October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4

Figure 7. The ISA on line interface
Figure 8. The BeL on line interface
The authoring and producing phases are now completed. The LO has to be loaded onto a LCMS to be browsed.
In A³ scenarios such a platform is a personalized instance of ATutor (Adaptive Technology Resource Centre,
University of Toronto, 2006). Figure 9 shows the page created during the process we have detailed above stepby-step
as it is rendered on the Web.
Accessibility evaluation
Accessibility of e-learning materials which has been produced by the above mentioned tools has been widely
tested by involving a group of people with disability in verifying on-line contents and services. Universality of
materials has been tested by using different browser running on different platforms and specifically:
MS Internet Explorer 5.0 and later (Microsoft Corp., 2006),
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and later (Mozilla Project, 2006),
Netscape Communicator 7.0 and later (Netscape Communications Corp., 2006),
Lynx 2.8.4 rel. 1 (Lynx Project, 2006),
IBM Home Page Reader 3.0 (IBM, 2006), and finally
Apple Safari 1.0 (Apple Computer Inc., 2006).
There are two obvious considerations about such an evaluation. First of all, we have exclusively considered
accessibility from a technical point of view. Pedagogical issues, including those ones on learning styles, are out
of the scope of our tests. Secondly, all LOs were controlled once loaded onto the LCMS to be properly browsed.
Furthermore content produced by our process is compliant to all the constraints considered by the Italian Law on
Web Accessibility (Italian Parliament, 2004), meeting also WCAG 1.0 AA level (World Wide Web Consortium,
1999c) and Section 508 (U.S. Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, 1998) requirements.
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