Improving Accessibility in Virtual Learning Environments and

Educational Resources: A Practical Case and Future Challenges

Yandson Costa

1,2 a

, Rayanne Silveira

1 b

, Ana F. Oliveira

1 c

, Luis Rivero

1,2,3 d

Alana Oliveira

1,3 e

, M

ario Teixeira

1,2,3 f

and Davi Viana

1,2,3 g

Directorate of Technologies in Education - DTED/UNA-SUS, Federal University of Maranh

ao (UFMA), Sao Luis, Brazil

MSc Program in Computer Science - PPGCC, Federal University of Maranh

ao (UFMA), Sao Luis, Brazil

PhD Program in Computer Science - DCCMAPI, Federal University of Maranh

ao (UFMA), Sao Luis, Brazil

Keywords:

Accessibility, Assessment and Redesign, Virtual Learning Environment, Educational Resources.

Abstract:

A system is considered accessible if it allows different users to access its features, even if these users have

physical, visual, auditory or any other type of disabilities. Accessibility has become crucial in Virtual Learning

Environment (VLE) since these deliver the educational contents as online activities and electronic courses.

Despite such importance, one of the most consistent problems with modern learning management systems is

their failure to comply with standards for accessibility. Also, those that manage to meet accessibility criteria

still receive negative reviews from disabled users. As a result, accessibility issues act as a barrier in the growth

of VLEs. In this paper, we intend to reduce this barrier by providing a practical example of how educational

institutions can improve their VLEs and their educational resources. We proposed and applied a process for

identifying accessibility requirements and implemented these requirements, testing the redesigned VLEs and

educational resources with end users. Obtained results are discussed to provide insights on how software

engineering teams can improve the accessibility of VLEs and educational resources.

1 INTRODUCTION

The use of virtual learning environments (VLE) and

online educational resources is one of the proposals

for popularizing and democratizing learning by pro-

moting access and inclusion of all types of users.

However, the use of such technologies still presents

barriers for the access and permanence of all students,

which include People with Disabilities (PwD) (Brito

and Dias, 2020). The latest World Report on Dis-

ability of the World Health Organization shows that

around 15% of the world’s population lives with some

degree of disability issues (Organization et al., 2011).

The lack of technological resources, specialized

practitioners and lack of accessibility in the architec-

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8219-6462

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5205-9328

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4371-4815

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6008-6537

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7870-3943

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8771-1478

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0470-549X

ture of VLE are considered challenges to the perma-

nence of students (Cinquin et al., 2021). Studies in

the Distance Education area point to the need to adapt

VLE, as well as the proposed curriculum and didactic

resources (Lee, 2017; Brito and Dias, 2020).

Considering the above, Assisting Technologies

(AT) emerge with the goal of promoting equity, en-

abling emerging barriers to be overcome or excluded,

as well as, reduce disadvantages in the learning of

PwD when compared to the other students. With the

rise of distance education (Lee, 2017) and the increase

in the number of PwD (Organization et al., 2011), ed-

ucation institutions face the challenge of promoting

the accessibility of offered courses, ensuring the qual-

ity of content and educational solutions, as well as the

strategies for student permanence until the comple-

tion of the course.

This position paper aims to present Federal Uni-

versity of Maranh

ao’s path towards the inclusion of

accessibility aspects in its VLE and its educational re-

sources. Initially, we conducted a survey of the most

needed accessibility items for environments and re-

sources. Then implementations in the environment

Costa, Y., Silveira, R., Oliveira, A., Rivero, L., Oliveira, A., Teixeira, M. and Viana, D.

Improving Accessibility in Virtual Learning Environments and Educational Resources: A Practical Case and Future Challenges.

DOI: 10.5220/0011092400003182

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2022) - Volume 1, pages 421-426

ISBN: 978-989-758-562-3; ISSN: 2184-5026

421

and objects were executed. Finally, the pedagogical

production team created the content with accessibil-

ity. After preparing the course, we made it available

to the general public in November 2021. To this day,

50 students with disabilities have already joined the

course, and they have to perform 28 activities.

The remainder of this paper is organized as fol-

lows: Section 2 presents the background and related

work regarding accessibility and VLEs. Section 3 de-

scribes our methodology for enabling accessibility in

our online educational resources and VLE. Then, Sec-

tion 4 presents the analysis and results regarding the

improvements and current use of our online educa-

tional resources and VLE. Finally, Section 5 presents

our conclusion and future work.

2 ACCESSIBILITY IN VIRTUAL

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

VLEs are tools aimed at providing learning oppor-

tunities through knowledge sharing and social in-

teraction (Dillenbourg et al., 2002). The literature

presents a series of environments that are currently

used by educational institutions, for example: Moo-

dle

, Blackboard

, and Edmodo

. Although these en-

vironments offer some kind of support for accessi-

bility, PwD still highlight the absence of elements to

help them achieve learning goals (Lee, 2017; Bozza

et al., 2010).

