Evaluating Accessibility of the Massive Open Distance e-Learning Platform

Abstract

As one of the constituents of the country’s national university and premier institution of higher learning, the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) provides and delivers Massive Open Online Courses as learning opportunities for more people anywhere in the country or the world. The official platform of UPOU MOOCs is the Massive Open Distance e-Learning website, also called the MODeL platform. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the accessibility of the platform, the selected course site, and the course materials of that course site, which are available to the students. The selected MOOC was Oral Communication and Conversational Fluency (CFE 101). The platform, course site, and course materials were evaluated using Initial Checks, the WCAG-EM report tool, along with several web accessibility evaluation tools. In the evaluation and audit reports, there are failures in several WCAG 2.0 guidelines in three levels of conformance, Levels A, AA, and AAA. The students from two batches (March and June) of the selected MOOC were invited to participate in offline and online surveys. The evaluation and the survey revealed that there are accessibility issues that need to be addressed as these are crucial to the overall learning experience of the users and students, especially to persons with disabilities. This research concludes that the accessibility issues of the MODeL website be addressed and fixed to provide a better and more effective delivery of MOOCs. This research also allows for more research and more opportunities for the improvement of the university.