Education Commons^™

We’Re Open Access—But Are We Accessible?, Matt Ruen, Jackie Rander

Jacklyn Rander

The open access movement, from the Budapest and Berlin declarations onward, has consistently focused on removing economic and legal barriers to scholarly information. While this has increased access to research for many, it implicitly assumes that content need only be online, free, and openly licensed for everyone to have access—an assumption which neglects the barriers that may lurk within content, preventing disabled or impaired users from enjoying the same access to scholarship.

This assumption is as prevalent in library open access services as elsewhere; like many other repository teams, we have focused on recruiting content, not evaluating it. This year, …