This special issue has its focus on the accessibility of open and distance learning for students with disabilities. The Guest Editors: Anne Jelfs and Chetz Colwell, have worked for many years in the Open University (UK) researching the needs of students with disabilities and evaluating university materials and systems for their accessibility for these students. They have gathered here a collection of papers that range widely across the issues faced by institutions trying to improve their provision for students with disabilities.
The previous generation of distance learning: that based on print and broadcast media, allowed many disabled students who could not engage in traditional institutions access for the first time to post-school formal education. Distance education institutions were often taken by surprise by the number of their students with disabilities. Once institutions grasped the special needs of disabled students, they began to develop enabling support systems such as the provision of materials in alternative forms of media and enabling technologies. The move from print-based distance learning to digital and web-based learning has brought with it new challenges for students with disabilities and their educational providers as well as opening up new uses of technology to support students. The collection of papers in this issue gives a good overview of the kinds of solutions that those engaged with distance learning are developing in 2015 in response to these new challenges.