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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are attracting a wide range of learners, over 800 universities around the world have launched at least one MOOC in 2019, coexisting worldwide an overall offering of more than 9K MOOCs. Due to the high amount of MOOC offerings, the need for specific recommender sites is indisputable. But there is still a critical point ignored in the MOOC recommender systems while dealing with inclusive design. There is a lack of detailed information regarding accessibility to ensure that disabled learners can access the platform and the educational resources.\ud \ud In this work, called YourMOOC4all [1], a pilot recommender system based on collaborative filtering has been developed and user feedback is organised from a wide range of participants into a coherent and actionable structure. This recommender system is influenced by other systems that use learners’ feedback. There exist several MOOC aggregator sites such as CourseTalk [2], where learners can add\ud feedback about the MOOCs they are participating in and receive recommendations. Learners are the best to provide compliments and criticisms of course designs, especially students with disabilities. YourMOOC4all is a programmed prototype harvesting information from more than 700 MOOCs for testing. The evaluation process is done by the users themseleves, answering autonomously a web\ud form created following the framework proposed by UDL (Universal Design for Learning) principles. The indicators have been developed by the authors based on the last UDL guidelines version. It is also possible to review different pedagogical aspects of the MOOCs rating them or adding free text comments, which includes giving an opinion about the content of the MOOC, that could be of interest to both the provider and the instructor.\ud \ud [1] YourMOOC4all http://yourmooc4all.lsi.uned.e\ud [2] Course Talk https://www.coursetalk.com/

Accessibility is a quality requirement for digital educational materials (or contents) in interactive learning environments. It ensures that students with disabilities do not face barriers when using such content. However, guaranteeing the accessibility of these materials is no easy task, at least for a significant part of the producers, evaluators, and users of educational materials, such as teachers. Proof of this can be found in the results of the case studies on the usability and reliability of technological accessibility evaluation standards conducted by Spanish Association for Standardisation (UNE) during the development of the Spanish Standard for the Quality of Digital Educational Materials UNE 71362. The results obtained show the difficulty of ensuring a good level of accessibility to digital educational materials, concluding that most creators and evaluators did not apply the guidelines due to either ignorance or difficulties. In order to minimise this problem, a new research approach has been taken based on unifying and abstracting the technology accessibility indicators from the regulations in force and integrating them, according to their applicability, transversally in the teaching and technological criteria of the new standard. This paper presents, explains and justifies this new approach in which the accessibility criteria are not isolated.

E-Learning environments are enhancing both their functionalities and the quality of the resources provided, thus simplifying the creation of learning ecologies adapted for students with disabilities. The number of students with disabilities enrolled in online courses is so small, and their impairments are so specific that it becomes difficult to quantify and identify which specific actions should be taken to support them. This work contributes to scientific literature with two key aspects: 1) It identifies which barriers these students encounter, and which tools they use to create learning ecologies adapted to their impairments; 2) It also presents the results from a case study in which 161 students with recognised disabilities evaluate the efficiency and ease of use of an online learning environment in higher education studies. The work presented in this paper highlights the need to provide multimedia elements with subtitles, text transcriptions, and the option to be downloadable and editable so that the student can adapt them to their needs and learning style.

The flexibility of the MOOC service allows students to learn at their own time, place and pace, enhancing continuous communication and interaction among all participants in knowledge and community building. This model especially benefits people with disabilities, which can improve therefore their level of employability and social inclusion, reaching a better quality of life. Unfortunately the access to MOOC platforms present severe barriers: there is a lack of accessibility on the learning resources, the communicating tools and personalized user interfaces. All these issues add extra difficulties such as the need to develop specific digital or even social skills for students with functional diversity. In this context, MOOCs are leading a revolutionary computer and mobile-based scenario along with social technologies that will emerge new kinds of learning applications that enhance communication and collaboration processes. For that reason, this paper describes the need for designing an information model and related specifications to support a new strategy for delivering accessible MOOC courses to learners with special needs, in terms of their preferences and context of use based on a particular application profile. This user profile’s design is based on standard metadata schemas, data that provides information about other data, regarding the achievement of accessibility from content to user preferences.

