An architectural approach for supporting accessible hypermedia in Web-based learning systems

The need for providing learners with Web-based learning content that match their accessibility needs and preferences, as well as providing ways to match learning content to user´s devices has been identified as an important issue in accessible educational hypermedia literature. Several initiatives already exist trying to provide accessible Web-based learning environments addressing a broad range of access needs and requirements. However, the design and development of Web-based learning environments for people with special abilities has been addressed so far by the development of hypermedia and multimedia based educational content that is specially designed for the user targeted group, as well as the use of dedicated infrastructure supporting the delivery of learning content. Such approaches not only prevent their user groups (learners and their tutors) from accessing other available resources, but also keep them dependent from the specific e-learning platform, since the supported hypermedia content and learning scenarios are a-priori designed for the targeted user group. In this paper we address the need for an architectural definition of a Web-based learning system that satisfies the design steps and requirements identified following the current state-of-the-art accessibility approaches and techniques.