IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nos/voprob/2020i1p205-229.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accessibility of Massive Open Online Courses on Mathematics for Students with Disabilities

Author

Listed:
  • Yekaterina Kosova
  • Milera Izetova

Abstract

Yekaterina Kosova - Candidate of Sciences in Education, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. E-mail: lynx99@inbox.ruMilera Izetova - Master's Student, Department of Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. E-mail: milera16@mail.ruTaurida Academy of V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal university.Address: 4 Academica Vernadskogo Ave, 295007 Simferopol, Russian Federation.The paper studies issues of accessibility of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for persons with disabilities. By browsing the catalogues of five leading MOOC-platforms with Russian-language content, 56 MOOCs on undergraduate mathematical disciplines were found. As a result of expert analysis according to 70 criteria, MOOCs' accessibility for people with disabilities was estimated. Any mistakes related to hyperlinks interpretation, audio playback quality, visualization in graphic browsers, adaptation to mobile devices, color contrast and keyboard controls were not revealed. At the same time, the analysis showed that 100% MOOCs offer no features for customizing a user interface, do not provide access to the content through a text browser; 98% of digital documents, 82% of math content and 91% of tests are incorrectly interpreted by screen readers; 64%, 66% and 52% of the courses, respectively, have no subtitles, shorthand transcripts and outlines to video lessons; no courses provide video interpretation using sign language; in all MOOCs the audio track is not enough for adequate perception of video lessons. The results indicate low accessibility of Russian-language mathematical MOOCs for people with disabilities, especially with severe visual impairments. The accessibility problems are related to technological limitations of the MOOC platforms and to developer errors. The results suggest the need for revising the MOOCs in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG2.1); guaranteeing strict adherence to the guidelines by platforms' administrators before posting new courses; training MOOCs' authors and developers in creating accessible learning content; involving persons with disabilities in beta testing of MOOCs.

Suggested Citation

  • Yekaterina Kosova & Milera Izetova, 2020. "Accessibility of Massive Open Online Courses on Mathematics for Students with Disabilities," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 1, pages 205-229.
    • Handle: RePEc:nos:voprob:2020:i:1:p:205-229
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://vo.hse.ru/data/2020/04/09/1554551355/Kosova.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Дюличева Ю. Ю., 2021. "Учебная Аналитика Моок Как Инструмент Анализа Математической Тревожности," Вопросы образования // Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 4, pages 243-265.
    2. Yulia Dyulicheva, 2021. "Learning Analytics in MOOCs as an Instrument for Measuring Math Anxiety," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 4, pages 243-265.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nos:voprob:2020:i:1:p:205-229. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Marta Morozova (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://vo.hse.ru/en/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.