A proposal based on knowledge modeling and ontologies to support the accessibility evaluation process of learning objects

Nowadays the governments of several nations must address the challenge of providing a high-quality education for all persons from the perspective of an inclusive focus. In this line, in the e-learning area exist several standards and models aimed at establishing quality guidelines or structures to certify an optimal process of development, implementation, and evaluation of Learning Objects (LO). Given that the teaching-learning process goes beyond the use of technological tools, it is necessary understanding that must exist a synergy between the technology and the methodological design used to establish an innovative and high-quality model. However, LOs have been developed to respond only to the needs and requirements presented by »standard students.» For this reason, these objects have lost the universality of their purpose as well as the functionality of responding to the diverse learning needs. For these reasons, in this paper, we present a novel approach that uses ontologies and knowledge modeling to support the accessibility analysis and evaluation of learning objects. Our model extends existing ontologies such as WCAG 2.0, Schema DRD and SKOS to represent how accessibility metadata relates to the most common types of disabilities (intellectual, physical, visual, auditory, etc.). We have validated our proposal with the support of a multidisciplinary team of experts, and the achieved results are encouraging.