Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Limitations of Automated Accessibility Evaluation in a MOOC Platform: Case Study of a Brazilian Platform

ABSTRACT

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been announced as a promising educational tool, driving a high number of applications, enabling open learning with an emphasis on the diversity of users. However, literature has pointed to the lack of accessibility in MOOCs. With the intention of improving accessibility support for a MOOC platform, a multi-format course was evaluated using automated tools. The results of the automated tests indicated some accessibility problems of the platform, which can hinder the participation of people with disabilities, signaling the need to design such platforms in an inclusive way. However, this type of test is not capable of discriminate relevant areas, functionalities and contents within a web page, nor is it able to differentiate between different roles of users. The result is that platform areas that are not visible to students (such as platform administration and course editing areas) are also evaluated - even if that is not the goal. For this reason, it was concluded that, to evaluate the inclusion support, it is necessary to combine a qualitative method with the automated tests. The indication of the limitation of this type of test is the most important finding.

KEYWORDS:
Distance education; Person with disability; Course

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