The challenges and options that appear along with recent innovations in online education make researchers to reflect on the barriers that still exist for learners with special needs. In case of vulnerable learner groups, MOOCs seem to include special benefits for them, such as openness, low cost, ubiquity, social learning and the possibility of acquiring knowledge, new competences and develop professionally. This is the main objective of present doctoral work: to provide an adaptive model for developing a recommendation system dedicated to people with special needs. The system will help these vulnerable users to find best MOOCs that suit their professional needs and that are more accessible for each learner. Both accessibility of eLearning platforms and content is analyzed, therefore the system should adapt its interface to each assistive technology and also the graded list of recommended MOOCs to best fit each user’s device and accessibility requirements.

1. Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services
for people with special needs
Francisco Iniesto
Advisors: Covadonga Rodrigo & Timothy Read
Second year part-time PhD student
Doctoral Consortium
1-2 June 2015

2. ROADMAP
1. Rationale. Study context
2. Objectives
3. Methodology
4. Tasks
5. Future work
6. References

3.  Context: lll for people with special needs
 Integrates education, work and personal life in a continuous process.
 People with special needs choose distance education universities (eLearning)
for their studies.
 7.500 enrolled students at UNED represents 50% of total Spanish univeristy
students with a disability
RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT
Evolution of enrolment of disabled students over period 2003 – 2015 at UNED (UNIDIS)
2554
2966
3462
3830
4283 4224
4808
6294 6104
7469
7670
7847
7469
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
(Fisseler & Bühler, 2007; Law et al, 2013; Universia, 2014)

4. RATIONALE. STUDY CONTEXT
Context: ICT + Disabilities:
• The possibilities that ICT offer people
with disabilities to improve their
wellbeing and the possibility of their
insertion into the work market.
• The fact to make digital people with
special needs increases the work rate in
this collective.
• 100% consider that the incorporation of
ICT into the workplace has increased
their work possibilities.
(Díaz & Bonjoch, 2007; Vila et al, 2007; Kop & Bouchard,
2011; Lewis, 2014)
Context: Accessible MOOC Learning:
Benefits such as:
• Openness
• Low cost
• Ubiquity (Time, space and rhythm)
• Acquiring knowledge
• Social learning: Connectivism
• Achieving new competences
• Develop professionally
(Downes, 2013; Siemens, 2013, Morrison, 2013; Zapata-Ros,
2013, Haggard, 2013, Teixeira & Mota, 2013; Waard et al 2014;
Gaebler, 2014)

5. OBJECTIVES
• The system will help to find MOOCs that best suit their
professional needs and that are more accessible regarding
hisher disability.
• Accessibility Analysis of both of eLearning platforms and
educational resources.
• Personalization: adaptation to each assistive technology.
• Rated list of recommended MOOCs to best fit accessibility
requirements and learning preferences.
DESIGN a personalized app for recommending MOOCs adapted to user needs:
achieve new professional competences + learner’s preferences.

6. MOOC data
defined
by achievable competences

7. OBJECTIVES
Competence-based recommendation app for people with functional diversity
1. Enriched user profile.
• User’s device personalization: preferences / needed assistive technologies -> technical
needs regarding user’s functional diversity.
2. Accessible MOOCs.
• Accessibility evaluation on MOOC platforms and their educational resources-> automated
recommendation list adapted to user’s functional diversity (user’s profile).
Objective suported by (Rodriguez-Ascaso & Boticario, 2015): Functional Diversity Scenario.

8. METHODOLOGY
TASK 0 (transversal): Literature review/update
TASK 1: Accessibility evaluation of MOOC platforms and courses to achieve a map of accessible
MOOCs versus functional diversities.
TASK 2: Development of a holistic approach assessing accessibility in MOOCs using different tools:
• automatic tools, disability simulators …
TASK 3: Analysis/Selection of accessible metadata for user profile definition:
• assistive technologies, device user preferences instead of functional disability
TASK 4: Enriched user profile definition:
• functional diversity (from Task 3)
TASK 5: Accessibility map: MOOC accessibility vector of characteristics vs user’s functional diversity
TASK 6: Literature enhancement and thesis paper development.

9. TASK 1: HOW SHOULD THE MODEL FOR AN ACCESSIBLE MOOC
PLATFORM BE?
The minimum required level of
accessibility :
 Guarantee access to the
content by means of the
platforms.
 Produce the content
accessible in itself.
 Evaluate the access conditions.
 The technological platform.
 The content of the MOOC must be
the same for all of the students.
 The students must be able to access
the content using assistive
technologies.
 It is necessary to offer alternative
textual descriptions for multimedia
content.
 Assistance must be provided.
Task 0: (Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2013; Najd et al, 2014; Bohnsack & Puh 2014; Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora 2015;
Rodríguez-Ascaso & Boticario, 2015)

10. (Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2013). Review of five Coursera courses. Authors found Web
accessibility problems in Coursera platform and the contents of the five courses, limiting access to
elderly students.
(Najd et al, 2014). Evaluation of 10 Coursera courses on different topics (technology, design,
humanities, physics, etc. according to WCAG 2.0 is aimed to blind or partially sighted people, none
of the courses reaches the level A. These affect important tasks as browse the contents, access to
the video classes, or perform test and exercises.
(Bohnsack & Puh, 2014). Evaluation of the accessibility of the five MOOC platforms more popular
in the United States (Udacity, Coursera, edX) and in Germany (OpenCourseWorld and Iversity) for
blind users. The experiment was stopped at the point at which an accessibility problem prevented
the user from continuing without help. All platforms (except edX) had fatal accessibility problems
in the initial stages of the interaction.
(Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2015). Proposal of a three-layer architecture to extend the
platform Open edX to enhance course content accessibility for users with disabilities. The goal of
the proposed extension is to enhance MOOCs’ accessibility by adapting course content to student
needs, preferences, skills and situations.
TASK 0: LITERATURE REVIEW – RELATED TASK 1