Accessibility is the concept that represents the

ability to access computers, mobile devices and the

internet by people with various types of disabilities

(visual, auditory, physical and others) (Carter and

Markel, 2001). According to (Paiva et al., 2021),

the importance of accessibility and its evaluation has

grown in recent years, as the use of software has

become increasingly essential in the modern world

(Buend

ıa et al., 2012).

Accessibility in VLE has also been the goal of

study in recent years. Nascimento et al. (2019) pre-

sented a LMS created from accessibility guidelines.

During development, PwD carried out part of the val-

idation of the LMS. Finally, the authors described that

the environment was well accepted by people with

and without disabilities (Nascimento et al., 2019). In

another study, (Alturki et al., 2016) present an acces-

sibility assessment of the VLE Blackboard at King

Saud University. The results showed that Blackboard

was an accessible tool for different types of teachers .

Avaliable at: https://moodle.org/?lang=en us

Avaliable at: https:/ /www.blackboard.com/

Evaluable at: https://new.edmodo.com/

In their research, Brito and Dias (2020) present a

focus group describing expert opinions about the ac-

cessibility of a LMS. As a result, they identiﬁed that

the use of third-party tools increases the ﬂexibility of

people with different types of disabilities and makes

the solution (development of the LMS) cheaper. How-

ever, there is incompatibility of the external tools with

the developed solution (Brito and Dias, 2020).

Considering the above results, it is clear that here

is an interest from researchers and practitioners in the

ﬁeld of VLE’ accessibility. Although the analysis of

popular VLE is being performed to verify to what ex-

tent they support people with disabilities, there is still

the need to further analyze the impact of implemented

changes in real use scenarios. Our goal is to provide

such type of analysis showing the impact of meeting

accessibility requirements in our MLS and its educa-

tional resources. In the following section, we present

the methodology we followed within this research.

3 METHODOLOGY

At Directorate of Technologies in Education

(DTED/UNA-SUS) from Federal University of

Maranh

ao (UFMA), we use a Moodle-based VLE.

In September 2020, we identiﬁed the need to support

PwD when a speciﬁc online course had disabled stu-

dents. The course dealt with teaching accessibility in

physical spaces in police stations. Up until this point,

our environment was not properly prepared to contain

accessible resources. Therefore, our objective was

the inclusion and evaluation of accessibility in digital

educational websites of UNA-SUS/DTED/UFMA.

Then, we developed a process containing the activi-

ties described below: (1) technological suitability for

accessibility; (2) creating content for accessibility;

and (3) tracking students’ progress through the

course. The process was proposed based on common

activities regarding accessibility evaluation and our

internal process. Figure 1 present our process.

3.1 Technology Adaptations for

Meeting Accessibility Criteria

3.1.1 Analysis of Accessibility

Recommendations

For the inclusion and evaluation of accessibility, it

was essential to identify requirements from the per-

spective of accessibility, using parameters that could

be followed in the development of an online envi-

ronment. In such context, the World Wide Web

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

422

Figure 1: Process for enabling and evaluating the accessibility at UNA-SUS/DTED/UFMA.

Consortium (W3C

) is an international consortium

of companies, government agencies and independent

organizations, which aims to develop a set of stan-

dards for the creation and interpretation of content

for the web. Through the Web Accessibility Initiative

(WAI

), which is the organization responsible for de-

veloping guidelines, strategies and resources for web

accessibility, the W3C created the Web Content Ac-

cessibility Guidelines (WCAG

). WCAG is a docu-

ment that presents some accessibility guidelines for

web content. These guidelines are related to intellec-

tual impairments and aim to reduce barriers for people

with different disabilities to access the internet.

For inclusion and evaluation of web accessibility,

in addition to WCAG, we also used the Digital Acces-

sibility Model in Electronic Government of our Coun-

try (e-MAG). Throughout the document, several rec-

ommendations are presented for the construction of

an accessible website, such as: (i) follow the web lan-

guage standards, in order to guarantee the website’s

compatibility with all types of browsers, software and

mobile devices; (ii) Accessibility recommendations in

the organization of HTML (HyperText Markup Lan-

guage) code in order of development and features; and

(iii) Accessibility assessment, which can be automati-

cally performed by software, or manually through hu-

man validation checklists.

3.1.2 Conduction of Automatic & Manual Tests

Accessibility validators are automatic tools that

search the code of a page, issuing reports that in-

dicate accessibility errors according to the priorities

suggested in WCAG. Therefore, in order to increase

https://www.w3.org/

https://www.w3.org/WAI/

https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

the degree of conﬁdence in the automatic validation

results, the tests were performed using the Cynthia

Says

, Lighthouse

and Accessibility Scanner

tools.

