1 Inclusion, Diversity, Accessibility, Anti-Racism, and Equity
These OER addressing inclusion, diversity, accessibility, anti-racism, and equity are listed separately in this first version of the guide in order to call attention to them and they can be used in a variety of courses. These suggestions are a very modest attempt at supporting inclusion, accessibility, and anti-racism at uOttawa.
Accessibility and Universal Design
Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition 
Amanda Coolidge (BCcampus), Sue Doner (Camosun College), Tara Robertson (CAPER-BC), and Josie Gray (BCcampus)
2019
Licence: CC BY 4.0
The goal of the Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition is to provide resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook—one that is free and accessible for all students.
This second edition has built upon, and improved, the original toolkit—a collaboration between BCcampus, Camosun College, and CAPER-BC—with a new “Accessibility Statements” chapter, bibliography, and list of links by chapter for print users in the back matter, updated information, and corrections to content, style, and layout.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and more
Dobble Debate: A Game Promoting Discussion of Difference and Disabilities
Lynne Heller and Nina Czegledy (OCADU)
2022
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
This digital version of Dobble Debate was conceived, co-designed and co-created in partnership with a variety of disabled community members. Committed to changing conversations around what it means to live with disabilities, our many workshop participants experience everything from deafness and blindness, to learning disabilities and mental health issues; some experience multiple concurrent challenges and so offered especially nuanced perspectives.
Dobble Debate’s accessible and community co-created game offers expanded gameplay options available to educators and learners across geographies, time zones and teaching contexts. It is designed to give educators, gamers and learners new perceptions around how they interact with the world—and how their family, friends, communities, peers and colleagues do.
Format: Online
Digital Methods for Disability Studies∗
School of Disability Studies (Toronto Metropolitan University)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0
The Digital Methods for Disability Studies course introduces students to a range of technologies and teaches them to think critically with and through media objects, practices, and processes. Through texts, videos, podcasts, games, and interactive activities, students develop their critical thinking, close-reading, textual analysis, platform analysis, visual analysis, and critical game design skills. This course offers students an opportunity to both interrogate the digital realm as a site of inequality and to harness digital tools and methods in addressing complex social challenges.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook and EPUB
FLOE: Flexible Learning for Open Education
Inclusive Design Research Centre (OCADU)
Licence: CC BY 4.0
FLOE provides the resources to personalize how we each learn and to address barriers to learning. Learners learn differently, and today’s society needs diverse, self-aware, life-long learners. FLOE supports learners, educators and curriculum producers in achieving one-size-fits-one learning design for the full diversity of learners, leveraging the variants made possible by Open Education Resources (OER).
Format: Accessible website
Includes: Resources on “Learning to Learn,” “Multimodal Presentation, Concept Adaptation and Personal Preferences,” “Social Justice, Activism and Digital Equity,” “Inclusive Design Practice”, “Privacy, Power and Autonomy,” and “Inclusive Technology for Learning.”
UDL On Campus: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education
CAST
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
UDL On Campus is a collection of resources developed by CAST geared towards multiple stakeholders within postsecondary institutions, including instructional designers, faculty, policymakers, and administrators. The purpose of the site is to offer an understanding of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in higher education and contains four sections: 1) UDL in Higher Education, 2) Course Design, 3) Media and Materials, and 4) Accessibility and Policy. Each section provides resources about addressing learner variability at the postsecondary level in an effort to improve learning opportunities, retention, and outcomes.
Format: Accessible website
Understanding Document Accessibility: A Reference for Creating Accessible Office Documents
Digital Education Strategies, The Chang School of Continuing Education (Toronto Metropolitan University)
2020
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
With much of the world gone digital, learning to create documents that are accessible to everyone is becoming a necessary skill. Intended for a general audience, this free resource reviews a wide range of document authoring applications, including the tools they contain for creating accessible documents and tests them to ensure they do not contain potential barriers. Learn how to create accessible word-processed documents, spreadsheets, presentation slides, and PDF documents, among others, so they are accessible to everyone.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and more
Includes: Additional resources
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA)∗
Darla Benton Kearney (Mohawk College)
2022
Licence: CC BY 4.0
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) project was a collaboration between 10 universities and colleges across Ontario to develop a 6-module open educational resource for post-secondary educators to help them understand their responsibilities under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). It will help instructors and others to incorporate principles of UDL and considerations of EDI and Indigenisation in their learning environments.
