© FORMATEX 2006 Accessibility and Model-Based Web Application Development for eLearning-Environments Sabina Jeschke 1 , and Helmut Vieritz 1* 1 Berlin University of Technology, Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Straße des 17. Juni 136, D-10623 Berlin, Germany Especially eLearning and eScience technologies offer a wide range of possibilities for pedagogical concepts supporting individual demands and interests. The two deciding factors are given by its interaction capability and the ability to adapt to the user, both practically unachievable using traditional media. These two features are the key to extend the methodology of teaching scenarios as well as the support of individual learning strategies - the integration of new media into the academic education thus possesses the potential to assist in transcending the disadvantages in the education of disabled people. Based on semantic content encoding and model-based development, a broad range of accessibility features can be supported. Within the BeLearning-Project at the Berlin University of Technology, these issues are investigated. Keywords accessibility; model-based Web application development; conceptual modeling; user-centered design 1. Introduction Learning and eScience platforms are characterized by non-linear information structures and intensive use of graphical and interactive components. Together with the dynamic generation of content are these the properties, which lead to new presentation approaches and new forms of learning environments. Unfortunately, the resulting Web applications are often not accessible for disabled persons. On the other hand, computer-based technology allow a complete separation between content and presentation. Therefore, new media possess the potential to adapt the presentation to individual users in principle. To build accessible Web applications, one has to respect the needs from the beginning of the design process. Based on recent proposals for a model-based Web application development, we discuss the essential modeling requirements to ensure enhanced accessibility in eLearning environments for education. A number of guidelines (designed and published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the European Commission, national governments and others) have been passed during the last years to address the issue of accessibility. The majority of the suggested rules focus on easy access to (more or less static, less interactive) information portals. Often, the paradigm of a universal design for all people is assumed. However, the existing concepts do not address the implementation of highly multimedia-based interactive learning and teaching contents for disabled persons, nor are they well-suited to this task. Advanced eLearning platforms are capable to adapt the presentation to the user and they can provide him with additional information about multimedia content, navigation and presentation suited to his own needs. Therefore, the universal design approach can be replaced by a user-centered or target-group- specific design which is based on two main paradigm: Semantic encoding: The flexibility of the separation of content and representation requires extensive semantic encoding of the complete content: supporting the underlying semantic technologies is vital to the realization of a broad accessibility of highly interactive virtual knowledge spaces and incorporating intelligent tools for the development and administration of content. Here, it is important to mention that semantic encoding may not be restricted to the content elements themselves, but has to be extended to all aspects which are highly content-related as, for example, navigation mechanisms. Semantic encoding * * Corresponding author: e-mail: vieritz@math.tu-berlin.de, Phone: +49 30 31429941 Current Developments in Technology-Assisted Education (2006) 1161