OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ACCESS TO
LEARNING FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN
LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEANRosa Navarrete-Rueda
Department of Informatics and Computer ScienceNational Polytechnic School (Ecuador)
Sergio Luján-MoraDepartment of Software and Computing Systems
University of Alicante (Spain)
ESCUELA POLITÉCNICA NACIONAL
Oportunities◦ UNESCO recognize the current relevance of
Open Educational Resources (OER) to widen education at all levels.
◦ There is a global conscience about rights of people with disabilities.
Problem◦ The barriers that restrict access for people with
disabilities to non-formal learning in web based environments.
Context
The premises The problem The proposal The evaluation/Results Discussion and future work
Content
Perspectives: ◦Website: Limited number of OER websites that
offered content in Spanish language (prevalent language in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries), and quite a few of them have accessibility barriers for people with disabilities.
◦Contents: The educational resources have accessibility issues.
The problem
Verify in some important websites the availability of OER which:◦ Meet accessibility criteria, ◦ Their contents are in Spanish language and,◦ Their contents are designed for an educational
level equivalent to upper high-school. In order to recommend their use for self-
learning and teaching support in LAC countries
The proposal
The websites for analysis should have contents:◦ In Spanish language (prevalent language in LAC
countries),◦ Appropriate for an educational level equivalent
to upper-high school as minimum.
The proposal
Websites for selectionWEBSITE NAME URL Spanish
contentHigh school
level or greaterARIADNE - European Knowledge Pool System http://www.ariadne-eu.org/ No Yes
Commonwealth of Learning http://www.collor.org/col/ No YesConneXions http://cnx.org/ No YesExploratorium Digital Library http://www.exploratorium.edu No YesHEAL: Health Education Assets Library http://www.healcentral.org/inde
x.jspNo Yes
Illumina: National Science Digital Library http://www.ilumina-dlib.org/ No YesMERLOT http://www.merlot.org/ No YesMIT Open Courseware http://ocw.mit.edu/ No YesNSDL National Science Digital Library http://nsdl.org/search/ No Yes
OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/ Yes YesOpen Courseware Consortium http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ Yes YesOpen Learning Initiative (OLI) Carnegie Mellon http://www.cmu.edu/oli/ No Yes
Tufts Open Courseware http://ocw.tufts.edu/ No YesUniversia OCW http://ocw.universia.net/ Yes YesWisconsin Online Resource Center http://ideas.wisconsin.edu/ No Yes
OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org
Yes Yes
Open Courseware Consortium
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
Yes Yes
Universia OCW http://ocw.universia.net/ Yes Yes
The proposal
Accessibility on the
home page
Search facility
Features of the website
Universities involved
Accessibility of the
resources OER Accessibili
ty
1
2
34
5
Issues considered for the evaluation proposal
The proposalAccessibility on the home
page
Search facility
Features of the website
Universities involved
Accessibility of the
resources OER Accessibili
ty
1
2
34
5
1. Accessibility on the home page of the website.
◦ Home page is the first interface for the user, so must be accessible to enable the retrieval of educational resources.
◦ Evaluation was based on WCAG 2.0, through automated tools.
The evaluation
1. Accessibility on the home page of the website
◦ WCAG 2.0 has been developed by W3C.◦ It has been adopted in most international
legislation about web accessibility.◦ It is a referenceable technical standard of 2008,
based on a set of success criteria that are not technology-specific.
◦ It has12 guidelines organized under 4 principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust.
◦ Conformance levels: A, AA both are mandatory, AAA is desirable.
The evaluation
1. Accessibility on the home page of the website
◦ Automated tools for evaluation: ◦TAW (Web Accessibility Test) is based on WCAG,
gives a number of problems detected according to conformance level.
◦Achecker produces a report of all accessibility problems for the selected guidelines.
The evaluation
The evaluation consider the conformance WCAG 2.0 level AA which is mandatory.
The evaluations results (1)
WEBSITE NAME URL
TAW AChecker
Perceivable Operable Understandable Robust Known Likely Potentia
lOER Commons http://www.oercom
mons.org/7 20 2 4 292 0 438
Open Courseware Consortium
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
15 4 2 1 15 0 226
Universia OCW http://ocw.universi
a.net/3 4 1 28 17 2 198
Home pages in all websites analyzed have accessibility issues, especially for visual disabled people.
The proposalAccessibility on the home
page
Search facility
Features of the website
Universities involved
Accessibility of the
resources OER Accessibili
ty
1
2
34
5
2. Search facility◦ Verify if the searching interface includes
refinements criteria about resources, like: educational level subject or topic, format, language, accessibility features.
◦ And, if the searching criteria could be used with boolean operator “and”.
The evaluation
The evaluation results (2)
* Not as search criteria but as a link on the website
WEBSITE NAMESEARCH CRITERIA
Educational level Subject Format Languag
eAccessibility
featuresAnd
operatorOER Commons Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesOpen Courseware Consortium No Yes No Yes No No
Universia OCW No Yes No Yes * No No
The evaluation results (2)
Language
OER Commons
Format
Level
Subject
Accesibility
OER Commons
This website admits the use of boolean operator "and" with different search criteria.
OER Commons Not all the resources
reported for Spanish language actually correspond to this language.
In some cases, when the search included "Accessibility" features, did not get any results
This website does not admit the use of boolean operator "and" with different search criteria.