The Criptzone Cynthia Says portal is an auto-

mated accessibility validator that was developed by

Criptzone Inc. together with The International Cen-

ter for Disability Resources on the Internet – ICDRI

and the Internet Society. This tool allows users to test

individual pages on their websites by providing feed-

back in report format.

Lighthouse is an open source automated tool that

analyzes the quality of web applications. It can be run

as a Chrome extension (only browser extension avail-

able) or from the command line. When informing the

URL to be audited, the tool runs a series of tests on the

page and generates a report on its performance, with

a speciﬁc section on accessibility-related failures.

The Accessibility Scanner is a tool that suggests

accessibility improvements in mobile applications,

such as increasing small touch targets, increasing con-

trast and providing content descriptions so that the

website can be more easily used by PwD.

Since automatic validators are not able to detect

all accessibility issues on a website, manual valida-

tion becomes an essential step in the evaluation pro-

cess, as many aspects require human judgment. For

this step of the process, we used the NonVisual Desk-

top Access (NVDA) screen reader, a tool that allows

blind or visually impaired users to access and interact

with websites. During manual validation, we scrolled

all pages using only the keyboard, checking behav-

iors, shortcuts, alternative contrast sheets, if the al-

ternative texts were described according to the image

and its context, among others.

https://bit.ly/3HkTDRa

https://bit.ly/3HbX8JG

https://bit.ly/3r4Krei

Improving Accessibility in Virtual Learning Environments and Educational Resources: A Practical Case and Future Challenges

423

3.1.3 Tests Report and Accessibility Features

Implementation

After performing the automatic and manual tests, all

identiﬁed improvement opportunities were registered

in a single document. Then, we presented the gen-

eral report to the development team for the implemen-

tation stage, where the suggested corrections were

made. Finally, after completion of the implementa-

tion, the site returned to the evaluation team, who an-

alyzed whether all the items described in the general

report were covered after the development process. In

this last assessment, we had a visually impaired pro-

grammer perform the assessment.

3.2 Creation of Content for Meeting

Accessibility Criteria

Despite all the technological work carried out, there

was a need to create content to promote accessibil-

ity, such as: translation into LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign

Language) by a qualiﬁed person and descriptive text

of images and videos for audio description. Addition-

ally, other activities were carried out by the educa-

tional content creation team, such as: (1) Study on

accessibility criteria, speciﬁc for all types of disabili-

ties; and (2) development of an internal reference ped-

agogical document to meet accessibility criteria con-

sidering the different media.

3.3 Release of the Course & Monitoring

of the Educational Path

In September 2021, UNA-SUS/DTED/UFMA re-

leased the course with the implemented accessibility

requirements. From that moment on, the information

technology team monitored the entry of students into

the courses and speciﬁcally analyzed data related to

students who declared themselves to be disabled. All

students, upon joining the course, signed a consent

form. Thus, the presentation of the data within this

paper is authorized by the students.

4 RESULTS

In this section, we present the results in two parts: (1)

technological results for enabling accessibility; and

(2) use of the course by people with disabilities.

4.1 Technological Results

At all, eight online educational resources (e-book,

info-graphic, video, podcast, forum, glossary, quiz

and form) and a VLE were evaluated. We have incor-

porated seven accessibility features, namely: audio

description, markup, behavior, content/information,

presentation/design, multimedia and form.

Regarding audio description, our main resources

(e-book and info graphic) received audio descrip-

tion of images. Pedagogical production teams pre-

pared all course material and also an adequate de-

scription of the images to be read by screen read-

ers (see Subsection 3.2). Our educational resources

can be read by screen readers on the market and by

readers developed by the development team at UNA-

SUS/DTED/UFMA. This adaptation for the descrip-

tion of the images is being carried out by a team

specialized in the production of accessible content.

This accessible audio description impacts other as-

pects of accessibility, such as multimedia. Currently,

our screen reader is exclusively intended for our e-

books and info-graphics and has several speed op-

tions.

Markup, behavior, content/information, and pre-

sentation aspects are following the accessibility

guidelines described above. Figure 2 presents an ex-

ample image of our e-book model where accessibility

innovations have been added. At the top left of the im-

age, it can be seen our unique screen reader activation

options, playback speed and contrast settings.

In the VLE, we have incorporated ﬁve features

listed by e-MAG (see Figure 3): accessibility bar;

hotkeys; contrast sheet; presentation of the site map;

and page with the description of accessibility features.

4.2 Results on the Course usage by PwD

The course and VLE with accessibility requirements

were made available for students in September 2021

and will be available until March 31, 2022. The

course is made available for both people with and

without disabilities. At the moment of the submission

of this paper, we registered 50 students with some

type of disability. The deﬁciencies reported by the

Figure 2: E-book with accessibility tools (screen reader,

playback speed, and high contrast screen.

