Online Accessibility Course Accessible Online

Tom Worthington's certificate of completion
for the Accessibility Fundamentals course
from Intopia, 18 May 2026

In support of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), the ANU College of Systems and Society invited staff to compete a short Intopia Accessibility fundamentals online course. The course has a similar format to the "AI Literacy for All", from Digital Education Council, which I recently completed. But fortunately, the Intopia course is much, much shorter, and has closed captions, as well as transcripts for the short videos. This gives a brief introduction as to why accessibility is important and how to do it. 

The Sydney Olympics web accessibility case is mentioned in the course. As it happens I was one of the expert witnesses presenting evidence in the case. Not due to my expertise, but I was free, had a suit, & no conflict of interest. ;-)

The Beijing Olympic committee then invited me over to talk about it.  

Web Accessibility 25 Years after the Sydney Olympics

Sydney Olympics web page without graphics

Yesterday, 15 September, was the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Olympics. I talked to ABC Canberra Radio about my experience as an expert witness in the Sydney Olympics SOCOG web accessibility case in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. I was asked by the lawyers for the complainant, to be one of their two expert witnesses on if the web site was accessible to someone who is blind. The other witness, Jutta Treviranus, had far more expertise in this, but I had done some teaching about it at ANU. As IBM was providing computer systems for the games, I used their accessibility guidelines (which were based on those of W3C) to assess sample pages. I concluded the site did not meet the guidelines, as did Professor Treviranus. 

The most basic problem with the site is easily understood. If you can't see the images, there needs to be alternate text. Unfortunately the Sydney Olympics site did not have text to indicate which sport was which. I suggested the website would be relatively simple and quick to fix. Unfortunately SOCOG did not agree, did not fix it and was fined $20,000. Subsequently BOCG asked me to provide them with advice on the Beijing Olympics website, which I was delighted to do.

Addressing Aging with AgeTech

Greetings from the IEEE AgeTech Aging and Longevity Webinar. This is early in the morning for me in Australia, so I was reluctant to attend. But being an IEEE Life Member I am in the age bracket for the topic. I am of an age where I have to deal with an increasing number of health, financial, and other issues, so Interest in how tech can help me. In recent weeks I have been to clinics, hospitals, transported by ambulance, scanned by CT & MRI devices, hooked to computer monitors, struggled to use health apps.

The webinar has good speakers, but is a little frustrating by being very US-centric & also having limited feedback. One speaker described the coming presenters as "pinch hitters", which I assume is a baseball term, so lost on Australian participants brought up on cricket. ;-) In the Q&A I asked about this, but did not get a reply. The chat forum is turned off, which limits the ability of participants to have a discussion. 

Speakers have covered some of the issues to do with the need for agetech to address the interfaces needed for people aging, the potential for technology in the home to provide more independence (and lower costs). 

I suggest we also should look at the positives. Smart phone offer the opportunity for better interfaces for those with a disability. These applications also help others, via the "Curb-Cut Effect": an accessibility feature introduced for one group can help other people. 

From purely self interest, AgeTech also has a group of increasinly wealthy & powerful customers. Older users represent a group whom many have disposable income & will vote for government funding to be spent on services for. 

One problem with this webinar is that it is taking a long time (44 minutes so far) to get to the call to action. So far none of the speakers has said what I can do, as a technologist, educator & IEEE member. Eventually I found a form to express interest for IEEE SA Industry Connection: IC24-010: Technology Standards for Aging (Age Tech). 

Is Ditching the Online Learning Option legal?

Meredith Wilkinson, writing in Times Higher Education suggests "Disabled students still need online learning options" (21 May 2022). They point out at least  17% of UK university students had a disability and online learning has  advantages for many of these students, and suggest universities should not withdraw this option with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. I would put the case more strongly than that. The UK, Australia, and many other countries have anti-discrimination legislation. Withdrawing online learning would discriminate against sections of the community, and may therefore be illegal.

