Beyond Standards: Unleashing Accessibility on a Learning Content Management System

Standards are typically conceived as a means of inclusion, where the term inclusion can refer either to an economic scenario or a social one. They represent a pattern, a paradigm, or an archetype to be wrapped around some kind of reality. Standards related to the Internet and its applications are explicit sets of requirements to be satisfied. Applying and implementing such standards reveals their capabilities to definitively satisfy their goals, beyond the authoritative principles they implicitly carry on. This paper explores questions and perspectives about the implementation of two accessibility standards in an e-learning platform, achieving inclusion both of the standards and their goals to provide accessibility. Their actual implementation in the LCMS ATutor reinforces considerations about inconsistencies and points out some aspects which may otherwise not be glaring. In order to offer enhanced accessibility, some adjustments have been applied in the implementation phase, as the paper describes.