Accessibility in U-Learning

Abstract

Accessibility means free access to content and services, regardless of one’s physical and cognitive limitations, maximizing the user’s aspect of hardware and software platform independence. Providing this access is a technical issue more than an ethical issue because the characteristics and limiting standards of accessibility are widely known but little used by software engineers, developers, and content producers. Although there is a specific set of standards and legislation to address these difficulties, accessibility is still far from being a priority among developers and content producers. One of the challenges for ubiquitous teaching, in the present and near future, is building tools to support the creation of accessible learning objects, in compliance with current and future standards. This chapter concerns accessibility standards and points out technological ways to enable the creation of support tools in order to minimize accessibility flaws.