Laws prohibits discrimination based on disability, gender, religion, race, and other grounds. Universities showed they can deliver online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic (although some had been doing this for decades). That learning benefits students who have a disability, or can't get to campus due to work, family, community, and cultural commitments, or simply due to were they live. If online learning is withdrawn, those students will find study harder, or impossible. If online learning was very expensive, or technically difficult to provide, then universities would have a defense in law for not doing it, but it isn't expensive, or difficult, so they must do it?

In reality most students, at least in Australia, were studying mostly online before the pandemic. By 2019 universities had put in place learning management and video systems to supplement face to face teaching. These were the same systems needed for fully online learning (I was using them for teaching online at ANU from 2009). The removal of online learning options will not reduce costs, as the video and learning systems for it will still be in place to support courses officially classified as on campus. However, students will have their flexibility to study how they want, and need to, restricted, for no good reason.

This may seem absurd, but then so did the idea that services must be provided online. Surely a sporting organisation is not required by law to have a web site blind people can use? The answer is yes they are, as established in the human rights case "Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games" (2000), which I was an expert witness for. The Beijing Olympics later asked me to go over to help them not make the same mistake.

Digital Inequality: Academic Heal Thyself

The University of Canberra is hosting what is claimed to be the "First International Symposium on Digital Inequality and Social Change" (ISDISC). The theme is  Bridging digital inequality for a better and inclusive society. Researchers, practitioners and policy makers are invited.

But I suggest university academics need to set their own house in order before being able to claim the moral high ground on digital equality. The scramble to convert university courses and research participation online over the last two years has shown a lack of thought given to this area by academia. Courses were converted from hard to access lectures, to hard to access video lectures. Assessment was changed from hard to access paper based examinations, to hard to access web based examinations. The sad part of this is that there were open online distance universities with decades of experience in how to provide equitable access to a wider range of people, but elite institutions willfully ignored the freely offered advice, as it would place their campus based business model at risk.

Similarly with research: it is open to anyone who  can afford to get to expensive conferences, and passes the entrenched gatekeepers of the academic publishing system.

Fortunately the University of Canberra is leading by example, offering virtual attendance for those who can't get to Canberra, with a low fee.

Provide Learning Content in Alternate Formats

I had a very compelling unplanned lesson in accessibility today. In a Zoom session, we were asked to watch a video. Rather than play the video via Zoom, which has problems, links to the video on three platforms were provided. But I could not get any to work. Normally I would read the notes, or the transcript, but could find neither, so I had no idea what it was about. I then took part in a discussion of the video and spent about ten minutes feeling excluded and a but of a fool, as I had no idea what they were talking about. As I can normally see and hear, this is not a common problem, but for those who can't, it is. I need to remember to include alternate formats in my own teaching, especially as I helped make this Australian law. 

Academic Comics Accessible?

Helen Kara has written an academic journal article in comic form. While innovative, as the text is part of the image it is not searchable, nor can it be turned into synthetic speech for someone who is blind. How can alternate text be provided for such an article? Do academic ethics require this? Does the law require it? Who's responsibility is it: the publisher, the author, or both? 

Captioned Recordings for Students

Kent, Ellis, and Peaty (2017) suggest that captions and transcripts of recorded lectures are of benefit beyond those with a disability they were originally intended for. While this paper was published in 2017, it is very relevant in the COVID-19 era, where lecturers are struggling to communicate to students online. Providing a transcript and captions on videos is an un-glamorous but effective way to improve learning, particularly for students who are not studying in their first language.

ps: I discovered this paper recently because it cites my blog (this blog): Worthington (2015).

References

Kent, M., Ellis, K., & Peaty, G. (2017). Captioned Recorded Lectures as a Mainstream Learning Tool. M/C Journal, 20(3), 1-1. URL https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1262

Worthington, Tom. “Are Australian Universities Required to Caption Lecture Videos?” Higher Education Whisperer 14 Feb. 2015. URL http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2015/02/are-australian-universities-required-to.html

Alternative approaches to engaging with video content

Kent and Ellis (2017) suggest that captions for online recorded lectures could benefit all students, not just those with hearing or learning difficulties, or from a non-English speaking background (NESB). These include
older students, diverse learning styles, those in a noisy environment or with older technology. I suggest this could also help for low bandwidth users: in the extreme case a series of still images and text captions could be used in place of video.

