Accessibility of MOOCs for Blind People in Developing Non-English Speaking Countries

Besides the globally popular MOOCs, localized MOOCs specific to a region or language are also emerging. These specialized MOOCs often aim to address specific needs that are typically unaddressed by the global MOOCs. Such example is Almooc that aims to address the needs of the Albanian-speaking persons who lack English proficiency. Despite the MOOCs adage to include and offer education to all people, research has shown that their interface is not accessible to people with disabilities, such as the blind. To evaluate the level of accessibility of Almooc, in this paper we report findings from three different methods: usability testing, automatic accessibility checking, and heuristic evaluation. The results indicate that Almooc is not currently accessible to blind people, however, we present recommendations to easily overcome the discovered issues.