Format: Pressbooks webbook and PDF
What You Can Do to Remove Barriers on the Web: Making Websites Accessible
Digital Education Strategies, The Chang School of Continuing Education (Toronto Metropolitan University)
2020
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
This book accompanies the Accessibility Maze, a game developed to teach the basics of web accessibility for those new to the topic. Or, for anyone else who wants to see how fun learning about web accessibility can be. You should try the maze before reading this book, to get the full effect of the game.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and more
Anti-Racism
Antiracism Inc.: Why the Way We Talk about Racial Justice Matters
Edited by Felice Blake (University of California, Santa Barbara), Paula Ioanide (Ithaca College), and Alison Reed (Old Dominion University)
2019
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Antiracism Inc. traces the ways people along the political spectrum appropriate, incorporate, and neutralize antiracist discourses to perpetuate injustice. It also examines the ways organizers continue to struggle for racial justice in the context of such appropriations. Antiracism Inc. reveals how antiracist claims can be used to propagate racism, and what we can do about it. While related to colorblind, multicultural, and diversity discourses, the appropriation of antiracist rhetoric as a strategy for advancing neoliberal and neoconservative agendas is a unique phenomenon that requires careful interrogation and analysis. Those who co-opt antiracist language and practice do not necessarily deny racial difference, biases, or inequalities. Instead, by performing themselves conservatively as non-racists or liberally as ‘authentic’ antiracists, they purport to be aligned with racial justice even while advancing the logics and practices of systemic racism. Antiracism Inc. therefore considers new ways of struggling toward racial justice in a world that constantly steals and misuses radical ideas and practices. The collection focuses on people and methods that do not seek inclusion in the hierarchical order of gendered racial capitalism. Rather, the collection focuses on aggrieved peoples who have always had to negotiate state violence and cultural erasure, but who work to build the worlds they envision. These collectivities seek to transform social structures and establish a new social warrant guided by what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” a way of being and thinking that privileges people, mutual interdependence, and ecological harmony over individualist self-aggrandizement and profits. These aggrieved collectivities reshape social relations away from the violence and alienation inherent to gendered racial capitalism, and towards the well-being of the commons. Antiracism Inc. articulates methodologies that strive toward freedom dreams without imposing monolithic or authoritative definitions of resistance. Because power seeks to neutralize revolutionary action through incorporation as much as elimination, these freedom dreams, as well as the language used to articulate them, are constantly transformed through the critical and creative interventions stemming from the active engagement in liberation struggles. (Description from publisher Punctum Books)
Format: PDF
Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future
Asoa B. Inoue (University of Washington Tacoma)
2015
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: assigning sections is permitted, but adaptations are not allowed without permission)
In Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies, Asao B. Inoue theorizes classroom writing assessment as a complex system that is “more than” its interconnected elements. To explain how and why antiracist work in the writing classroom is vital to literacy learning, Inoue incorporates ideas about the white racial habitus that informs dominant discourses in the academy and other contexts. Inoue helps teachers understand the unintended racism that often occurs when teachers do not have explicit antiracist agendas in their assessments. Drawing on his own teaching and classroom inquiry, Inoue offers a heuristic for developing and critiquing writing assessment ecologies that explores seven elements of any writing assessment ecology: power, parts, purposes, people, processes, products, and places. (Description from publisher Parlor Press)
Formats: PDF and EPUB
Reviews: Open Textbook Library
Critical Race Theory in Education: Reader of Open Access Scholarship
Edited by Oscar E. Patrón (Indiana University, Bloomington)
2023
Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0
This resource serves as a critical reader of open access (OA) scholarship on Critical Race Theory (CRT). Each of the authors selected a different article that in some capacity (e.g., guiding framework) involves CRT. Then, authors engaged in a review of the very same article. Each review includes a description of a) why the given article was chosen, b) the actual review, c) relevant questions for the audience to consider, and d) additional resources for those that want to learn more about the topic.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook and PDF
Includes: review, resources and relevant questions
From Racist to Non-Racist to Anti-Racist: Becoming Part of the Solution
Keith L. Anderson (Boise State University)
2020
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: assigning sections is permitted, but adaptations are not allowed without permission)
Drawing on his teaching experience, the author offers a unique educational experience for learners in a formal classroom setting as well as a broader set of readers seeking to make the world a better, more equitable place. Anderson writes, “Living in Idaho has taught me to fight against racism in a way that gives people insight. I try to give them an understanding of racism that will allow them to become anti-racist warriors.” Chapters include material on different aspects of racism, guidance on how to be anti-racist, and essays. (Description by Leigh Kinch-Pedrosa for Pressbooks)
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, PDF, EPUB, and MOBI
“I Can’t Breathe”: International Responses to the BLM Movement∗
Ibis Sierra Audivert and Hannah A. Matangos (Pennsylvania State University)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This module is intended for students interested in having a global perspective on the impact of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Students will survey BLM in the U.S. context and its international iterations around the globe by addressing the complexity of race in relation to social justice, political oppression, and the role of the media and technology. Through the assigned materials, students will grasp the ways in which racism manifests across cultural contexts and local histories, with particular attention to the regions of Central Europe (Germany and France), East Asia (China, South Korea, and Japan) and Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic).