However, the report notes that captions or transcripts are not routinely provided (Kent and Ellis, p. 10, 2017). But the only support they provide for this is a blog posting from me (Worthington, 2015).

The report addresses lecture recordings. However, it should be noted that live lectures, webinars, and video-conferences are also capable of being captioned. Commercial services now provide for live captioning via the Internet. A human operator listens to the audio and types the captions in real time.

References

Kent, M., & Ellis, K. (2017). Mainstreaming Captions for Online Lectures in Higher Education in Australia: Alternative approaches to engaging with video content. Curtin University. URL https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MainstreamingCaptions_FinalReport.pdf

Worthington, T. (2015, February 14). Higher Education Whisperer: Are AustralianUniversities Required to Caption Lecture Videos? Retrieved from
http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2015/02/are-australian-universities-required-to.html

Accessibility Problems with Massive Open Online Courses

Park, Kim and So (2016) found problems with the accessibility of Coursera, edX, and Khan Academy for users with a disability. Particular problems found were with drop-down menus (toggled on mouse is roll-over), dynamic webpage structures (quiz  feedback without page reloading), repetitive elements (course description at the top of each page),  illogical focus movement (such as back to top of screen not to next item). Many of the problems appear to be with quizzes. Also the mobile versions of the interface were less accessible than the PC based versions. Also user comments appeared to favor down-loadable content (as in more conventional distance education courses).

What the authors did not address is if Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle, which are not designed for MOOCs, have more accessible interfaces.

Reference

Park, K., Kim, H. J., & So, H. J. (2016, January). Are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Really Open to Everyone?: A Study of Accessibility Evaluation from the Perspective of Universal Design for Learning. In Proceedings of HCI Korea (pp. 29-36). Hanbit Media, Inc. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.17210/hcik.2016.01.29

Evaluating the Usability of e-Learning Systems

Two papers in The International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning discuss the usability of e-Learning Systems. Junus,  Santoso, Isal and Utomo (2015) look at the use of Moodle for teaching computer science students at Universitas Indonesia (Fasilkom UI). Orfanou, Tselios and Katsanos (2015) look at Moodle and the less well known "Open eClass" (based on the open source software Claroline) in Greece.

The former examined the Student Centered e-Learning Environment (SCeLE), a repository of learning materials implemented in Moodle by Universitas Indonesia. Students were surveyed on their experience. The results were positive. The first recommendation for improvement is deceptively simple: upgrade to the latest version of Moodle. Many institutions keep old versions of software even after newer, improved versions are available. New features in Moodle, such as better mobile compatibility and finer grain feedback for students, are well worth the cost of an upgrade.

The latter found the System Usability Scale (SUS), a questionnaire based survey, effective for evaluating usability of learning management software. The use of a standardized, simplified survey, was found to be effective, even when using a small number of students.

References

Junus, I., Santoso, H., Isal, R., & Utomo, A. (2015). Usability Evaluation of the Student Centered e-Learning Environment. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 16(4). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2175/3455
 

Orfanou, K., Tselios, N., & Katsanos, C. (2015). Perceived usability evaluation of learning management systems: Empirical evaluation of the System Usability Scale. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 16(2). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1955/3262

Usable and accessible online courses

Greetings from the seminar room of Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW)at the Australian National University where I am taking part in "How usable and accessible are your on-line courses?" by Professor Denise Wood, Central Queensland University, and Dr Sheila Scutter, University of South Australia. We were first introduced to the principles of accessible web design and the more general Universal Design for Learning. They are designing a MOOC for teaching this. Jeremy Smith from ANU received an acknowledgement for his contribution.

The project is not just about making course materials readable for people with a disability, it is also  about accessibility more broadly. Also it is about making course accessible on-line for completely remote delivery, or in blended mode.

Some of these are issues of basic course design, which will benefit all students. For example, how to how to contact the instructor and what course materials are available are issues which are not well addressed in traditional classroom based courses and can be improved with on-line support.

One tool mentioned was the Student Usability Scale (SUS). Also the use of software installed on the user's computer to record a test session for the usability of a course was discussed. The Flexible Learning for Open Eduction (FLOE)  tool was demonstrated.

