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Accessibility of MOOCs for Blind People in Developing Non-English Speaking Countries

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Advances in Design for Inclusion

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 500))

Abstract

Besides the globally popular MOOCs, localized MOOCs specific to a region or language are also emerging. These specialized MOOCs often aim to address specific needs that are typically unaddressed by the global MOOCs. Such example is Almooc that aims to address the needs of the Albanian-speaking persons who lack English proficiency. Despite the MOOCs adage to include and offer education to all people, research has shown that their interface is not accessible to people with disabilities, such as the blind. To evaluate the level of accessibility of Almooc, in this paper we report findings from three different methods: usability testing, automatic accessibility checking, and heuristic evaluation. The results indicate that Almooc is not currently accessible to blind people, however, we present recommendations to easily overcome the discovered issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.coursera.org.

  2. 2.

    http://www.udacity.com.

  3. 3.

    http://www.khanacademy.org.

  4. 4.

    http://www.edx.org.

  5. 5.

    http://www.almooc.com.

  6. 6.

    http://www.webaim.org/extension.

  7. 7.

    https://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/3/507/T1.expansion.html.

  8. 8.

    http://www.nvaccess.org.

  9. 9.

    https://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/wa.php.

  10. 10.

    http://www.chromevox.com.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the participants involved in the evaluation of Almooc interface. In addition, we express our sincere gratitude to the Almooc team for their positive attitude in using their interface for our evaluations.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway

    Mexhid Ferati

  2. South East European University, Skopje, Macedonia

    Njomza Mripa

  3. ALMOOC, Prishtina, Kosovo

    Ridvan Bunjaku

Authors
  1. Mexhid Ferati
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  2. Njomza Mripa
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  3. Ridvan Bunjaku
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mexhid Ferati .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Chieti-Pescara , Pescara, Chieti, Italy

    Giuseppe Di Bucchianico

  2. EIDD - Design for All Europe , Oliveto Lario, Italy

    Pete Kercher

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Ferati, M., Mripa, N., Bunjaku, R. (2016). Accessibility of MOOCs for Blind People in Developing Non-English Speaking Countries. In: Di Bucchianico, G., Kercher, P. (eds) Advances in Design for Inclusion. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 500. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41962-6_46

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41962-6_46

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-41961-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-41962-6

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