Accessibility and MOOCs: an adaptive model for developing services for people with special needs

1. Accessibility and MOOCs: an adaptive model for
developing services for people with special needs
Francisco Iniesto
Supervisors: Prof Patrick McAndrew, Prof Shailey Minocha & Dr Tim Coughlan
Leverhulme Doctoral Training Session
24November 2015

2. Context: lll for people with special needs:
• Integrates education, work and personal life in a
continuous process.
• People with special needs tend to choose distance
education universities (eLearning) for their studies.
Context: ICT + Disabilities:
• ICT offers people with disabilities with possibilities: to
improve their wellbeing and their inclusion in the labour
market.
• Digital skills reduce unemployment rate in people with
special needs.
• High percentage consider that the incorporation of ICT
into the workplace has increased their work possibilities.
Context: Accessible MOOC Learning:
Benefits such as:
• Openness
• Low cost
• Ubiquity (Time, place and pace)
• Acquiring knowledge
• Social learning: Connectivism
• Achieving new competences
• Develop professionally
(Fisseler & Bühler, 2007; Díaz & Bonjoch, 2007; Vila et al, 2007; Kop & Bouchard, 2011; Downes, 2013; Siemens, 2013,
Morrison, 2013; Haggard, 2013; Waard et al 2014)

3. MODEL a personalized system for recommending
MOOCs adapted to user needs:
• Help to find MOOCs that are more accessible
regarding his/her 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.

4. Literature Review
Accessibility Assessment:
(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.
(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. All platforms (except edX) had fatal accessibility problems in the initial stages of
the interaction.
Accessibility Framework:
(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.
(Rodríguez-Ascaso & Boticario, 2015) Accessibility and MOOC: Towards a holistic perspective. Authors offer a framework of services, standards,
quality procedures and related issues that should be taken into account

5. Accessibility at EADTU, data from 5 different
universities:
• Open University. UK
• UNED. Spain
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Spain.
• Universidade Aberta. Portugal.
• Open Universiteit. The Netherlands.
Research in terms of people with disabilities and socialization

6. Accessibility at EADTU, data from 5 different
universities:
• Open University. UK
• UNED. Spain
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Spain.
• Universidade Aberta. Portugal.
• Open Universiteit. The Netherlands.
Research in terms of people with disabilities and socialization
• Availability of data and own reports.
• Availability of data and own reports.
• Government data
• There is no data.
• There is no data.

7. Accessibility at EADTU
Disabled Student Numbers Summary: Q4 2014-15 The Open University (The Disability Advisory Service)
Total of Active
Students
Total Disabled
Students
% Total Disabled
Total Disabled New
Students
% Disabled Students
who are New
Total Disabled
Continuing Students
% Disabled Students
who are Continuing
102.224 15.847 15,5% 2.905 18,3% 12.942 81,7%
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
Evolution of enrolment of disabled students
over period 2003 – 2015 at UNED (UNIDIS)

8. Report on Disabled Student Satisfaction (2013/14):
For Internal Use Only
Accessibility and policies at OU
Report from the "Accessibility and OERs (SCORE ):
• The responsibility for the provision of accessible OERs
should not solely reside with resource creators
• There are a number of relatively simple strategies that
could greatly enhance the accessibility of OERs,
• Provision of transcript for any audio/video material and
ensuring that the resource is an easily customisable
format
• There is a need to provide OER-related accessibility
resources
• There is a need to address accessibility features of
platforms where OERs are deposited
Open Media Unit 2014:
Number of disabled visitors to the platforms per
year:
• OpenLearn (23%)
• iTunes U (18 %)
• YouTube U (14%)
(Gruszczynska, 2012)
Securing Greater Accessibility (SeGA):
• Accessibility Guidelines
• VLE and Media Player Accessibility and Usability tests

9. Accessibility and policies at OU
Adapting online learning resources for all: planning
for professionalism in accessibility (EU4ALL):
Implications of adopting the framework in the following
areas:
• legacy curricula: the need to accurately describe and
manage adaptation
• availability of accessible content: validation against
standards such as WCAG 2 and providing alternatives as
necessary
• course development and lesson design: appropriate
representation and recording of decision points
• the need to ensure users have adequate training and IT
skills.
• the culture change required to promote proactive
consideration of accessibility
Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years
and over in the UK:
The group of 55 years of age and over is normally not
recognised as being significant for the workforce and
the economy.
If UK could boost its employment rate for workers aged
55--‐64 then it would boost Britain’s GDP by 5.4% or
£100 billion.
Recommendations:
• MOOC on “Designing individual MOOCs and MOOC
platforms for older and disabled students”
• A MOOC on developing social media strategy for
digital professionals
• OpenLearn: Introducing Ageing, Success in the
workplace, Using Voluntary work to get ahead in the
job market(McAndrew et al, 2012; Minocha et al 2015)

