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Scaffolding the design of accessible eLearning content: a user-centered approach and cognitive perspective

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Abstract

There exist various guidelines for facilitating the design, preparation, and deployment of accessible eLearning applications and contents. However, such guidelines prevalently address accessibility in a rather technical sense, without giving sufficient consideration to the cognitive aspects and issues related to the use of eLearning materials by learners with disabilities. In this paper we describe how a user-centered design process was applied to develop a method and set of guidelines for didactical experts to scaffold their creation of accessible eLearning content, based on a more sound approach to accessibility. The paper also discusses possible design solutions for tools supporting eLearning content authors in the adoption and application of the proposed approach.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. VICE is an acronym for VIrtual Communities for Education (Comunitá virtuali per la formazione).

  2. XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language.

  3. SCORM stands for Sharing Content Object Reference Model (ADL, 2001).

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Correspondence to Tiziana Catarci.

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Catarci, T., De Giovanni, L., Gabrielli, S. et al. Scaffolding the design of accessible eLearning content: a user-centered approach and cognitive perspective. Cogn Process 9, 209–216 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-008-0213-3

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