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

424

Figure 3: Homepage of our VLE with accessibility features (In Brazilian Portuguese Language).

Figure 4: Status of the PwD within the course.

students were: physical (28 students), visual (11 stu-

dents), intellectual (5 students) and hearing (5 stu-

dents). We highlight that only one student indicated

having more than one deﬁciency, which in this case

were both visual and physical impairments.

Regarding the course progress, we identiﬁed that

only ﬁve students completed the course. Students

who have concluded have the following disabilities:

physical (3 students); hearing (1 student); and intel-

lectual (1 student). On the other hand, we have 10

students who failed (i.e. they ﬁnished the course but

failed due to unsatisfactory grades). The remaining

35 students are still taking the course. Our result is

an initial indication that it is possible to complete the

course proposed in our VLE for people with the fol-

lowing disabilities: physical, hearing and intellectual.

Figure 4 presents a detailed chart of the status of stu-

dents in courses by type of disability.

By carrying out a detailed analysis of the students

who are still taking the course, we observed that the

course and the implemented VLE can be used by

PwD. However, we need to wait until the course’s

ending for more data to conﬁrm our observations.

Moreover, there is no guarantee that the students ﬁnd

the online resources easy to carry out the activities.

Figure 5 presents an overview of the current perfor-

mance of students in the course, considering which

activities they managed to ﬁnish until this paper sub-

mission.

Considering the current state of these students,

although they are able to access all educational re-

sources, when reaching activity 6 (which is an e-

book), only visually impaired users are able to com-

plete this and later activities. Nevertheless, not ﬁnish-

ing the activities may not be related to the difﬁculty of

the activities nor lack of accessibility (since 5 students

with different disabilities have already ﬁnished all ac-

tivities). Also, the students have two more months

to ﬁnish the activities, which can cause students to

pause the course and continue whenever they can ded-

icate further time. These data, however, allowed us

to identify that students with disabilities take longer

to attend the course than students without disabilities.

Since we do not have an average time yet of how long

it takes students with and without disabilities to ﬁnish

the course, we need more time to reach a conclusion

whether there is a signiﬁcant statistical difference on

the conclusion time. Also, in this analysis, it is nec-

essary to verify the reasons behind using more time

to ﬁnish the activities, and verify if further accessi-

bility requirements need to be met. Finally, the de-

velopment of accessibility features, such as an inter-

nal screen reader for the e-book and an info-graphic,

were also seen as facilitators of the student-VLE inter-

action from the point of view of the visually impaired

evaluator inside the development team.

Figure 5: Student with disabilities per activity performed.

Improving Accessibility in Virtual Learning Environments and Educational Resources: A Practical Case and Future Challenges

425

5 CONCLUSIONS

The inclusion of accessibility is important to pro-

vide access of educational resources and systems to

all user proﬁles. However, including accessibility at-

tributes in VLEs and educational resources is still a

challenge, as it is necessary to consider the different

types of disabilities.

In this paper, we proposed a process for inclu-

sion and evaluation of accessibility in educational re-

sources and VLE considering the context of UNA-

SUS/DTED/UFMA. Besides monitoring the use of

resources and our VLE by people with disabilities, we

carry out a survey of the main techniques and stan-

dards for accessibility implementation and then car-

ried out various activities to include the identiﬁed ac-

cessibility attributes in our VLE, such as: perform-

ing manual and automated tests; implementation of

accessibility features; and creating content for acces-

sibility. Within this experience, we managed to ade-

quate eight educational resources and a VLE. In these

resources and VLEs, we have incorporated seven ac-

cessibility features. The resources and VLE are cur-

rently made available to students with and without

disabilities. At all, at least 50 students with disabil-

ities are attending the courses.

As a limitation of this work, there is a reduced

number of educational resources with accessibility.

Additionally, we did not carry out a more in-depth

analysis to consider the speciﬁcs of intellectual dis-

abilities. These limitations can prevent students from

completing the course. As future research perspec-

tives, we intend to further analyzed the data after the

course offering period. In addition, we intend to an-

alyze other types of disabilities, such as intellectual

disability and their variations, while proposing mech-

anisms to improve access to the VLE and its educa-

tional resources. With this real success case of im-

proving the accessibility of VLE and educational re-

sources, we intend to encourage other educational in-

stitutions to improve educational systems and provide

further access to different user proﬁles, reducing the

barriers to high quality education.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the Ministry of Health (MS),

the Ministry of Tourism (MTur), and the Ministry

of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH)

from Brazil for supporting the research and the im-

provements on our VLE and educational resources at

UNA-SUS/DTED/UFMA. The last author thanks the

FAPEMA (BEPP-01608/21).

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