I am familiar with some of these accessibility issues having been an expert witness in the Sydney Olympics 2000 Accessibility case and invited to advise the Beijing Olympics.

Wood and Scutter gave an excellent seminar on well run research into teaching. Unfortunately, this appears to be another of the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) funded research projects which is addressing the wrong question. There are decades of research on on-line course design and accessibility. There are tools and training courses based on this research in routine use in the vocational education and training (VET) sector for developing accessible courses. The question is why Australian universities do not implement what has been shown to work in the VET sector.

For anyone teaching across the vocational and university sectors (as I do), the differences are obvious. In the vocational sector (and in distance/open universities) the courses are designed by a team and then delivered by instructors. All the courses for a program use the same template, with course components laid out in the same way. The instructor has limited, or no, ability to change the template or the course materials (even to correct spelling errors or broken links). As a result, accessibility is designed in to the program, at the cost of flexibility.

Universities, particularly research orientated universities, allow their academics more freedom in course design and delivery than the vocational sector. The academic can teach what they want, how they want. But researchers are trained to conduct research and are understandably reluctant to take the extra time needed to learn how to design courses and teach. This problem is not unique to Australia. Last year I talked to staff at Cambridge University about how to help the graduate students with on-line courses. One option would be to incorporate basic teaching skills in postgraduate research programs, bringing early career academics up to the standard of VET teachers. Bryant and Richardson (2015) found that university lecturers with teacher training tended to have fewer failing students.

Academics producing a course content need to only work on the content, using the skills of specialists to worry about how it is presented. As an example text can be written using the default formatting features of a word-processor, so that it will inherent the style set up for the institution's template. I have used this approach for the course "ICT Sustainability", enabling the course content to restyle automatically when the institution's template is updated. This has also allowed the course to be ported between three very different higher education institutions (vocational, open and research orientated) and also adapted for mobile devices with minimal additional work required.

Scriven describes how from the 1970s he became increasingly disenchanted with evaluating US education programs based on the goals of the programs, leading to Goal-Free Evaluation (GFE)  (p. 56, 1991). A program designed to improve the usability and accessibility of courses is likely to be successful by its own internal logic: those academics who are motivated to take part are likely to produce better courses. However, using GFE, the bigger question becomes apparent: how do we motivate Australian university academics to improve courses? I suggest this is the area needing research.

References

Bryant, D., & Richardson, A. (2015). To be, or not to be, trained. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 37(6), 682-688. DOI: 10.1080/1360080X.2015.1102818

Scriven, M. (1991). Prose and cons about goal-free evaluation. Evaluation Practice, 12(1), 55-63. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0886-1633(91)90024-R

Disability and eLearning: Opportunities and Barriers

Mike Kent from Curtin University writes on the accessibility of Blackboard and Moodle in "Disability and eLearning: Opportunities and Barriers". He points out that pre-LMS course material using simply formatted web pages was compatible with assistive technology. Early LMS caused problems, but this is being addressed, more so with Blackboard than Moodle. One point not mentioned is that access on mobile devices (which is also a proble with Moodle) can be accommodated with the same approach as for accessbility

ps: This paper must be good as it cites me*. ;-) 


* Worthington, T. (2000). Olympic Failure: A Case for Making the Web Accessible. Oxford University Computing Laboratory, October. http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/bat.html

Web Based eBook Interface for Young Students?

Another "learning object" I have had to review as as part of a course on instructional design, is an e-book for young readers: "Sk8 for Jake". The content of the book seemed suitable for the intended audience, but the web interface has some problems. Perhaps this would be better as an ePub e-book.

Some routine tests run on the interface:

1. W3C Markup Validation Service: 32 Errors, 12 warnings.
2.  W3C mobileOK Checker: Score of 0 out of 5 (lowest possible score). Failures per severity: critical 4, severe 2, medium 2, low 5.
3. Achecker Accessibility Review for WCAG 2.0 (Level AA) Guidelines: Known Problems (22), Likely Problems (0), Potential Problems (187).

