Accessibility in Learning
Project - Guidelines
www.ict4ial.eu