MOOCs include benefits for people in vulnerable groups but full access to the educational content and the learning platform must be assured.

1. Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential
services for people with functional diversity
Francisco Iniesto
School of Computer Science, UNED, Spain
3rd GO-GN Seminar
OpenEd 2014
17-21 November 2014
Washington, DC

2. CONTEXT: PHD CANDIDATE
1. Engineer in Computer Science. Part-time PhD researcher. IT consulting
2. Connection with the creation of educational materials cycle and
accessibility:
 Mst. in Languages and Computer Systems. Specialized in
teaching, learning, collaboration and adaptation.
 Master's thesis: Accessibility and standardization in the cycle of
creation educational materials.
(Covadonga Rodrigo)
3. Connection with OERs world: OpenScout:
 Accessibility evaluation.
4. Connection with MOOCs and PhD Research:
 Accessible MOOCs recommender system for people with
functional diversity.
(Covadonga Rodrigo & Timothy Read)
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

3. CONTEXT: LLL FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
 The access and integration process for people with functional diversity in the
education system is positive and irreversible.
 There is a growing proportion of people with disabilities that choose distance
education universities (eLearning) for their studies.
Evolution of enrolment of disabled students over
period 2003 – 2014 at UNED
Disability 2013/2014
Physical 4454
Psychic 1736
Hearing 570
Visual 874
Specified total 6474
Unspecified
6474
total
Total 7847
Students enrolled by type of
disability 2013 – 2014 at UNED
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

4. CONTEXT: ICT + DISABILITIES
The fact to make digital people with disabilities increases the work rate in this
collective, low burden for the government and thus increases economic activity in a
country.
Chris Lewis, Accessibility for the Disabled in the
Increasingly Mobile World Report
‘The Untapped Billion’ Feb 2014
The possibilities that Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT) offer people
with disabilities to improve their wellbeing and
the possibility of their insertion into the work
market.
It is pointed out that 100% consider that the
incorporation of ICT into the workplace has
increased their work possibilities
Informe Acceso y uso de las TIC por las personas
con discapacidad.Fundación Vodafone Spain 2013
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

5. CONTEXT: ACCESSIBLE MOOC LEARNING
These students look for the so-called permanent
learning or lifelong learning paradigm:
Integrates education, work and personal life in a
continuous process and allows the citizens to be
able to access the knowledge and develop it both
personally and through work.
II Report “Universidad y Discapacidad” Sept 2014
Fundación Universia and CERMI
.
 Informal Learning.
 Social Learning: Connectivism.
 Time, space and rhythm.
 Entertainment: interaction between all
participants and media.
 Free and open education.
 Reach global audiences.
Most vulnerable potential users might
be left behind in the Knowledge Society.
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

6. COMPETENCE-BASED RECOMMENDATION APP FOR PEOPLE
MOOC data
defined
by achievable competences
WITH DISABILITIES
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

7. COMPETENCE-BASED RECOMMENDATION APP FOR PEOPLE
WITH DISABILITIES
MAIN OBJECTIVE: Design a PERSONALIZED APP for RECOMMENDING MOOCs adapted
to achieve new professional competences and specifically designed for people with
disabilities
TASK 1 Evaluation of the accessibility level in MOOC platforms and courses -> map of
accessibility in MOOCs vs disabilities
TASK 2 Analysis of competence-based information (learning goals, learning outcomes,
etc) in MOOCs syllabus: where and what
TASK 3 Mapping MOOC information with professional posts (competence based
defined)-> set of metadata collection
TASK 4 Definition of enriched user profile: 1) functional disability (assistive technologies,
device user preferences), 2) list of achievable professional competences or professional
post
TASK 5 System integration with 3er party recommender system (research collaboration)
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

8. TASK 1: HOWSHOULD THE MODEL FOR AN ACCESSIBLE MOOC
PLATFORM BE?
In order to achieve the minimum
required level of accessibility in this type
of platform, two significant aspects will
have to be taken into account:
 Make possible and guarantee
access to the content by
means of the platforms.
 Produce the content accessible
in itself.
 Evaluate the access conditions, the
knowledge and the handling of the
technological platforms.
 The technological platform. The degree of
usability of a series of Web services offered
to the student.
 The content of the MOOC must be the same
for all of the students, although the
presentation might be different.
 The students must be able to access the
content using assistive technologies and
adapt their presentation in accordance with
their specific needs.
 It is necessary to offer alternative textual
descriptions for multimedia content.
 Assistance must be provided to those
students who have encountered problems or
barriers to accessibility.
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

9. TASK 1: CREATING ACCESSIBLE MOOCS. THE IMPORTANCE
OF STANDARDS
Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.0 (2008)
Accessibility guidelines
for documents
Website Accessibility
Conformance
Evaluation
Methodology
1.0 (2014)
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C (2013) Estándares y accesibilidad en el ciclo de creación de OERs mediante herramientas de autor. Proceedings
from V Congreso Internacional ATICA 2013 ISBN edición impresa: 978-612-4196-16-4 ISBN Eds. M.A. Córdoba, L. Bengochea, p. 55 –
62, Huncayo, Perú.

