Open For Whom? Data Accessibility and Inclusion In Research Data Management

When we think of accessible data, we usually think of the FAIR principles and especially sufficient documentation of the data for re-users. We often forget the perspective of people with disabilities when it comes to data sharing. Therefore, we aim to develop a module for a Train-the-Trainer course in research data management (RDM) to raise awareness of data accessibility to people with disabilities. Our goal is to raise this awareness among RDM trainers and, consequently, among researchers sharing their data. We will make use of the distance metaphor and equip trainers with a tool to teach this concept and the importance of an outside perspective when describing data to enable future re-use.

Learning objectives of this module will be:

• Participants are able to describe Borgman’s and Groth’s (2025) concept of distance between data creator and data re-user.
• Participants are able to point out the parallels in the challenges for data reuse between data creators and re-users in general and between data creators and re-users with disabilities in particular.
• Participants actively experience a specific knowledge gap between creator and re-user through a practical and repeatable exercise which they can include in RDM trainings.
• Participants experience and can enumerate the practical consequences of the need to verbalize structure and context to preserve meaning and to make information „extractable“.
• Participants apply a step by step approach to data documentation. Exercise partners test the documentation for clarity, aiming to identify and reduce possible sources of ambiguity.
• Participants can list basic measures of inclusion in RDM and apply them. • Participants are able to educate researchers about inclusion and the tools to put it into practice.

After a trial course, we aim to implement our module in a nation-wide train-the-trainer concept.