Criteria
OCW Consortium
Open Courseware Consortium
The searching by language or Category delivers a list of courses without any order.
OCW Universia
This website does not admit the use of boolean operator "and" with different search criteria.
Criteria
Language
The proposalAccessibilit
y on the home page
Search facility
Features of the website
Universities involved
Accessibility of the
resources
1
2
34
5
3. Features of the website Highlight the features of the website that foster
or hinder accessibility in the website itself and also in the available resources.
The evaluation
OER Commons◦ Content providers are almost a thousand of
institutions and organizations, it doesn’t have direct participation from universities.
◦ The website improves the user experience with some options over the web interface.
◦ The website provides accessibility information about the resources.
The evaluation results (3)
OCW Consortium ◦ Content providers are associated universities
around the world.◦ Links to individual resources lead to each
university's OCW page.◦ The website does not include information about
accessibility
The evaluation results (3)
Universia OCW◦ Content providers are universities associated
from many countries around the world.◦ The website provides an option in menu bar for
language and areas, authors, keywords and universities.
◦ The website does not include information about accessibility
The evaluation results (3)
The proposalAccessibilit
y on the home page
Search facility
Features of the website
Universities involved
Accessibility of the
resources
1
2
34
5
4. Universities involved◦ We evaluated qualitatively the awareness of
accessibility in the universities involved in the websites analyzed.
The evaluation
OER Commons◦ The resources came from Connexions Collection
and GeogeBra Institution. ◦ There were not universities involved.
The evaluation results (4)
OCW Consortium ◦ There were 12 universities from Spain, and only
3 universities from LAC countries, with available resources in Spanish language.
◦ We only considered the universities with an active OCW site.
The evaluation results (4)
Universia OCW◦ We considered only universities from LAC
countries that appear as providers. ◦ Some OCW sites from universities involved were
not available at the date of this research, and many others mentioned in the project does not had resources available.
The evaluation results (4)
The proposalAccessibilit
y on the home page
Search facility
Features of the website
Universities involved
Accessibility of the
resources
1
2
34
5
5. Accessibility of the resources◦ This evaluation tests accessibility criteria in the
resources of the OCW site. Web pages: automated evaluation tools Non-text resources: alternative formats Portable Document Format (PDF): tagged file. Verify if resources meet accessibility criteria
for visual and auditory disabilities.
The evaluation
OER Commons
The evaluation results (5)
Resource formatMeet Accessibility
criteria Comments about resourcesVisual Auditory
Web Pages Yes YesResources on literature theme presented through web pages, meet accessibility criteria. Description about resource is in English language.
Video, animation No Yes No captions for videos. No alternative format for non-text resources.
PDF files No Yes The PDF files reviewed don´t meet accessibility criteria
OCW ConsortiumThe evaluation results (5)
University (Hyperlink to OCW
site)Home Page Accessibility
Number of resources
Resource format Accessibility of Resources
Web pages PDF files Visual Auditory
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Accessibility issues 197 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Universidad de Alicante
Meet accessibility criteria 211 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Universidad de Sevilla Minimal Accessibility issues 220 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad Politécnica Madrid
Minimal accessibility issues 102 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Universidad del Valle - Colombia Accessibility issues 11 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad de Monterrey - México
Accessibility issues 40 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad Estatal a Distancia – Costa Rica
Accessibility issues 12 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad Particular de Loja - Ecuador
Minimal accessibility issues 14 Yes Yes No Yes
The evaluation results (5)
OCW Consortium◦ The previous table only shows the universities from
Spain, with the major number of resources and those universities that belong to LAC countries.
◦ Some important universities have educational resources suitable for people with visual and auditory disabilities, but not the entire contents of an specific course meets accessibility criteria.
◦ The universities from LAC countries correspond to Colombia, México, Costa Rica y Ecuador, and those resources do not meet accessibility criteria.
Universia OCWThe evaluation results (5)
University (Hyperlink to OCW
site)Home Page Accessibility
Number of resources
Resource format Accessibility of Resources
Web pages PDF files Visual Auditory
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina)
Accessibility issues 60 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad Anáhuac (México) Accessibility issues 46 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad de Monterrey (México)
Accessibility issues 30 Yes Yes No Yes
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile)
Accessibility issues 21 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad de Chile (Chile) Accessibility issues 25 Yes No No Yes
Universidad del Valle (Colombia) Accessibility issues 11 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad Icesi (Colombia) Accessibility issues 6 Yes Yes No Yes
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Perú)
Accessibility issues 26 Yes Yes No Yes
The evaluation results (5)
Universia OCW◦ The previous table only shows universities from
LAC countries that not already evaluated.◦ All universities have accessibility issues, and
the resources are not suitable for visual disabled people.
◦ The number of available resources is still low.
Discussion and future work
Preliminary study Limited number of OER websites with content in Spanish language.
Universities from Spain surpass the universities from LAC countries in accessibility awareness.
Discussion and future work
Improve the actual situation in this matter in LAC countries requires the commitment of governments and universities.
Future research would be valuable to establish a more accurate and thorough assessment of the availability of resources in areas of specific knowledge.
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ACCESS TO LEARNING
FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
Rosa [email protected]
Sergio Lujá[email protected]@sergiolujanmora
ESCUELA POLITÉCNICA NACIONAL