11. TASK 1: CREATING ACCESSIBLE MOOCS. THE IMPORTANCE
OF STANDARDS
eLearning platform
standards:
Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.0 (2008)
Website Accessibility
Conformance Evaluation
Methodology
1.0 (2014)
TASK 0: (García et al 2012; Pagés & Aguado, 2014)(Iniesto & Rodrigo, 2013)

12. TASK 1: CREATING ACCESSIBLE MOOCS. THE IMPORTANCE
OF STANDARDS
•Documents:
o PDF, Word. Follow Accessibility guidelines for documents
•Videos (pills)
o Include subtitles.
o Sign Language Interpreter.
o Include alternative text to the video content. Textual description
Task 0: (Sánchez Caballero, 2010; Sama & Sevillano, 2012, Chicaiza 2014)
Task0: (Moreno et Al, 2011; Bengochea & Budia, 2012)

13. TASK 1: METHODOLOGY AND GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING
ACCESSIBILITY IN MOOCS
A selection of a set of Web pages:
•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,…
Multimedia, Video lessons.
Methodology that combines:
 Conformance reviews.
 Screening techniques.
TASK 0: (Brajnik ,2008; Brajnik ,2009; Markku et al, 2012; Hilera et al, 2013)

14. TASK 1: CASE STUDIES
"Emprendimiento y Desarrollo de Aplicaciones de Realidad Aumentada"
(COLMENIA: Weprendo + UnX).
"España+Francia+Cerca I" (UNED COMA).
"Estrategias de Marketing Online. Community Manager" (Miriada X).
“As alterações climáticas - or contexto das experiências de vida” (UAb iMOOC).
(Iniesto et al, 2014; Iniesto & Rodrigo 2014)

15. 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%

16. 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

17. 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.

18. 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 No No No

19. TASK 1: CASE STUDY RESULTS
All platforms obtain average results 5 – 6 /10 -> place for improvement. None of the
platforms achieve reasonable values (higher than 60%).
For the educational content -> no standards (either platforms or accessible
educational content). -> SCORM and accessibility guidelines.
Lack of accessibility of audiovisual resources exist for all the platforms.

20. TASK 2: HOLISTIC APPROACH FOR EVALUATING
ACCESSIBILITY IN MOOCS
Global or heuristic vision:
MOOC accessibility vector of
characteristics.
Evaluation through automatic
accessibility tools :
WCAG Accessibility Validation:
eXaminator
 Disability Simulators:
aDesigner
 User Experience (UX)
Testing Tools: Sortsite
 User evaluation
 Educational content evaluation
The MOOC
platform
The educational
content.
(Iniesto & Rodrigo, 2014)Task 0: (Pascual Espada et al, 2014)

21. TASK 3: ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBLE METADATA FOR USER PROFILE
DEFINITION
Task 0: (Takagi et al, 2008; Boticario & Santos, 2008, Otón et al 2014)
IMS Access for All (AfA) : Personal Needs and Preferences (PNP) and Digital
Resource Description (DRD) -> Multiplicity (Collections)
( Rodrigo & Iniesto, 2015)

22. Learning Profiling:
•Display information: the user preferences to have information presented. define
preferences related to text (fonts and colors), video (resolution), mouse (pointer, motion)
•Control information: user preferences to control the device keyboard (virtual), zoom
preferences, voice recognition)
•Content information: user preferences for visualizing learning content.
•Privacy and data protection information.
TASK 3: ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBLE METADATA FOR USER PROFILE
DEFINITION
Learning Resources:
•Technological: the technology to develop and edit the resources. (authoring tools to facilitate
the production of accessible materials)
•Adapted Devices: when a user accesses a resource available on the Internet, it can be
accessed directly or a device would have to be used specifically (screen reader, specialized
mouse, virtual keyboard, magnifying glass).
•Existing Inclusive Methodologies and Educational Standards: XML markup languages.

23. FUTURE WORK
TASK 2: Refinement of holistic approach.
MOOC accessibility vector of characteristics :
Collect positive/negative indicators
Define user cases to evaluate a correct accessibility
Virtual users
Users with special needs
TASK 3: Analysis of accessible metadata for user profile definition.
IMS Access for All (AfA) : Personal Needs and Preferences (PNP) and Digital Resource
Description (DRD) -> Multiplicity (Collections)
TASK 4: Enrichment of user profile definition
Web form:
Design of the questions
Personal data
User’s device personalization
Preferences / needed assistive technologies.
Users with special needs
TASK 5: Development of accessibility map. MOOC accessibility vector of characteristics vs user’s
functional diversity

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26. Accessibility issues in MOOCs: potential services for people
with special needs
Francisco Iniesto
Advisors: Covadonga Rodrigo & Timothy Read
Department of Computer Languages and Systems
E-mail: finiesto2@alumno.uned.es, finiesto@gmail.com