IEEE EDUCATION SOCIETY SECTION Received May 28, 2021, accepted June 28, 2021, date of publication July 6, 2021, date of current version July 21, 2021. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3095041 Improving Accessibility in Online Education: Comparative Analysis of Attitudes of Blind and Deaf Students Toward an Adapted Learning Platform CONCEPCIÓN BATANERO-OCHAÍTA 1 , LUIS DE-MARCOS 2 , LUIS FELIPE RIVERA 3 , JAANA HOLVIKIVI 4 , JOSÉ RAMÓN HILERA 2 , AND SALVADOR OTÓN TORTOSA 2 1 Computer Engineering Department, Polytechnic School, University of Alcalá, 28871 Alcalá de Henares, Spain 2 Computer Science Department, Polytechnic School, University of Alcalá, 28871 Alcalá de Henares, Spain 3 Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism, University of Alcalá, 28802 Alcalá de Henares, Spain 4 School of ICT, Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, 00079 Metropolia, Finland Corresponding author: Concepción Batanero-Ochaíta (concha.batanero@uah.es) This work was supported in part by the EduTech Project under Grant 609785-EPP-1-2019-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP, and in part by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. ABSTRACT People with different capacities, such as the deaf and blind, have problems accessing educa- tional content due to lack of accessible technology. Accessibility and usability are closely related concepts that share the goals for a satisfactory user experience. Existing literature establishes a direct relation between accessibility and usability, and reports that there are problems with both in learning platforms, and more generally with most websites. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the accessibility and usability of a learning platform by interrogating its participants. Three groups of students with different capacities (blind, deaf and deaf-blind) used an accessible learning platform prototype to assess the accessibility and usability of the platform and its contents. This article presents a comparative study of the perception and attitude of blind and deaf students towards the use of a learning platform adapted to their personal needs. Results showed that their attitude to the adaptation was very positive but there were differences in the perception of the ease of use of the application and with the level of difficulty to access the learning content. This work contributes to the body of knowledge by showing the effects that adaptations have on learning contents for blind and deaf students in terms of accessibility and ease of use through the analysis of the perceptions of participants. Future work may consider increasing the sample of students, as well as developing and testing new technologies and approaches that address other forms of functional diversity. INDEX TERMS Accessibility, accessible content, attitudinal test, blind, deaf, educational technology, learning platforms. I. INTRODUCTION We consider the following definition of e-learning introduced by Young et al. [1] in 2012, which is based on the opinion of experts from around the world: E-learning is an approach to teaching and learning, representing all or part of the educational model applied, that is based on the use of electronic media and devices as tools for improving access to training, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Rebecca Strachan . communication, and interaction and that facilitates the adoption of new ways of understanding and developing learning. (p. 152) This definition establishes a direct relationship between e-learning and new technologies, which reinforces the idea of an online Learning Platform (LP) as a conducive environment for improving accessibility in education [2] through advan- tages such as access to information from a distance and the ease of converting data to different types of formats (visual, textual or auditory) [3]. Dahlstrom-Hakki et al. [4] suggest that online learning can improve learning outcomes of people 99968 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ VOLUME 9, 2021