3.2 Flexibility is the key

A driving principle we choose to adopt in this project is flexibility, both on the side of the users (usually students) and producers (usually lecturers) of course materials.

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  Writers of course materials should be able (and appropriately supported) to produce accessible versions with as little change to their preferred workflow as possible. In any automatic conversion process, technical issues and incompatibilities are inevitable — but technical support, consultation, testing, and iterative refinement will drastically help to reduce this.

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  Users should be able (and appropriately supported) to customise the display of course materials to a format that is most accessible to them. There are certainly general guidelines we can follow to produce accessible documents — but prescribing a specific format (e.g. prescribing a specific font family or colour palette) is not as good as giving people options.

Importantly: accessibility is about ensuring that everyone can engage fully. For instance, for many students, PDF course materials will always be their preferred option: they are useful for printing, annotating and note-taking on tablets, and can be easier to use offline. We are very much not asking lecturers to get rid of their PDF notes unless they want to — the idea is to also provide alternative options.