Widening Creation of Accessible Digital Educational Content: A Combined Blended Learning and Massive Open Online Approach

Abstract

Ensuring inclusive education systems at all levels and lifelong learning is a commitment shared by all the United Nations countries who in 2006 signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, by which each country should ensure that all citizens with disabilities or some special educational need have access to primary and secondary education, higher education, job training, adult education and lifelong learning, without discrimination and on an equal basis with others. This same principle should apply as well to their integration in the work environment.To move towards an inclusive education, progressively and substantially increasing alternative education practices based on Information Technologies and Communications (ITC) are needed, through the implementation of accessible eLearning. In the virtual educational context, in which teachers use digital educational content, it should be ensured that the content is accessible, i.e., understandable, usable and perceivable by any student or lifelong learner who has the prior knowledge required to enrol in the training, and having any kind of disability is not a barrier to complete the training.The course “Creating accessible digital educational content” is aimed at teachers conducting online training, and its objective is training for teachers to create digital educational content that any student can use, whether or not they have some kind of physical or sensory disabilities. The course is organized by participants in the cooperation project ESVI-AL, which aims to move towards a virtual inclusive Higher Education in Latin America. This course has two versions. One has the format of a workshop, with a online component and a face-to-face one. The second version uses the same resources but is organized as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).