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Copyright and digital accessibility

Implications for learning providers

Alistair McNaught Consultancy Ltd

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What is digital accessibility

Personaliseable

Text based resources reflow when magnified, change colours, navigate by heading levels, speak content, change spacing of lines/ letters/ margins, �work without a mouse, interact with assistive technology tools and plugins.�Theoretically, web pages can do all of this. And Word docs and PDFs.
Images and graphics have teaching points available as text.
Videos and podcasts have teaching points available as text – eg caption or transcript or summary.

Flexible

Phone, tablet, PC, assistive technology.

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What is the legislation?

Disability Discrimination Act 1995 > Equality Act 2010

Focusing on

Individual disabled people
“Reasonable Adjustment”

“If there’s a problem we might fix it”

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

Focusing on

organizational responsibility
removing barriers at source,
“meeting the accessibility requirement”.

“These are the problems and this is what we’re doing to address them.”

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Contrasting paradigms

PERSON CENTRED

(REASONABLE ADJUSTMENT)

PROCESS CENTRED

(MEET ACCESSIBILITY REQUIREMENT)

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“Reasonable adjustment” - benefits

The benefit for disabled people

Personalised
Contextualised
Dynamic

The benefit for the organisation

Reactive
Contextualised
Arguable

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“Reasonable adjustment” - issues

The problem for disabled people

Needs energy to ask
Needs courage to argue
A needless waste of energy
The culture doesn’t change, disabled people adapt to it.

The problem for the organisation

Unpredictable,
Made up “on the fly”
Legally vulnerable,
No institutional improvement.

What about reasonable adjustment? Issues

There are some significant issues with reasonable adjustments. The problem for disabled people include:

they need to have the energy to continue to seek support around barriers,

it needs a certain amount of courage to continue to ask for people to change their practice or give you an alternative format. Some disabled people feel that they are going to be a nuisance, make themselves unpopular and compromise their marks.

It is a needless waste of energy since the barriers should not exist in the first place if digital content is properly developed.

The culture doesn't change as a result of reasonable adjustments, disabled people just have to adapt to business as usual.

There are also problems for the organisation.

Relying on reasonable adjustments means you have no way of predicting when the next call for an alternative format is going to come or who it will come from. This can impact on planning and workloads.

There is also the problem that reasonable adjustments end up being made on the fly. And different people in different departments may make entirely different decisions about what is reasonable. That can result in inconsistent practice. Inconsistent practice and lack of overall strategies means you have failed you anticipatory duty. This makes you legally vulnerable to challenge.

The biggest problem of reasonable adjustments for organisations is it does not result in an institutional improvement because it is continually focusing on specific solutions rather than systemic removal of barriers.

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Meeting the accessibility requirement

Premises:

It is unreasonable to create content that is needlessly inaccessible.
Disabled people should not need to ask for an accessible version.
After 21 years of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and 25 years of disability legislation this should already be working.

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The Accessibility requirement

Not insignificant,
Not all checkpoints are relevant to all content,
BUT applies to all home grown content, licensed and purchased content.

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The legislation conundrum

The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Disability) Regulations 2014

31B Making and supply of accessible copies by authorised bodies

(1) If an authorised body has lawful possession of a copy of the whole or part of a published work, the body may, without infringing copyright, make and supply accessible copies of the work for the personal use of disabled persons.

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

12.—(1) A failure by a public sector body to comply with the accessibility requirement is to be treated as a failure to make a reasonable adjustment.

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Damned if you do/n’t

The organisation must make all content accessible. (2018 regs)

BUT

The organisation only has the right to “make and supply” accessible copies of copyrighted materials to disabled people (2014 regs)

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Strategies for wriggle room

Procure wisely

Influence academic practice

Train students strategically

Advocate broadly

Explain effectively

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Procure wisely

Accessibility as a core procurement criterion,
Check supplier’s accessibility information,
Insist on

a high ASPIRE score or
lower licence cost to cover additional support needs.

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Influence academic practice

Sliding scale of preposterous demands…

Mandatory minimum of digital content on reading lists,
Mandatory accessibility training on document accessibility,
Departments supporting additional costs for inaccessible resources,
Course leaders responsible for course level accessibility statement that includes known issues and remediation plans.

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Train students strategically

Exploiting different formats and views;

Online, PDF, EPUB, HTML

DIY remediation via

Browser plugins – eg Spreed, ReaderView, colour and contrast shifters.
Office 365

PDF > Word > Immersive Reader (colours, text to speech etc)

Google drive

PDF > Googledoc > Text to speech or > Word > Immersive Reader

OneNote / GoogleKeep / EverNote etc

screenshot > extract text > Word > Immersive Reader

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Advocate broadly

Lobby Government Digital Services
Lobby CLA
Lobby Publishers Licensing Society
Develop sector wide “best practice” compromise for safety in numbers.

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Explain effectively

Accessibility statement

Library level
Individual platform level.

“Some of our licensed content has accessibility issues. Accessibility details are available next to each platform. See our recommendations on the most accessible platforms and formats. We have adapted our procurement requirements to prioritise accessibility.”

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Strategies for wriggle room - complete

Procure wisely

Influence academic practice

Train students strategically

Advocate broadly

Explain effectively

Human rights v copy rights?

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Further information

ASPIRE supplier accessibility statements and scores
Training on formats and ebook accessibility.
Public sector website accessibility
Audits and accessibility statement support:

AbilityNet/McNaught | AllAble

Accessibility maturity support for whole organisation buy-in

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Thankyou!

McNaught Consultancy Ltd

enquiries@alistairmcnaught.co.uk

http://tiny.cc/amcnltd

https://tiny.cc/mcnaught

@alistairm