Formats: PDF and PowerPoint files downloadable as a .zip file (after completing the “Course Download Questionnaire”)
In the Wings: Role Play Exercise for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour Resurgence and Allyship
Judy El-Mohtadi, Sally El Sayed, Jamal Koulmiye-Boyce, Felicity Hauwert, Khadija El Hilali, and Nadia Abu Zahra (University of Ottawa and Carleton University)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
“In The Wings” is an anti-oppression workshop organized by students, faculty, and recent graduates from Carleton University and Ottawa University. Participants in the workshop will have the opportunity to join break-out rooms and enact a role-play exercise about racism and resistance co-authored by students, faculty, and recent graduates from Canadian post-secondary institutions. This role-play seeks to facilitate critical and creative reflections about systemic racism, hierarchies of knowledge and expertise, and structural inequities embedded in universities. Following the role-play, there will be a group discussion and conversation about how students and faculty experience these systemic issues in their everyday lives. We anticipate that these discussions and conversations will involve knowledge-sharing about the ongoing legacies of oppression within which pedagogy and research take place as well as the potential of education as a decolonial practice.
Formats: Online and PDF
Toolkits for Equity Series∗
Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications
2020
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
While a growing awareness of racial disparities has resulted in a groundswell of support for inclusivity in scholarly publishing, the resulting initiatives would be more effective if our professional associations were able to provide training materials to help transform our workplaces and organizational cultures. As evidence of the interest and need, the project leaders of this guide have been contacted by individuals across scholarly publishing asking for resources about how to replicate workplace equity groups, what to do in cases of discrimination or microaggressions, and how to begin conversations about race. In support of necessary change, the Toolkits for Equity project leaders embarked on creating three toolkits to provide resources for our community, for allies, for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and for organizations. These toolkits provide a common framework for analysis, a shared vocabulary, and best practices to address racial disparities specific to the scholarly publishing community.
As of fall 2022, the series includes:
Antiracism Toolkit for Organizations
Antiracism Toolkit for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)
Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education
Jay Timothy Dolmage (University of Waterloo)
2017
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: assigning sections is permitted, but adaptations are not allowed without permission)
Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all. (Description from University of Michigan Press)
Formats: Online, PDF, and EPUB
Includes: Supplementary resources
Better Practices in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework
Natalie Kouri-Towe and Myloe Martel-Perry (Concordia University)
2024
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
Better Practices in the Classroom draws on research in gender and sexuality studies, education, and related fields to examine pressing issues facing the contemporary postsecondary classroom. Topics include gender inclusive language in the classrooms, grappling with racial violence in education, decolonial approaches to education, accessibility and disability justice in the classroom, and more.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, EPUB, PDF, MOBI, XHTML
Cases on Social Issues: For Class Discussion
Deirdre Maultsaid and Gregory John (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0
This Open Educational Resource, “Cases on Social Issues: For Class Discussion” includes valuable cases on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion for student use. The critical events portrayed in the cases are realistic and emotional, and feature the experiences of under-represented and marginalized people. These thoughtful, contemporary cases pose ethical dilemmas about social issues that encourage post-secondary students and instructors to have stimulating, inclusive, and compassionate discussions. Inspired by input from post-secondary students and authored by people usually under-represented in education material, this resource is designed for upper-level undergraduate or graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, business, healthcare, science, agriculture, environmental studies, law and more. Each case is supplemented with modifiable discussion prompts, notes for teaching strategy, and a short reading list. This resource is a work in progress.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, EPUB, PDF, and more
Reviews: Open Textbook Library
Crip Negativity
J. Logan Smilges (University of British Columbia)
2023
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: assigning sections is permitted, but adaptations are not allowed without permission)
Leveling a strong critique of the category of disability and liberal disability politics, Smilges asks and imagines what horizons might exist for the liberation of those oppressed by ableism—beyond access and inclusion. Inspired by models of negativity in queer studies, Black studies, and crip theory, Smilges proposes that bad crip feelings might help all of us to care gently for one another, even as we demand more from the world than we currently believe to be possible.