10. Global or heuristic vision:
MOOC accessibility vector of
characteristics.
Evaluation through automatic
accessibility tools :
WCAG Accessibility Validation
Disability Simulators
 User Experience (UX)
Testing Tools
 Educational content evaluation
Text based: PDF, Word,…
Multimedia, Video lessons.
The MOOC
platform
The educational
content.
Are MOOCs accessible enough?
(Iniesto & Rodrigo, 2014)

11. Holistic approach evaluation
Past Case Studies
COLMENIA: Weprendo + UnX:
"Emprendimiento y Desarrollo de Aplicaciones de
Realidad Aumentada“. UNED.
UNED COMA
"España+Francia+Cerca I". UNED.
Miriada X:
"Estrategias de Marketing Online. Community
Manager". University of Cantabria.
UAb iMOOC
“As alterações climáticas - or contexto das
experiências de vida”. Universidade Aberta

12. Holistic approach evaluation
Past Case Studies
COLMENIA: Weprendo + UnX:
"Emprendimiento y Desarrollo de Aplicaciones de
Realidad Aumentada“. UNED.
UNED COMA
"España+Francia+Cerca I". UNED.
Miriada X:
"Estrategias de Marketing Online. Community
Manager". University of Cantabria.
UAb iMOOC
“As alterações climáticas - or contexto das
experiências de vida”. Universidade Aberta
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). ->
accessibility guidelines.
Lack of accessibility of audiovisual resources exist
for all the platforms.
(Iniesto et al, 2014; Iniesto & Rodrigo 2014)

13. Holistic approach evaluation
Past Case Studies
COLMENIA: Weprendo + UnX:
"Emprendimiento y Desarrollo de Aplicaciones de
Realidad Aumentada“. UNED.
UNED COMA
"España+Francia+Cerca I". UNED.
Miriada X:
"Estrategias de Marketing Online. Community
Manager". University of Cantabria.
UAb iMOOC
“As alterações climáticas - or contexto das
experiências de vida”. Universidade Aberta
Present Case Studies
FutureLearn:
• Introduction to cyber security. The Open University.
• What is character? Virtue ethics in education. University of
Birmingham.
• How to succed at: witting applications. The University of Sheffield.
Coursera:
• What a Plant Knows (and other things you didn’t know about
plants). Tel Aviv University
• Cryptography I. Stanford
• Machine Learning Foundations: A Case Study Approach. University
of Washington.
edX
• Mobile Computing in App Inventor: CS Principles. TrinityX (Trinity
College)
• Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science. MITx
(MIT)
• Circular Economy: An Introduction. DelftX (TuDelft)
Udacity
• Health Informatics in the Cloud. Georgia Tech
• Google Play Services: Location & Context. Google
• Data Analysis with R. Visually Analyze and Summarize Data Sets.
Facebook.

14. Past Case Studies
Evaluation through automatic accessibility
tools :
WCAG Accessibility Validation:
eXaminator
Disability Simulators: aDesigner
 User Experience (UX)
Testing Tools: Sortsite
 Educational content evaluation: Manually
Holistic approach evaluation

15. Past Case Studies
Evaluation through automatic accessibility
tools :
WCAG Accessibility Validation:
eXaminator
Disability Simulators: aDesigner
 User Experience (UX)
Testing Tools: Sortsite
 Educational content evaluation: Manually
Holistic approach evaluation
Present Case Studies
Evaluation through automatic accessibility tools :
WCAG Accessibility Validation: eXaminator
Mobile Checker: TAW
Disability Simulators: aDesigner + Virtual
Users
 User Experience (UX)
Testing Tools: Sortsite
 Educational content evaluation: Manually + PDF
Accessibility Checker

16. Do we have a real feedback in terms of accessibility from the MOOCs stakeholders?
MOOC providers:
• How each provider works in terms of accessibility?
Students:
• Have feedback from users of the courses
Coursetalk. (https://www.coursetalk.com/)
• Can we get information about accessibility there? => NO
• Coursetalk. Develop an accessibility Coursetalk.
Next steps

