The impacts of open educational resources (OERs) are both well-documented and far-reaching. However, open educational practices should not be evangelized or held beyond critique. Approaching OERs as an inherent good, and evangelizing open access and open education in general, limits our ability to improve our approaches and practices. Without mitigating the positive outcomes of OERs - including reduced textbook costs, readily available knowledge platforms, and open research - we problematize the commonly held assumption that open resources are necessarily more accessible and equitable. Drawing on writing from disability scholars and disability justice advocates, we explore the relationship between access and accessibility as it applies to open educational resources. By critically examining UCLA Library’s own open educational resource initiative, Writing Instruction + Research Education (WI+RE), we mobilize a disability justice framework to consider how open access (OA) and accessibility might be reconciled for the creation of better OERs.

The WI+RE team recently had a book chapter (title above) accepted in the ACRL published book "Teaching Critical Reading Skills: Strategies for Academic Librarians". Our book chapter explores three WI+RE projects: the Reading Strategies Playlist - a bank of videos that outline general tips for reading and comprehending informational content efficiently and effectively, the Breaking Down Academic Articles webcomic - focuses on reading strategies that help learners identify and understand the essential components of academic articles, and C.R.E.A.T.E.S - an interactive website highlighting a six-step approach for comprehending and analyzing scientific papers. By highlighting these online learning resources, and the process through which they were created, we outline the cross-applicability of learner centered design in creating responsive, community-oriented instruction in general. We will advocate for WI+RE’s learner-centered design process by outlining how it informed three unique resources geared towards student reading, specifically critical and analytical reading skills acquisition and reading different source types.