Accessibility

Accessibility means that research must be open, free, and readable to anyone. It must not be locked behind paywalls, proprietary platforms, or restrictive licensing agreements.

1. Open Licensing

Research must be published under open licenses (e.g., CC-BY) that allow redistribution and republication with attribution. Knowledge funded by the public must remain a public good.

2. Free Access

No paywalls. No subscription barriers. No artificial scarcity. The public must be able to read, download, and archive research freely.

3. Human Readability

Published formats must be readable across devices and platforms. This means that plain text is the primary format of writing and publishing. Web-first publishing format means:

• HTML — accessible, searchable, and standards-compliant for the web

Offline publishing may also use:-

• EPUB — an html format that is specially built for e-readers

4. Accessibility Standards

Web outputs must follow modern accessibility standards. This includes:

• Semantic HTML structure
• Alt text for images
• Captions for figures and tables
• Transcripts for multimedia
• Logical heading hierarchy

Accessibility ensures that research can be read not only by scholars, but by the broader public — including readers using assistive technologies.