Format: Online (Manifold)
Diversity and Difference in Communication∗
OpenLearn Diversity & Difference in Communication (The Open University)
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Interpersonal communication in health and social care services is by its nature diverse. As a consequence, achieving good or effective communication whether between service providers and service users, or among those working in a service means taking account of diversity, rather than assuming that every interaction will be the same. This text explores the ways in which difference and diversity impact on the nature of communication in health and social care services.
Formats: Online and PDF
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in Teaching and Learning: An Introductory Course in Five Modules
Inclusive Teaching @ UBC (Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, University of British Columbia)
Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0
This course was created for instructors in all disciplines who are interested in developing their capacity to create more inclusive classrooms and learning environments, but are not sure of where to start. The content is also relevant for anyone who is involved in teaching and learning in higher education, including Teaching Assistants, educational developers, or staff who support instructors.
While any of the five modules can be taken independently, we recommend that you start with Module 1 to make sure that you are familiar with the basic concepts and vocabulary used in the course.
Format: Online Canvas course
Exploring Equity and Inclusion in Canadian and Quebecois Contexts
Radamis Zaky and Yeroseo Aris Kusiele Somda (University of Ottawa)
2024
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This open-source resource is mainly designed for communication students who are studying organizational communication and primarily focused on the Canadian context. It fills an important need as most of the available textbooks are mainly American-focused textbooks and as a result, do not properly represent the complexities of the Canadian context. This resource is divided into four chapters. The first one provides different definitions and explanations for equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDID). The second chapter focuses on the existing legal frameworks that are meant to legally organize EDID in both Canada and Québec. The third chapter focuses on the importance of the culture of EDID as legal frameworks alone will not achieve effective EDID. Chapter 3 also provides readers with some practical recommendations for best practices that organizations can use to achieve EDID for hiring practices. The last chapter focuses on the ramifications on mental health when EDID is not achieved.
Format: Pressbooks webbook, PDF, EPUB, XHTML
Haunting Our Biases: Using Participatory Theatre to Interrupt Implicit Bias
Kevin Hobbs, Nadia Ganesh, Sheila O’Keefe-McCarthy, Joe Norris, Sandy Howe, and Valerie Michaelson (Brock University)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0
This project invites learners to deepen their self-awareness about the implicit biases that they hold. In participatory theatre, this kind of invitation for self-exploration can haunt us, leaving a lasting impression that can evoke self-reflexive actions and behaviours.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook and EPUB
Humanizing Learning: A Student-Generated Framework∗
Co-designed by students, recent graduates, educational developers, librarians, and instructors (University of Toronto Mississauga)
2022
Licence: CC BY 4.0
This work explores what humanizing learning is – and isn’t – while centering student voices and the student experience. This is a resource meant for instructors, and is filled with quotes from students and instructors alike.
Format: Pressbooks webbook
Inclusive Education: Simple Strategies to Improve Equity and Embrace Diversity
Alison Flynn and Jeremy Kerr (University of Ottawa)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The premise of inclusion should be thoroughly uncontroversial. The job of professors, instructors, and educators of all kinds is to offer each student in their classes the same opportunities to learn and expand their horizons. It is part of the basic definition of what it means to do this job. That educators want all their students to succeed is axiomatic, particularly those who are interested in reading a book of this kind. Nevertheless, the challenges of learning can differ enormously among individuals, and many of those challenges align with their identities, cultural backgrounds, privileges, and capacities. None of these characteristics predicts talent in any discipline. Yet, student success nevertheless correlates with individual characteristics [Caballero et al. 2007, Wei et al. 2018]. In other words, characteristics do not predict talent, but characteristics do relate to success. The inclusion gap is the space between talent and success, and it is created, in part, by obstacles to inclusion that we hope this resource might help reduce. While the idea of inclusion – what we refer to as “inclusion by default” – ought to be obvious, achieving an inclusive learning environment can be challenging. Failures to account for diversity in learning environments can lead to systemic exclusion of students for reasons that are unrelated to their ability, effort, or ambition. This outcome is the antithesis of what educators aim to achieve.
