Abstract:

This work highlights the importance of accessible multimedia content on the Web for people with or without disabilities. Specifically, in the educational field, the use of videos in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has notably increased in recent years. One of the causes for the rise of online learning or electronic learning (e-Learning) process could be the support these platforms provide for inclusive education. Other causes for the acceptance of e-Learning could be the technological advancement, flexibility of schedule, saving time and money for mobilization, and so forth. However, at present, there is evidence of the lack of access to information in videos during e-Learning. Some of the accessibility problems in the content of the online videos are the lack of captions or audio synchronization with the captions, the lack of sign language interpretation, and so forth. These problems go against a human right that is the right to education without discrimination. On the other hand, because of the problems generated to access the content of a course, some students are demotivated and even make the decision to drop out of the course; reasons why this topic needs to be researched with more precision. The decision to drop out of an e-Learning process could affect their interest to continue studying, due to the exclusion of which they are victims. Consequently, it is imperative that all MOOCs platforms provide accessibility in the multimedia content of their lessons. As far as we know, there are no specific accessibility guidelines for videos that take into account all the needs of people with disabilities.
This research proposes the main requirement that videos should include according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 of the World Wide Web Consortium. Furthermore, the results obtained will help to MOOCs designers and developers to improve the accessibility of videos. Thus, this study will contribute to the development of a more inclusive education. Moreover, this work also contributes to overcome the obstacles that do not allow to fulfill the objective for which the Web was created that is the universality. Finally, by means of the application of this proposal, we present the results of the compliance evaluation with the accessibility requirements of the videos published in MOOCs of different educational platforms (Canvas Network, Cousera, edX, Futurelearn, Independent, Miriadax, Open Education by Blackboard, openSAP, NPTEL, Udacity).

Keywords:

Accessibility, education, e-learning, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), multimedia, video, web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.