Redesigning the User Interface of a Learning Platform for Social Engineering Integrating Web Accessibility Basics

Introduction

The general perspective of this chapter is to establish aspects of web accessibility in an educational platform given the need for technological tools that are focused on online learning. There are papers that report the lack of compliance with accessibility guides on the websites of educational institutions. Some of the important aspects to be integrated in educational environments go from the interaction and processes necessary to acquire knowledge to the cognitive development (Jiménez-González, Mendoza-González, & Luna-García, 2018) and for this reason studying educational website is of interest to the community. Another point of view in the observation of educational environments are the Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs), which have also been subject to study in terms of accessibility and have encountered difficulties for user interaction and therefore, the assurance and monitoring of accessibility in LCMSs is vital to guarantee universal access to education (Iglesias, Moreno, Martinez, & Calvo, 2014). Libraries also need to integrate aspects of accessibility because users nowadays access more services through the web, consequently, having good practices in usability, accessibility and universal design will allow libraries to offer accessible content, which is its main purpose (Riley-Huff, 2012). According to a study carried out on websites of top universities in Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, among others, the universities in several countries still have difficulties in meeting the criteria of web accessibility that allows providing services effectively for the entire group of users in those who also consider disabled users (Ismailova & Inal, 2018)

In an evolutionary field of what accessibility implies and how it is visualized, it makes it difficult for the web accessibility community to interact, agree or share the way it is understood. In addition to the above, one thing that is of importance outside the community is the difficulty they may have in understanding, planning or meeting the accessibility requirements given the conflict of ideas they have and what they really mean (Yesilada, Brajnik, Vigo, & Harper, 2015). For higher education, providing a properly designed website must be a good practice and a requirement to be met. The above is related to the fact that in universities there is an interest to place some undergraduate, and the entire graduate courses online (Floyd & Santiago, 2007). With the integration of new technologies, there is a lot of work to be done on e-learning websites, which should focus on how to make their websites accessible so that they can also serve disabled students (Shawar, 2015).

The use of tools to support the evaluation of aspects related to web pages is something that has been used in different works in aspects of usability (Kaur, Kaur, & Kaur, 2016) or accessibility as is the case of (Floyd & Santiago, 2007; Riley-Huff, 2012; Maisak & Brown, 2014; Iglesias et al., 2014; Shawar, 2015; Ismailova & Inal, 2018), applying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). However, web accessibility evaluation tools can not determine the accessibility of web sites; they can only help us to determine if that is the case (Floyd & Santiago, 2007). In this sense, it is commented that technology cannot identify or solve all possible problems or situations in a way that replaces human evaluation. Consequently, the use of help tools for compliance with web accessibility guidelines can be a first step, but the second step, human judgment, is a critical part, which involves careful observation by web developers to identify and resolve situations that may arise. Finally, according to the work presented by Lee, in the context of higher education and long distance education, the increase in access to university education through online education is not automatic; furthermore, increasing accessibility is in fact, a complex and challenging process (Lee, 2017).