10. TASK 1: METHODOLOGY AND GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING
ACCESSIBILITY IN MOOCS
A selection of a set of Web pages, being
a representative example:
•The platform’s homepage.
•A representative page of the course.
•A course page including a form.
•A course page including a forum.
 Educational resources (Knowledge Pills)
Text based: PDF, Word,…
Video lessons
The approach presented can be
considered as a methodology that
combines
 The methods of conformance
reviews
 Screening techniques
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

11. TASK 1: METHODOLOGY AND GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING
ACCESSIBILITY IN MOOCS
Global or heuristic vision:
Evaluation through automatic
accessibility tools :
WCAG Accessibility Validation:
eXaminator
 Disability Simulators:
aDesigner
 User Experience (UX)
Testing Tools: Sortsite
 User evaluation (ongoing)
 Educational content evaluation
The MOOC
platform
The educational
content.
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C (2014) Pautas para la evaluación de la accesibilidad en las plataformas MOOC. Proceedings from VI Congreso
Internacional ATICA 2014 ISBN edición impresa: 978-84-16133-42-0 Eds. L. Bengochea Martínez, J. M. Gutiérrez Martínez, A. García Cabot,
E.García López. p. 57 – 64, Universidad de Alcalá, España.

12. TASK 1: AUTOMATIC ACCESSIBILITY TOOLS. EXAMINATOR
Generic
information
Disaggregated
test table
Results by
criteria
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

13. TASK 1: DISABILITY SIMULATOR. ADESIGNER
Simulator
Detailed
report
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

14. TASK 1: TESTING TOOLS. SORTSITE
 General Errors: Broken links, Server
configuration
 Web browsers compatibility
 Privacy: standards regulating privacy
 Search Guidelines
 Standards: W3C HTML/XHTML, W3C
CSS Validation, W3C Style Guide
 Usability: W3C Best Practices
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

15. TASK 1: TESTING TOOLS. SORTSITE
Chart
Sitemap
Results
report
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

16. TASK 1: EDUCATIONAL CONTENT EVALUATION
•Documents:
o PDF, Word. Follow accessibility
standards
•Videos (pills)
o Include subtitles.
o Sign Language Interpreter
o Include alternative text to the video
content. Textual description
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

17. TASK 1: CASE STUDIES
"Emprendimiento y
Desarrollo de
Aplicaciones de
Realidad
Aumentada"
(COLMENIA:
Weprendo + UnX).
"Estrategias de
Marketing Online.
Community Manager"
(Miriada X. ).
"España+Francia+Cerca I" (UNED
COMA).
“As alterações
climáticas - or
contexto das
experiências de
vida” (UAb
iMOOC)
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C., Moreira Teixeira, A. (2014) Accessibility analysis in MOOC platforms. A case study: UNED COMA and UAb iMOOC.
Proceedings from V Congreso Internacional sobre Calidad y Accesibilidad de la Formación Virtual CAFVIR 2014 ISBN edición impresa: 978-
9929-40-497-7 ISBN Eds. L. Bengochea, R. Hernández, J. R. Hilera González, p. 545 - 550, Antigua, Guatemala.
Iniesto F., Rodrigo C. (2014) "Evaluación de la accesibilidad en las plataformas MOOC en español: UNED COMA, COLMENIA y Miriada X"
Proceedings from XVI Simposio Internacional en Informática Educativa (SIIE’14) Acceso masivo y universal para un aprendizaje a lo largo de la
vida. J.L.Sierra Rodríguez, J. M. Dodero Beardo y D. Burgos (Eds.) SBN: 978-84-16125-41-8 Logroño, La Rioja pp. 231 - 236

18. UNED COMA Excelent, good
and very good
Regular Bad Very Bad Score Compliance
Homepage 7 1 4 1 6.6 54%
Form 7 1 2 3 7.7 54%
Course 7 1 4 3 6.8 50%
Forum 6 2 4 1 6.7 46%
Average Value 6.1 51%
COLMENIA
Homepage 5 2 7 6 4.5 25%
Form 5 3 8 4 4.7 25%
Course 7 2 7 1 5.4 41%
Forum 6 1 5 5 6.2 32%
Valor Medio 5.2 31%
Miriada X
Homepage 4 1 4 7 4.2 25%
Form 6 3 8 4 4.5 29%
Course 4 3 5 6 4.1 22%
Forum 6 3 8 4 4.5 29%
Average Value 4.3 26%
UAb iMOOC
Homepage 7 6 4 5 4.8 32%
Form 7 2 1 3 5.8 54%
Course 9 2 1 4 6.1 56%
Forum 9 4 2 4 5.9 47%
Average Value 5.6 47%
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

