Accessibility means making online services as easy as possible for as many people as possible to use. Institutions of higher education are required by law to produce accessible material. Accessibility is easy to achieve in many software applications. The most common difficulty is to produce alternative texts for images, videos or audio.
An accessible file or webpage is also available and easily accessed by all thus increasing opportunities for citizen science.
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.1 contains 49 legally mandated criteria. The guidelines are organized under four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. WCAG 2.2 was published at the end of 2023, and the changes in it will become requirements of the Act.
Success criteria have been defined for each guideline. There are three levels of success criteria: A, AA and AAA. The Act on the Provision of Digital Services requires higher education institutions to achieve at least level A and AA.
When designing learning materials, it is good to consider these points:
The requirements of the Digital Services Act apply to theses. It is the responsibility of the higher education institution to provide guidance on the accessibility of theses and accessible thesis templates.
The own publication series of institutions of higher education must be accessible. It is the responsibility of the author to follow the publication guidelines for each series and to include alternative texts to images.
The Digital Services Act was extended to commercial publishers, and by 2025, publications of other publishers should also be accessible. Publishers outside EU have their own accessibility requirements as well, for example, in the USA, The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) sets its own requirements. Please read the publisher's guidelines carefully.
