1. Rosa Navarrete-Rueda Department of Informatics and Computer Science National Polytechnic School (Ecuador) Sergio Luján-Mora Department of Software and Computing Systems University of Alicante (Spain) ESCUELA POLITÉCNICA NACIONAL

2.  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.

3.  The premises  The problem  The proposal  The evaluation/Results  Discussion and future work

4.  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.

5.  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

6.  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.

7. WEBSITE NAMEURL Spanish content High school level or greater ARIADNE - European Knowledge Pool System http://www.ariadne-eu.org/NoYes Commonwealth of Learninghttp://www.collor.org/col/NoYes ConneXionshttp://cnx.org/NoYes Exploratorium Digital Libraryhttp://www.exploratorium.eduNoYes HEAL: Health Education Assets Library http://www.healcentral.org/inde x.jsp NoYes Illumina: National Science Digital Library http://www.ilumina-dlib.org/NoYes MERLOThttp://www.merlot.org/NoYes MIT Open Coursewarehttp://ocw.mit.edu/NoYes NSDL National Science Digital Library http://nsdl.org/search/NoYes OER Commonshttp://www.oercommons.org/Yes Open Courseware Consortiumhttp://www.ocwconsortium.org/Yes Open Learning Initiative (OLI) Carnegie Mellon http://www.cmu.edu/oli/NoYes Tufts Open Coursewarehttp://ocw.tufts.edu/NoYes Universia OCWhttp://ocw.universia.net/Yes Wisconsin Online Resource Centerhttp://ideas.wisconsin.edu/NoYes OER Commonshttp://www.oercommons.orgYes Open Courseware Consortium http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ Yes Universia OCWhttp://ocw.universia.net/Yes

8. OER Accessibility 1 2 34 5  Issues considered for the evaluation proposal

9. OER Accessibility 1 2 3 4 5

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13.  The evaluation consider the conformance WCAG 2.0 level AA which is mandatory. WEBSITE NAME URL TAWAChecker PerceivableOperableUnderstandableRobustKnownLikelyPotential OER Commons http://www.oerco mmons.org/ 720242920438 Open Courseware Consortium http://www.ocwco nsortium.org/ 15421 0226 Universia OCW http://ocw.universi a.net/ 34128172198  Home pages in all websites analyzed have accessibility issues, especially for visual disabled people.

14. OER Accessibility 1 2 34 5

15. 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”.

16. * Not as search criteria but as a link on the website WEBSITE NAME SEARCH CRITERIA Educational level SubjectFormatLanguage Accessibility features And operator OER CommonsYes Open Courseware Consortium NoYesNoYesNo Universia OCWNoYesNoYes *No

17. Language OER Commons

18. Format Level Subject Accesibility OER Commons  This website admits the use of boolean operator "and" with different search criteria.

19.  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

20.  This website does not admit the use of boolean operator "and" with different search criteria. Criteria OCW Consortium

21.  The searching by language or Category delivers a list of courses without any order.

22.  This website does not admit the use of boolean operator "and" with different search criteria. Criteria Language

23. Accessibility on the home page Search facility Features of the website Universities involved Accessibility of the resources 1 2 3 4 5

24. 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.

25.  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.

26.  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

27.  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

28. Accessibility on the home page Search facility Features of the website Universities involved Accessibility of the resources 1 2 34 5

29. 4. Universities involved ◦ We evaluated qualitatively the awareness of accessibility in the universities involved in the websites analyzed.

30.  OER Commons ◦ The resources came from Connexions Collection and GeogeBra Institution. ◦ There were not universities involved.

31.  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.

32.  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.

33. Accessibility on the home page Search facility Features of the website Universities involved Accessibility of the resources 1 2 34 5

34. 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.

35.  OER Commons Resource format Meet Accessibility criteria Comments about resources VisualAuditory Web PagesYes Resources on literature theme presented through web pages, meet accessibility criteria. Description about resource is in English language. Video, animationNoYes No captions for videos. No alternative format for non-text resources. PDF filesNoYes The PDF files reviewed don´t meet accessibility criteria

36.  OCW Consortium University (Hyperlink to OCW site) Home Page Accessibility Number of resources Resource format Accessibility of Resources Web pagesPDF filesVisualAuditory Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Accessibility issues197Yes Universidad de Alicante Meet accessibility criteria 211Yes Universidad de Sevilla Minimal Accessibility issues 220Yes NoYes Universidad Politécnica Madrid Minimal accessibility issues 102Yes Universidad del ValleUniversidad del Valle - Colombia Accessibility issues11Yes NoYes Universidad de MonterreyUniversidad de Monterrey - México Accessibility issues40Yes NoYes Universidad Estatal a DistanciaUniversidad Estatal a Distancia – Costa Rica Accessibility issues12Yes NoYes Universidad Particular de LojaUniversidad Particular de Loja - Ecuador Minimal accessibility issues 14Yes NoYes

37.  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.

38.  Universia OCW University (Hyperlink to OCW site) Home Page Accessibility Number of resources Resource format Accessibility of Resources Web pagesPDF filesVisualAuditory Universidad Nacional de CórdobaUniversidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) Accessibility issues60Yes NoYes Universidad Anáhuac Universidad Anáhuac (México) Accessibility issues46Yes NoYes Universidad de MonterreyUniversidad de Monterrey (México) Accessibility issues30Yes NoYes Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile) Accessibility issues21Yes NoYes Universidad de Chile Universidad de Chile (Chile) Accessibility issues25YesNo Yes Universidad del Valle Universidad del Valle (Colombia) Accessibility issues11Yes NoYes Universidad Icesi Universidad Icesi (Colombia) Accessibility issues6Yes NoYes Universidad Nacional de IngenieríaUniversidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Perú) Accessibility issues26Yes NoYes

39.  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.

40. Preliminary study  Limited number of OER websites with content in Spanish language.  Universities from Spain surpass the universities from LAC countries in accessibility awareness.

41.  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.

42. Rosa Navarrete-Rueda rosa.navarrete@epn.edu.ec Sergio Luján-Mora sergio.lujan@ua.es@sergiolujanmora ESCUELA POLITÉCNICA NACIONAL