Towards an ontology-based representation of accessibility profiles for learners

Web accessibility has gained significant attention over the past decades due to the widespread use of the internet, which has urged web developers to address the needs and preferences of a variety of users. In e-learning contexts, learner profiles can be used to describe the needs and preferences of users and adapt the educational resources accordingly. We propose the use of ontologies to represent accessibility needs and preferences in learner profiles in order to structure the knowledge and to access the information for recommendations and adaptations in OpenCourseWare systems. In particular, we propose to use and extend the ACCESSIBLE ontology containing knowledge about disabilities and web accessibility standards. In this work, we extend the ACCESSIBLE ontology to represent accessibility knowledge and requirements for learning contexts with respect to the standards of the IMS Global Learning Consortium.