What defines "archived" content under the DOJ rule?

Guest Questions

If I have an old version of a textbook in LibreTexts that I am no longer using for active instruction, do I still need to remediate it?

LibreTexts

We will be putting together some curation efforts to try to be sure that things meet the minimum standard, so any material that is not remediated by the author will have a baseline of remediation. There is likely to be some AI used in the curation bots that we use (for generating alt-text, for instance). Thus: if you have any issues with other people touching your text or the use of AI in remediating your old text, then you should be sure to watch our Newsletter for upcoming releases of remediation efforts so as to remediate yours before they are put in use.

If you have released your book with an OER license that allows for reuse and editing, then it will be remediated as much as we can do. If your book does have a non-derivatives clause in its license we may contact you or retire your book to the archive as it cannot be used without remediation. We will have discussions about this in the future.

As for your use of your own book - check with the legal requirements (both the DOJ and your own state) and institutional requirements as to what you may be expected. DOJ Legal

Delmar

A formal definition of an archived resource is content that is not actively used in a course and therefore does not fall under upcoming DOJ accessibility regulations. Organizations vary in how they define and implement workflows for archiving OER that do not yet meet ADA accessibility requirements (e.g., WCAG compliance). In some cases, archiving does not require the resource to remain publicly available online. For example, Pressbooks supports marking online OER with an “Archived” tag; as long as these resources are not used in courses, they may meet the definition of archived content.

In practice, however, many campuses and instructors choose to move inaccessible resources to secondary, non-public locations (e.g., unpublishing a resource or storing it offline in systems such as Dropbox or OneDrive). Without a clear remediation plan, this approach is likely to result in the removal of OER from the shared community corpus. If a campus is considering this path, we encourage consultation with LibreTexts, which can host the content and provide remediation tools to bring resources into compliance.