Fostering accessibility of OpenCourseWare with semantic technologies - a literature review

Accessibility has become a fundamental requirement for web applications, especially when it comes to e-learning and educational websites for OpenCourseWare. There are various types of disabilities and numerous ways of addressing them. Using semantic technologies to structure and represent the available concepts and taxonomies enables sharing and reusing the knowledge in a variety of systems. This paper provides a literature review of standards and ontologies that were developed to address accessibility requirements. The findings and recommendations reveal missing and future needs for building accessible OpenCourseWare services.