An Introduction to the FLOE Project

Learners learn differently. Research shows that learners learn best when the learning experience is personalized to individual needs. Open Education Resource (OER) platforms potentially provide an ideal learning environment to meet the diverse needs of learners, including learners with disabilities. Unfortunately accessibility was not a consideration when OER were initially designed or developed. When the FLOE (Flexible Learning for Open Education) Project was asked to address the accessibility of OER, rather than a traditional approach to accessibility with a single set of fixed criteria, FLOE set out to support the OER community in providing a personalized and fully integrated approach to accessible learning. This approach advances the strengths and values of open education and also encourages pedagogical and technical innovation. While ensuring the resources are accessible to diverse learners, including learners with disabilities, the approach also supports content portability, ease of updating, internationalization and localization, content reuse and repurposing, and more efficient and effective content discovery.