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. A bridge between accessibility and MOOCs: an
adaptative model for developing new services for
people with special needs
Francisco Iniesto
Supervisors: Covadonga Rodrigo & Timothy Read
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
4th GO-GN Seminar
20-21 April 2015
Open Education Global
22-24 April 2015
Banff, Alberta
Canada

2. CONTEXT: LLL FOR PEOPLE WITH FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY
 People with disabilities choose distance education universities (eLearning) for their
studies. (50% UNED)
Evolution of enrolment of disabled students over period 2003 – 2015 at UNED
Disability 2013/2014
Physical 4454
Psychic 1736
Hearing 570
Visual 874
Total 7847
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

3. CONTEXT: ACCESSIBLE MOOC LEARNING
.
Benefits such as:
• Openness
• Low cost
• Ubiquity
• Acquiring knowledge
• Social learning
• Achieving new competences
• Develop professionally
Image retrieved from Open Education Europa
The fact to make digital people with special needs increases the
work rate in this collective

4. DOCTORAL WORK OBJECTIVE
• Adaptive model.
• 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 of the app: GUI adaptation to each assistive
technology.
• Rated list of recommended MOOCs to best fit accessibility
requirements and learning preferences.
The main objective of this doctoral work: Design a PERSONALIZED APP for
RECOMMENDING MOOCs adapted to user needs: achieve new professional
competences + learner’s preferences.

5. COMPETENCE-BASED RECOMMENDATION APP FOR PEOPLE
WITH FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY
Enriched user profile. There are two main groups of information:
1. list of professional competences the user wants to achieve -> what the person wants
to learn
2. User’s device personalization: preferences / needed assistive technologies ->
technical needs regarding user’s functional diversity.

6. COMPETENCE-BASED RECOMMENDATION APP FOR PEOPLE
WITH FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY
Professional profiles defined by competences.
The system should have professional skills defined to be mapped to user expectations.
MOOC content defined by achievable competences.
The information of competencies within the MOOC platforms and courses.
Accessible MOOCs.
Accessibility evaluation on MOOC platforms and their educational resources
-> automated recommendation list adapted to user’s functional diversity (user’s profile).

7. MOOC data
defined
by achievable competences

8. MOOC data
defined
by achievable competences

9. COMPETENCE-BASED RECOMMENDATION APP FOR PEOPLE
WITH FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY
TASK 1: Development of an 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 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 vs user’s functional diversity

10. 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.

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)
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C (2013) Estándares y accesibilidad en el ciclo de creación de OERs mediante herramientas de autor. ATICA 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

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.
(Brajnik ,2009; Sánchez Caballero, 2010,
Sama et al, 2012; Hilera et al, 2013)

14. TASK 1: CASE STUDIES
"Estrategias de
Marketing Online.
Community Manager"
(Miriada X. ).
"Emprendimiento y
Desarrollo de
Aplicaciones de
Realidad
Aumentada"
(COLMENIA:
Weprendo + UnX).
“As alterações
climáticas - or
contexto das
experiências de
vida” (UAb
iMOOC)
"España+Francia+Cerca I" (UNED
COMA).
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C., Moreira Teixeira, A. (2014) Accessibility analysis in MOOC platforms. A case study: UNED COMA and UAb iMOOC.
CAFVIR 2014
Iniesto F., Rodrigo C. (2014) "Accessibility assessment of MOOC platforms in Spanish: UNED COMA, COLMENIA and Miriada X. SIIE14

15. 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 full accessibility of audiovisual resources exist for all the platforms.

16. TASK 2: HOLISTIC APPROACH 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
 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 ATICA 2014

17. TASK 3: ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBLE METADATA FOR USER PROFILE
DEFINITION
Analysis of accessible metadata for user profile definition: {assistive technologies, device user
preferences instead of functional disability}
Rodrigo C., Iniesto F. (2015) Holistic vision for creating accessible services based on MOOCs. Open Education Global Conference. 2015.

18. Learning Profiling:
•Display information: the user preferences to have information displayed or
presented. For example, it is possible to define preferences related to text (fonts and
colors), video (resolution), mouse (pointer, motion), etc.
•Control information: this set defines the user preferences to control the device:
keyboard (virtual), zoom preferences, voice recognition.
•Content information: this set defines the user preferences for visualizing learning
content.
•Privacy and data protection information: The privacy and the data integrity is
considered very important, since the exchanged information can be closely related to
the user’s functional diversity.
TASK 3: ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBLE METADATA FOR USER PROFILE
DEFINITION

19. Learning Resources:
•Technological: the technology to develop and edit the resources, authoring tools to
facilitate the production of accessible materials or the adaptation of those already
produced.
•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, etc.
•Existing Inclusive Methodologies and Educational Standards: in this sense the XML
markup languages have to be mentioned.
TASK 3: ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBLE METADATA FOR USER PROFILE
DEFINITION

20. IMS Access for All (AfA) : Personal Needs and Preferences (PNP) and Digital
Resource Description (DRD) -> Multiplicity (Collections)
TASK 3: ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBLE METADATA FOR
USER PROFILE DEFINITION
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C (2015) Accessible services for people with functional diversity based on MOOCs. EC-TEL 2015
Iniesto, F., Rodrigo, C (2015) Modelado de perfiles de usuario accesibles para servicios académicos basados enMOOCs. Interracción2015

21. Enriched user profile
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
Personalization of the app: GUI adaptation to each assistive
technology.

22. Creation of a map of accessibility in MOOCs versus functional diversity
Heuristic evaluation:
Collect positive/negative indicators
Define user cases to evaluate a correct accessibility
Virtual users, learning scenarios
Users with special needs
MOOCs sort by level of accessibility.
Allow to search the educational
resources that best meet the user's
functional diversity.
TASK 5: DEVELOPMENT OF ACCESSIBILITY MAP

23. FUTURE WORK
TASK 2: Refinement of holistic approach.
TASK 3: Analysis of accessible metadata
for user profile definition
-> Include microdata standards: AMP
and LRMI (search engines)
TASK 4: Enrichment of user profile
definition.
Image retrieved from Mary Robinson Foundation

24. Francisco Iniesto
Department of Computer Languages and Systems
School of Computer Science
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED),
Madrid, Spain
E-mail: finiesto@gmail.com
LinkedIn: es.linkedin.com/in/franciscoiniesto/en