A compliance review by the U.S. Department of Justice
has led to an agreement with edX to make its massive open online courses
(MOOCs) more accessible to people with disabilities. EdX agreed to make its
website, mobile applications, and learning management system fully accessible within
the next 18 months.
As part of the settlement, edX will provide guidance
for course creators on best practices in creating accessible online courses,
hire a web-accessibility coordinator, and develop a web-accessibility policy.
The settlement acknowledges that edX has taken steps to improve access, but
needs to do more.
“We were very aware in 2012 or so about the emergence
of MOOCs and the importance, or the potential importance, that they offer to
students who have distance barriers and cost barriers to getting good
educational content,” Eve L. Hill, deputy assistant attorney general for civil
rights, said in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “And they offer a potentially really good
avenue for students with disabilities.”
Details of what was wrong with the edX platform were
not provided, but Hill told The Chronicle that common website accessibility
problems include videos without captions and pop-up windows that can’t
recognize screen-reader applications used by the visually impaired.
