Abstract:The EU4ALL project (IST-FP6-034778) has developed a general framework to address the needs of accessible lifelong learning at Higher Education level consisting of several standards-based interoperable components integrated into an open web service architecture aimed at supporting adapted interaction to guarantee students' accessibility needs. Its flexibility has supported the project implementation at several sites with different settings and various learning management systems. Large-scale evaluations involving hundreds of users, considering diverse disability types, and key staff roles have allowed obtaining valuable lessons with respect to "how to adopt or enhance eLearning accessibility" at university. The project was evaluated at four higher education institutions, two of the largest in Europe and two mediumsized. In this paper, we focus on describing the implementation and main conclusions at the largest project evaluation site (UNED), which was involved in the project from the beginning, and thus, in the design process, and a medium-sized university that adopted the EU4ALL approach (UPV). This implies dealing with two well-known open source learning environments (i.e. dotLRN and Sakai), and considering a wide variety of stakeholders and requirements. Thus the results of this evaluation serve to illustrate the coverage of both the approach and developments.

This chapter introduces a standards-based and adaptive framework whose main objective is to adapt user interfaces, content and learning environment to learners’ needs, including their functional diversity issues (i.e., disabilities). The framework is intended to be general (e.g., two different learning management systems and two large pilot sites are being considered) and to that end it is implemented in terms of an open architecture, which aims at providing services for Accessible Lifelong Learning. The chapter focuses on accessibility and adaptation issues, and their interoperability requirements. The covered topics are the required standards, interoperability requirements of the architecture, user model, recommender system, and their application to the end-user services that are being implemented at UNED University, one of the large pilot sites of the EU4ALL European project. Some of the challenges and solutions provided are discussed as well as the future work of related research areas.

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