The E xcellence methodology for quality assurance of e learning in higher education has developed into a flexible and effective approach to quality assurance. It has proved suitable to meet the needs of a diverse range of institutions and national quality assurance regimes, and is applicable to both distance and blended modes. The E xcellence resources (http://e-xcellencelabel.eadtu.eu/) include a quality manual, guidance for institutions and assessors, and an online Quick Scan self-evaluation tool. The manual was updated in 2012 and 2016 to reflect evolving changes in practice. \ud \ud The E-xcellence methodology provides 35 benchmark statements, grouped under six headings: Strategic Management, Curriculum Design, Course Design, Course Delivery, Staff Support and Student Support. Higher education institutions self-assess their capabilities against each of the benchmark statements on a four-point scale. They also prepare a roadmap of future actions which can be mapped to benchmark statements. A visit by external reviewers enriches and complements the self-assessment.\ud \ud This study is based on an analysis of E xcellence self-evaluations and roadmaps at twenty higher education institutions. Tabulating those benchmarks that are rated as not yet adequate, and those which attract the most planned actions, highlights the aspects that institutions have found most challenging as they develop and implement online and blended learning programmes. \ud \ud This profiling exercise indicates that institutions regard issues of strategy, curriculum design and staff support as presenting the greatest challenges. Particular problems include staff workload and developing an online academic community for students. In contrast, the provision of reliable IT systems and hardware is unproblematic.

Este documento contiene dos adaptaciones de la herramienta de evaluación de la calidad de materiales educativos digitales (MED) del estándar UNE 71362 al profesor y al alumno que no son especialistas en Tecnologías ni en Accesibilidad con el fin de facilitar o mejorar la creación y selección de MED. Estos perfiles de aplicación no garantizan el cumplimiento del 100% de los criterios de calidad, por lo que no pueden ser usados como herramienta para certificar la calidad de los MED. Sin embargo, sí pueden ser usados para asegurar/comprobar con más facilidad determinados aspectos de la calidad.

[ES]El acceso a las plataformas MOOC presenta barreras: hay una falta de accesibilidad en los recursos educativos, las herramientas de comunicación e incluso la personalización de las interfaces de usuario. A esto se añaden dificultades como la necesidad de desarrollar habilidades digitales específicas o incluso sociales para los estudiantes con diversidad funcional. Por lo tanto, una visión de las diferentes estrategias en relación con la consecución de la accesibilidad (desde el contenido a las preferencias del usuario) se presenta en este trabajo; estrategias que deben ser abordadas con el fin de lograr el mejor nivel de accesibilidad durante el diseño de nuevos servicios de aprendizaje basados en cursos MOOC.

This article has come about as a result of joint work between the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain) and the Universidade Aberta (Portugal), pioneering universities in the development of MOOC platforms with pedagogical approximations different from the xMOOC and cMOOC models. The work has been centred on the analysis of the degree of accessibility of both platforms from the\ud point of view of the User Centred Design for which tools suitable for this purpose such as eXaminator and aDesigner have been used

Las personas con discapacidad tienen y han tenido muchas desventajas a la hora de integrarse plenamente en la sociedad, no sólo en cuanto a las limitaciones para el acceso a los servicios generales de la misma, sino a uno muy importante como es la educación. El desarrollo de la educación mediante las TIC permite dar muchas esperanzas a personas con discapacidades. Para ello es necesario producir materiales que sean plenamente accesibles, la relación de la accesibilidad con los estándares se describe en este artículo.

El presente artículo describe las posibilidades de trabajo colaborativo desde el punto de vista de la accesibilidad que ofrece el portal OpenScout para la adaptación multicultural de contenido educativo en abierto REAs. Para ello se han analizado en detalle el grado de accesibilidad que ofrecen las herramientas de compartición y reutilización de los recursos así como los aspectos de integración del portal con el uso de las redes sociales

Este artículo describe la evaluación de la accesibilidad Web del portal basado en la producción mediante redes sociales de contenido abierto en las áreas de Economía y Administración de Empresas, OpenScout. El contenido del sitio Web persigue la generación y adaptación autorregulada por los propios usuarios (profesores y estudiantes principalmente) y busca la mejora de las comunidades de usuarios para la gestión de la educación y la formación de habilidades específicas. Se pretende por lo tanto dar unas pautas para la evaluación y resultados de la misma.

The present deliverable aims to report on functionalities of the first step of the described process. In other words, the deliverable describes how the consortium will gather the learning objects metadata, centralize the access to existing learning resources and form a suitable application profile which will contribute to a proper and suitable modeling, retrieval and presentation of the required information (regarding the learning objects) to the interested users. The described approach is the foundation for the federated, skill-based search and learning object retrieval. The deliverable focuses on reporting the analysis of the available repositories and the best infrastructure that can support OpenScout’s initiative. The deliverable explains the motivations behind the chosen infrastructure based on the study of available information and previous research and literature.