These are some easily fixed problems with the interface. However the major difficulty is that the content of the book appears to be presented as one large image per page. There is no text which could be converted to Braille, or synthetic speech. This makes the entire book inaccessible.
There is an audio option, which has very clear narration and has the option of setting the speed. But I had difficulty operating the audio interface and it does not appear to exactly match the text in the book.

Are Australian Universities Required to Caption Lecture Videos?

The New York Times has reported "Harvard and M.I.T. Are Sued Over Lack of Closed Captions" (TAMAR LEWIN, FEB. 12, 2015). Australia has a Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), like the USA. The Australian Human Rights Commission has issued "Disability Discrimination Act Action Plans: A Guide for the Tertiary Education Sector", which include in their checklist: "do you ensure that videos or films produced or presented are captioned?".

The approach used by Australian universities is exemplified by the University of Western Australia, which says: "Captions, a transcript or lecture notes for the uploaded video must be published at the same time as the video. Google's auto-caption feature can be used, but the captions must be edited."

However, my impression is that Australian universities mostly provide captions for video materials which are used repeatedly, such as in MOOCs and other packaged on-line courses. One-off lectures are not captioned, nor is a transcript provided, just lecture notes. Presumably universities are relying on the 'unjustifiable hardship' provision in the DDA, to say it would be too expensive and difficult to caption all lecture videos.

But as Marianne Stenger noted, the closed captions can be useful for students generally. In particular these are useful for those with English as a second language. University education is not a cottage industry, it is Australia's fourth largest export and perhaps it is time to provide closed captions for all video lectures.

However, it should be noted that on-line courses do not necessarily require video. Most of the on-line courses I teach and am a student of, do not have video. These courses have text based notes and discussion forums.

ps: I am not a lawyer or an accessibility specialist, but was an expert witness in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission web accessibility case, Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games 2000.

Australian Enable Technology Learning Program

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where the "Enable Technology Learning Program" is being launched. Initially ANU and University of Canberra students will undertake the program, in conjunction with Enable Development. Students work with the community to produce products and services for people with a disability. It should be kept in mind that such products and services can include web based applications. When teaching web design to students I included a component on accessible design after difficulties with the Sydney Olympics.

One Key Step to Your First LMS: Course Content

Jordan Barrish suggests when selecting your first Learning Management System (LMS) to: "Think Through Your Courses" and "Focus on Usability" ("Two Key Steps to Selecting and Loving Your First LMS", eLearning Industry, 26 August 2013). I suggest that the first of these is most important the second applies to any computer based application and should be a matter of routine.

Many make the mistake of selecting a LMS and then trying to use that to develop e-learning courses. The LMS is just a framework to put around the e-learning courses to help administer them: delivering the materials to the student and recording progress. The LMS is not intended for creating the actual course content.

Most LMS provide some content creation tools, but these are crude at best. Courses should be designed outside the LMS using specialist tools and then installed in the LMS for delivery. If you use the LMS to create the courses, then be prepared to use very simple formats and have to do much manual work to overcome the limitations of the tools.

As LMS are not intended for creating courses, tinkering with an LMS is not a good way to learn teaching or course design. Staff designing and delivering courses need training first in how to teach and then in how to teach on-line. Just giving a university lecturer who has never had any formal education in teaching an LMS is a recipe for frustration, for other the staff and students. Sending staff on a course on how to use the LMS will not help, as the LMS have built in assumptions about pedagogy and course design. Staff need to learn to teach, learn to design e-leanring and then using a LMS is  simple.

Usability can be evaluated first by use of the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (W3C WCAG) with someng like A Checker, Mobile device compatibility (W3C mobileOK Checker) and Markup Validation Service. These will indicate if the tool implements web standards and will be usable on a wide range of devices and network speeds.

Accessibility of Course Content and Administrative Systems

Greetings from the Accessibility Week Conference at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The first session is an introduction to web accessibility for people with a disability. As anyone working in education should know, there are federal laws requiring education to be made available to people with a disability and guidelines for web accessibility. I was an expert witness in the case which was the legal precedent for web accessibility (Maguire Vs. SOCOG, 2000). This case was more than ten years ago and conforming with the guidelines is not very difficult, but many universities are still failing to make their course content and on-line administrative systems accessibility. Apart from people with a disability, the accessibility guidelines also make web materials easier to access for those using a smart phone, with English as a second language and on slow Internet links.