As authors of this resource, we recognize that we carry our own biases, learned from lifetimes of living in society. Our shared aspiration to eliminate prejudice cannot heal the lived (and sometimes life-altering) experiences of our students and colleagues in being singled out, called out, or labelled because of their identities. A university course cannot wash away such things either. But it is imperative that university courses should never be places where such exclusion is perpetuated. So, the fundamental goal of this book is to suggest ways to do better using a framework that aligns with fairly common approaches to conceiving, designing, and teaching a university-level course. Perfection, which is subjective in this context in any event, should not be the enemy of progress. As instructors, we are uniquely positioned to make a positive difference in students’ lives and careers. It’s worth it.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, EPUB, and PDF
Inclusive Pedagogies∗
Edited by Christina Page (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This resource introduces educators to educational strategies that can foster more inclusive, equitable, and just classroom environments. It aims to create classroom environments that support the needs of diverse learners, while at the same time creating an enhanced learning environment for all.
Topics include:
- Defining inclusive teaching practices
- Applying a systematic approach to making implicit cultural and disciplinary knowledge explicit
- Using the academic literacies model to support student development in reading, writing, and digital literacies
- Supporting multilingual student writing
- Facilitating diverse student teams
- Creating inclusive online learning environments
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, EPUB, and PDF
Interculturalizing the Curriculum∗
Christina Page (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
2021
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Interculturalizing the Curriculum is the third in a series of educator development resources on interculturality. Developed for the KPU Intercultural Teaching Program, this short book engages educators in two main strands of interculturalizing the curriculum: (1) revising curriculum to reflect intercultural learning outcomes, and diverse content from multiple perspectives, and (2) supporting student interculturality development.
In the first chapters of the book, we explore the process of interculturalization. First, the process is placed within its theoretical context(s) with an exploration of the streams of thought that contribute to understandings of how education can support equity and social justice. From there, Leask’s (2013, 2015) model of curriculum internationalization informs the process of considering how our curriculum currently reflects diverse knowledge sources and ways of knowing, and envisioning what changes might be desired.
The second part of this resource focuses on student interculturality development. One of the overarching goals of interculturalizing the curriculum is providing a means by which our students understand their identities, learn to engage with multiple perspectives, relate effectively with classmates, and prepare to advocate for social change. These chapters discuss how student interculturality development can be integrated into the curriculum and assessed, as well as how educators can support the complex and challenging classroom conversations that arise from an interculturalized curriculum.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, EPUB, and PDF
Learning to be Human Together: Humanizing Learning∗
Student, faculty and staff at OCAD University, Mohawk College, Brock University, Trent University, Nipissing University, University of Windsor, and University of Toronto at Mississauga
2022
Licence: CC BY 4.0
This resource explores the importance of, and processes for, humanizing education. We start by exploring what humanizing teaching and learning means: to acknowledge that our relationships are foundational to the work that we do. It aims to make learning inclusive with connection, access, and meaning-making at its core.
Formats: Pressbooks webbook, EPUB, and PDF
Making Lab Based Courses Inclusive
Allyson MacLean (University of Ottawa)
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This resource is meant to provide general guidance on enhancing the accessibility of lab-based courses, with a particular focus on supporting the learning of students with physical disabilities. Individuals with disabilities are under-represented within scientific disciplines, and students with physical disabilities may even be discouraged from taking science-based courses in part due to concerns about the relatively inaccessible nature of scientific laboratories. It is worth emphasizing that while students with disabilities represent a small minority of the overall student population, the implementation of inclusive teaching practices has the potential to benefit learners of all abilities. Uniquely, teaching laboratories are learning environments in which poorly designed spaces and unsafe practices not only have the potential to adversely impact accessibility and learning but, at worst, may represent danger to a student and others in the class.
Format: Pressbooks webbook
