Accessibility and Usability in the Development of Digital Educational Resources: The Case of MfM, a Platform for Teacher Training

Abstract

Despite their importance, the dimensions of accessibility and usability are not overly present in the usual design and development processes of open educational resources by educators and instructional designers. This paper aims to fill this gap in literature, with the objective of evaluating and validating a teacher training platform (Mestres que formen Mestres-MfM) in terms of user experience (usability) and web accessibility. This has been done from the perspective of 15 participants from the three teaching profiles of potential users: university teacher educators, in-service teachers in schools and preservice teachers (initial teacher training). A mixed methodology in two phases has been applied through the sequential application of a heuristic and aprioristic evaluation of web usability and accessibility and a second evaluation of the design applying standardized scales (System Usability Scale- SUS and Usability Metric for User Experience-UMUX). The development of MfM has considered usability and web accessibility as essential characteristics to ensure that digital educational resources are functional and inclusive, and so the positive results show. This article documents this accessibility and usability analysis, as well as its main results as a practical example. In this sense, and as practical implications, this example can serve as a model to evaluate the accessibility and usability when developing other digital educational resources