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Archives of Business Research – Vol. 12, No. 12
Publication Date: December 25, 2024
DOI:10.14738/abr.1212.17994.
Kohli, R. K., & Pant, A. (2024). Some Guidelines to Publish Open Education Resource (OER) Materials for ADA Auditory Compliance
in a Business Class. Archives of Business Research, 12(12). 51-68.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Some Guidelines to Publish Open Education Resource (OER)
Materials for ADA Auditory Compliance in a Business Class
Raj K Kohli
Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics
Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, IN 46634
Anurag Pant
Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics
Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, IN 46634
ABSTRACT
The number of persons with disabilities in the US has steadily increased to more
than one in four today. Such disabilities have impaired both physical and cognitive
functioning in human beings. Educational designers have suggested using a
universal approach to designing courses and their materials such that all students
could potentially benefit from such accommodations. Visual disability in particular
has caused persons to be unable to grasp materials fully due to their dependence
on text to speech software. Persons with disability have lagged the rest of the
population in employability because of their lack of access to proper materials. In
business education, finance classes have a particular problem of being able to
depict tabular information to those with visual disability. This paper provides one
method of how text-to-speech options can be used to suitably modify teaching
materials and enable better learning among those with visual challenges.
28.7% of the US population has some form of disability. There are different disabilities in the
US population including vision (5.5%), hearing (6.2%), mobility (12.2%) and cognition (13.9%)
(CDC 2024). A disability is best understood in the modern context as anything that impairs the
normal functioning of the body or mind (CDC definition). People with disabilities are
disadvantaged in learning, hiring, and promotion processes on account of the accommodations
sought by them as well as the lack of proper assistive technologies. Consequently, 22.5% of
people with a disability were employed in USA compared to 65.8% of those without disability
(BLS 2023). Persons 65 and over accounted for over half the persons with disability. But even
in the 16 to 64 group, persons with disabilities had a 37.1% employment ratio compared to the
75% ratio for those without disability. These persistent lower levels of employment underline
how much work there remains to be done to level the playing field for those with disabilities.
Difficulties in providing accessible materials to the differently abled continue to be bottlenecks
to their growth. Lack of professional business curricula and other academic resources is an
important contributor to the unemployment problem faced by persons with disability (Cranna
and McKinnon 2022). These authors not only underlined the need for more disability inclusive
business education but also proposed a full course in business that dealt with educating all
students about such adversity. One challenging example of how basic assumptions were
reexamined for the betterment of the programs comes from the case of a paraplegic student
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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol. 12, Issue 12, December-2024
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
who successfully graduated from a nursing program and went on to become a registered nurse,
despite initial discomfort of many of the instructors (Evans 2005).
Other educators have recommended becoming familiar with disabilities and getting educated
on the specific needs of the differently abled students (Myers 2009). They have recommended
using Universal Design techniques in developing course curriculum that would benefit all
students and not just those with disabilities. Such universal instructional design modifies
curricula, program, student services, and even learning outcomes in a way to benefit all
students including those with disability. The so-called accommodations for disabled students
become something that improves the pedagogy and learning outcomes for all students. These
then form the basis of best teaching practices without being seen as a burden imposed by
students with disabilities. These recommendations are also consistent and well-founded in the
Universal Design of Instruction framework which subsumes prior approaches of instructional
development (Burgstahler). Amongst other suggestions, it is recommended that faculty use a
‘equitable use’ paradigm in making their courses inclusive. For example, faculty can make their
website so well-designed that the captions and text-to-speech help not only the visually
challenged but all other students as well. Our paper addresses one such problem of those with
visual disability who are unable to interpret business data represented in tables. For those with
impaired vision, getting access to verbal information in audio format depends on how the
metadata in tables are encoded. This paper outlines the process to make such data available
and accessible to persons with such disabilities. Organizations with limited resources can also
use this method to make their materials more accessible to the students with visual disability.
THE OER IMPERATIVE
Considering the high cost of college textbooks, a few universities have started an initiative to
provide free textbook materials to students under the Open Education Resources (OER). For
example, OpenStax was initiated by an organization from Rice University. Indiana University,
also encourages its faculty to adopt, modify, or create OER materials with compensated
proposals. Open Education Resources is the start of a rapidly growing trend in higher education
that is aiming to lower the cost of education for students and thus lower educational barriers
for all students. Hence it is critical to have its material designed using the UDI principles
mentioned above so that it remains inclusive even as it grows in popularity.
This article shows a non-comprehensive and brief description of steps needed to easily prepare
MS Word or Excel files suitable to students needing help due to visual reasons. In particular,
the examples chosen are from the finance field which offer very specific problems to the visually
challenged due to their use of tables and financial formulae. Even though Microsoft and others
have provided features to aid faculty in creating materials for students with visual disability,
these are very often not used. This is either because faculty do not believe there is a workaround
or that such workarounds are cumbersome, or they lack in confidence in their ability to apply
universal design principles (West, Novak and Mueller 2016). Hence, we provide this step-by- step guideline to faculty who may be seeking help with developing their materials. If these can
be done in classical finance problems, then all other areas of business would confidently be able
to address their curriculum as well. We have used classical finance problems like estimating
future and present value of a stream of cash flows. If these financial concepts can be successfully
communicated to students with visual disabilities, then all other business materials can also be
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Kohli, R. K., & Pant, A. (2024). Some Guidelines to Publish Open Education Resource (OER) Materials for ADA Auditory Compliance in a Business
Class. Archives of Business Research, 12(12). 51-68.
URL: http://doi.org/10.14738/abr.1212.17994
easily modified. Specifically, the article demonstrates how to edit tables and pictures
compatible with the “Read Aloud” feature in MS word files. The paper also demonstrates how
to add various heading levels in the files to make the learning materials clearer to students with
visual disabilities.
Future research in this area is continuing and recommended as visual and other disabilities
continue to increase in numbers. New universal design strategies are also being developed by
faculty across all academic areas and universities. The implementation of the current paper will
be studied in future terms for effectiveness of learning among those with visual disabilities. In
keeping with the simplicity and ease of availability requirement of the UDI, we also recommend
that such implementations and others be assembled in a best practices handbook for ease of
access to whoever needs such assistance.
STEP BY STEP SUGGESTIONS FOR OER MATERIAL COMPLETION IN MS WORD
1. The chapter shall be typed using the “Title” option shown below.
2. The next topic may be listed as Heading 2
3. “Read Aloud” features in MS Word.
If you right click anywhere in the text and then select Read Aloud, a voice starts reading
the text from that location onward until you stop read aloud.
4. Formulas must be written as equations so the students can use “read aloud” feature of
the MS Word file.
FV formula = FV = PV ∗ (1 + i)
n
5. The contents of any Table, Figure or Graph shall be explained in the “view alt text”
feature of the MS word. For example, see the following Excel table from a finance