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A proposal toward the development of accessible e-learning content by human involvement

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Abstract

Most of the existing efforts for supporting the design, preparation, and deployment of accessible e-learning applications propose guidelines that primarily address technical accessibility issues. Little, if any, consideration is given to the real actors involved in the learning experience, such as didactical experts and disabled learners. Moreover, implementing artifacts addressed to the e-learning world requires a wide range of particular skills which are related not only to technical but also to didactical, pedagogical, usability, and accessibility aspects of the produced material. This paper argues that the know-how of a number of stakeholders should be blended into a joint design activity, and that it should be possible to determine the role of each participant in the successive phases of the development lifecycle of e-learning applications. The paper sketches the methodological guidelines of a design framework based on involving the users with disabilities, as well as pedagogical experts, in the development process. The novelty of this proposal mainly stems from being built up around the core of strategies and choices specifically bound to accessibility requirements. Characteristic elements of learner-centered design are then further integrated into processes and methodologies which are typical of participatory and contextual design approaches. Following such guidelines, it will be possible to gain a deeper understanding of the requirements and of the operational context of people needing accessible material, either as learners or educators. The underlying objective is to increase the potential to realize learning systems that better meet different user needs and that provide a more satisfying learning experience. Moreover, when people get involved in the development process, they gain a sense of ownership of the system and are therefore more likely to accept and “promote” it.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the VICE project [CNR/MIUR VICE: Comunità virtuali per l’informazione] http://www.progettovice.it. We want to gratefully thank the referees for their appropriate comments and precious suggestions that helped us to clarify and improve our work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica (DI), University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Via Salaria 113, 00198, Rome, Italy

    Maria De Marsico

  2. Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica (DIS), University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Via Salaria 113, 00198, Rome, Italy

    Stephen Kimani, Valeria Mirabella & Tiziana Catarci

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Kent L. Norman

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  1. Maria De Marsico
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Correspondence to Maria De Marsico.

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De Marsico, M., Kimani, S., Mirabella, V. et al. A proposal toward the development of accessible e-learning content by human involvement. Univ Access Inf Soc 5, 150–169 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-006-0035-y

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