19. UNED COMA totally blind difficulty in
seeing
members Understanding age
Homepage 7.2 6.4 6.9 5.7 6.5
Form 6 6.4 5 5.4 6.2
Course 6.5 5.7 5.8 5.3 6
Forum 6 6.5 6.6 5.8 6.1
Average Value 6.4 6.2 6.1 5.5 6.2
COLMENIA
Homepage 4.5 4.7 4.2 5.2 5.2
Form 4.2 5 4.2 5.2 5.5
Course 4.5 5.7 4.9 6 6.2
Forum 5.3 6.7 5.7 7.1 7.1
Valor Medio 4.6 4.4 4.7 5.9 6
Miriada X
Homepage 4 4.3 3.6 4.3 4.6
Form 4.3 4.7 4.2 4.6 4.8
Course 3.6 4.5 3.5 4.3 4.8
Forum 4.3 4.7 4.2 4.6 4.8
Average Value 3.3 4.5 3.9 4.4 4.7
UAb iMOOC
Homepage 5 4.9 4.9 4.3 5
Form 5.9 6.3 5.5 5.3 6.1
Course 5.8 6.7 6.0 5.9 6.4
Forum 5.8 6.2 6.0 5.5 6.0
Average Value 5.6 6 5.6 5.25 5.8
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

20. UNED COMA:
 PDFs of scanned documents.
 PDFs self-produced and externally produced.
 MP3 Audio format.
 Links to external pages and videos to the
platform.
COLMENIA:
 Supporting documents in compressed format.
 PDFs self-produced.
Miriada X :
 PDFs self-produced.
UAb iMOOC:
 PDFs externally produced.
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

21. UNED COMA COLMENIA Miriada X
Sans-serif style No, Times New Roman Yes, Calibri Yes, Calibri
Visual hierarchy Correct Correct Correct
Contrast Correct, black and white Correct Correct, colors
abuse
Underline Correct Correct Not applicable
Adjust the sound volume Correct Not applicable Not applicable
Text, symbols or pictures for auditory
materials
Not provided Not applicable Not applicable
Images must be high resolution Low resolution Low resolution Medium resolution
Graphs and tables with titles and
abstracts
Not provided Not provided Not provided
UNED COMA COLMENIA Miriada X UAb iMOOC
Include subtitled Yes No Yes No
Sign Language Interpreter No No No No
Textual transcription No, Videos in French
only.
No No No
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

22. TASK 1:CASE STUDY RESULTS
Serious problems have been found in this collective accessing the
education facilitated in this type of platform.
All platforms obtain average results of between 5 and 6 which are very
improvable. None of the platforms achieve values that could be considered
reasonable (higher than 60%).
For the educational content, no standards have been followed in either
platforms to create a uniform and accessible educational content which
would serve for better reuse. It could be desirable that a common format for
all courses will be developed, including accessibility guidelines.
It is worth to notice that a dramatic lack of full accessibility of audiovisual
resources exist for all the platforms.
Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people with functional diversity

23. TASK 1: METHODOLOGY AND GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING
ACCESSIBILITY IN MOOCS
TASK 1 Evaluation of the accessibility level in MOOC platforms and courses -> map of
accessibility in MOOCs vs disabilities
Heuristic evaluation (present and future work):
Collect positive/negative indicators
Define user cases to evaluate a correct accessibility
Virtual users, scenarios
MOOCs sort by level of accessibility.
Allow to search the educational
resources that best meet the user's
disability.

24. TASK 2: ANALYSIS OF COMPETECE-BASED INFORMATION
TASK 2 Analysis of competence-based information (learning goals, learning outcomes,
etc) in MOOCs syllabus: where and what
• Syllabus analysis for metadata extraction:
description, objectives, learning outcomes, …
• Competence Mapping with INCUAL

25. CATÁLOGO NACIONAL DE CUALIFICACIONES PROFESIONALES (CNCP)
Leticia Riaza Moreno
Jefa de Área de Diseño de Cualificaciones (2014)
15

26. FUTURE WORK
TASK 3 Mapping MOOC
information with professional
posts (competence based
defined)-> set of metadata
collection
TASK 4 Definition of enriched user
profile:
1) functional disability (assistive
technologies, device user
preferences)
+
2) list of achievable professional
competences or professional
post
TASK 5 System integration with
3er party recommender system
(research collaboration)

27. Francisco Iniesto
School of Computer Science, UNED, Spain
E-mail: finiesto@gmail.com
LinkedIn: es.linkedin.com/in/franciscoiniesto/en
It is the art of ensuring that, as far and wide as possible, resources
(such as web access) are available for individuals, whether or not
deficiencies of one kind or another.
Accessibility definition by Sidar Foundation