17. •Fisseler, B., Bühler, C.: Accessible e-learning and educational technology – extending learning opportunities for people with disabilities. In: Proceedings of ICL, 2007, hal-00257138, pp.
26–28. Archives Ouvertes ,2007
• Díaz, M. P., & Bonjoch, M. R. ¿ Y después del trabajo, qué?: más allá de la integración laboral de las personas con discapacidad. Revista de Educación, (342), 329-348 ,2007.
•Vila, M.; Pallisera, M. & Fullan J. Work integration of people with disabilities in the regular labour market: What can we do to improve these processes. Journal of Intellectual &
Developmental Disability, Volume 32, Issue 1:10-18, 2007.
•Kop R. , & Bouchard P., “The role of adult educators in the age of social media”. Digital education: Opportunities for social collaboration, 61-80, 2011.
•Downes S., “What the „x‟ in „xMOOC‟ stands for?” https://plus.google.com/109526159908242471749/posts/LEwaKxL2MaM, 2013.
•Siemens G., “MOOCs are really a platform”. http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-aplatform, 2013.
•Morrison D., “The Ultimate Student Guide to xMOOCs and cMOOCs”. http://moocnewsandreviews.com/ultimate-guide-to-xmoocs-andcmoocso , 2013
•Haggard D. “Massive open online courses and online distance learning: review”. GOV.UK Research and analysis. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/massive-open-online-
coursesand-online-distance-learning-review, 2013
•De Waard I., Gallagher M.S., Zelezny-Green R., Czerniewicz L., Downes S., Kukulska-Hulme A., Willems J.: Challenges for conceptualising MOOC for vulnerable learner groups.
eMOOC2014 MOOC stakeholder summit, pp. 33-41. Lausanne, Switzerland. P.A.U. Education, S.L. U. Cress, C. Delgado-Kloos (2014).
•Najd A. Al-Mouh, Atheer S. Al-Khalifa, and Hend S. Al-Khalifa. A First Look into MOOCs Accessibility. The Case of Coursera K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.): ICCHP 2014, Part I, LNCS 8547,
pp. 145–152. Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2014
•Bohnsack, M., & Puhl, S. (2014). Accessibility of MOOCs. In Computers Helping People with Special Needs (pp. 141-144). Springer International Publishing.
•Rodríguez-Ascaso, A. y Boticario, J. G. Accesibilidad y MOOC: Hacia una perspectiva integral. RIED. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 18 (2), 61-85. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5944/ried.18.2.13670, 2015
•Sandra Sanchez-Gordon S., Sergio Luján-Mora Adaptive Content Presentation Extension for Open edX. Enhancing MOOCs Accessibility for Users with Disabilities. ACHI 2015 : The
Eighth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. IARIA, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-61208-382-7, 2015.
•Gruszczynska, A (2012). Report from the "Accessibility and OERs [Open Educational Resources]" survey
•McAndrew, Patrick; Farrow, Robert and Cooper, Martyn (2012). Adapting online learning resources for all: planning for professionalism in accessibility. Research in Learning
Technology, 20(4), pp. 345–361.
•Minocha, Shailey; McNulty, Catherine and Evans, Shirley (2015). Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years and over in the UK. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
•Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C., Moreira Teixeira, A. Accessibility analysis in MOOC platforms. A case study: UNED COMA and UAb iMOOC. Libro de Actas del V Congreso Internacional sobre
Calidad y Accesibilidad de la Formación Virtual CAFVIR, Antigua, Guatemala, 2014
•Iniesto, F.; Rodrigo, C., "Accessibility assessment of MOOC platforms in Spanish: UNED COMA, COLMENIA and Miriada X," Computers in Education (SIIE), 2014 International Symposium
on, vol., no., pp.169,172, 12-14 doi: 10.1109/SIIE.2014.7017724, 2014
•Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C. Pautas para la evaluación de la accesibilidad en las plataformas MOOC. Libro de Actas del 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, 2014.
References

18. Accessibility and MOOCs: an adaptive model for
developing services for people with special needs
Francisco Iniesto
Supervisors: Prof Patrick McAndrew, Prof Shailey Minocha & Dr Tim Coughlan
Leverhulme Doctoral Training Session
24November 2015