The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) provides a list of Accessibility Standards and Guidelines for Education as well as Web Accessibility Information. Some of the problems I commonly see in university materials are poorly formatted PDF documents, videos with no captions and no text notes, images with no captions and use of color with no text alternatives.

Checking a course for accessibility can be a good time to rethink what information you are providing to students and how you provide it. One common response I get when I point out to teachers and administrators the need for accessibility is: "We can't reformat all this material.". But in many cases the material would benefit from revision and simplification. In many cases the course has grown up with a jumble of documents with redundant, obsolete and contradictory information. Paring down the information will help. Also preparing documents in an accessible format can make them easier to maintain.

One tip I have is to use web pages in place of PDF. While it is theoretically possible to create accessible PDF, it is easier to avoid the issue and just use web pages. This also makes maintenance easier. As an example, I prepare my ICT Sustainability course notes as a set of web pages, one page per week. The notes use the basic HTML constructs, such as headings, paragraphs and lists with no mention of fonts, colors or layout. When I import the notes into a Learning Management System (LMS), such as Moodle, the document inherits the colors, fonts and layout set by the educational institution. This way if the color scheme or other details change, I don't have to make any changes, my notes adjust automatically. If a mobile version is provided for smart phones and tablets, my notes also adjust.

But before spending time making course documents accessible, first consider if they are needed at all. As an example,  one of my colleagues showed me a table they had prepared to summaries their course topics, week by week, along with lectures, tutorials, workshops, assignments and exams. They had color coded the table and tried their best to make it clear. However, the problem was that the course seemed to have no logical pattern to what the students had to do. Instead I suggested breaking the course into modules which had a repeating pattern, so that a complex table would not be needed.

As an example of a pattern, my ICT Sustainability course is divided into two halves, with an assignment for each. Each six week module has one forum with questions to be answered at the same time each week.

Ranking Web of Universities

Various rankings of universities have been published. These use a combination of research publications, status of university staff and some measures of teaching quality. This can influence a student's choice of an institution and so is taken very seriously by university administrators. One interesting variation is the Ranking Web of Universities (Webometrics Ranking), which bases it assessment on the university's web presence. Apart from making the process more automated, this more closely mimics a world where academics get information on-line, not from traditional publications. Interestingly the results from Webometrics are not so different from the ranking produced by more labor intensive and traditional methods.

In the latest Webometrics, the top ranking Australian university is the Australian National University (ANU) at 76 in the world. The overall rank is compued from three components: Presence Rank: 335, Impact Rank: 96, Openness Rank: 110, Excellence Rank: 131.

ANU is followed in the Webometrics list for Australia by: University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, Monash University, University of Queensland. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings  has University of Melbourne before ANU,  then University of Sydney, University of Queensland and University of New South Wales, with Monash University relegated to sixth place. The Academic Ranking of World Universities has the University of Western Australia displacing Monash for fifth place.

While universities would need to make large investments in research over many years to improve their ranking in traditional systems, it should be much simpler and cheaper for university administrators to improve the Webometrics rank. This is because web "presence" and "openness" are two of the four criteria used.

Administrators may not be able to get researchers to do research any quicker or to write better papers, but they can improve the university's web site and access to on-line publications. The web sites can be improved by using web accessibility guidelines, so that web pages are easy to access. Also universities can pay the additional publication fees to have journal papers made open access, so that readers don't need to pay a subscription to read them.

Often marketing and graphic design staff produce complex, hard to access web designs, in the mistaken belief these will appeal more to readers. What in fact happens is that web search engines can't index the content and people, particularly using mobile devices can't read the documents. It is better to use simple web formats.

Researchers will choose the most prestigious journals to publish their papers. However, these publications tend not to be "open access" and require a subscription to read the articles. Some journals offer to make individual papers open access if an additional fee is paid by the author. But academic are reluctant to pay these fees, unless there is a requirement from their institution (and a special grant) to do so. As a result these closed access papers tend to be read and cited less than open access ones, simply because they are harder to get on-line.