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as well as the portability of the user's pref-
erences to external systems.
dotLRN is developed) it is feasible to comply with
the accessibility requirements and modify the
code accordingly to support them. For this reason,
the instantiation of the framework at UNED is
based on dotLRN LMS. Technical details on the
integration can be read in (Raffenne et al., 2009;
Santos et al., 2010).
To illustrate the application at UNED, we have
selected the adaptive psycho-educational support
service from the list of services identified in Santos
et al. (2010). In this service a student is invited
to take a personalized course that will introduce
her to the university's learning environment, as
well as to support eServices available at the uni-
versity. The course is based on an IMS-LD unit
of learning, personalized to student's identified
learning style and needs (managed by the User
Model in terms of IMS Learner Information
Profile and ISO Personal Needs and Preferences,
which can correspond to the component C1- cf
with Figure 1). The contents are characterized
with ISO Digital Resources Description and IMS
Metadata (Metadata Repository which can cor-
respond to the component C2). In addition to this,
the student receives dynamic guidance through
recommendations (a Recommender System which
can correspond to the component C3), based both
on user model information and interactions with
the system (Tracking and Audit Module which
can correspond to the component C4).
To provide the inclusive and personal-
ized interaction approach for this eService,
a recommender system is used to support
personalization/adaptation and interoperability in
this inclusive learning scenario. The underlying
research goal is to deliver dynamic contextual
recommendations to the learner when coping with
psycho-educational scenarios and contribute to
enrich the existing LMS with adaptive navigation
support. This innovative feature considers user-
centred design methods and involves the educator
in the modelling at design time in order to produce
a wide variety of recommendations that take
into account the learners' needs and their evolv-
•
Supporting resources to accommodate in-
accessible course components
The UNED Use Case
UNED -funded in 1972- has made an intensive
use from its beginning of the communication
channels available to allow students communi-
cate by using their preferred medium: telephone,
videoconference, postal mail, fax, broadcasting
radio and TV programs, and the Internet. For this
reason, it cannot surprise that in 1999 a group
of professors and students from a Laboratory at
the UNED's Artificial Intelligence Department
started to pay attention to a software produced at
the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT),
called ArsDigita Community System (ACS). As
the software was released under an open source
license, this group downloaded and tested it to
work out how it could be used to better support the
learning of their subjects. This software evolved
along time and turned into an open source software
called OpenACS, which offers an educational
application called dotLRN. On the one hand, its
robustness, and on the other hand, the large com-
munity of developers and educational institutions
that support it has made it a success for 10 years
running, struggling against commercial systems,
such as WebCT or Blackboard, and popular open
source ones, such as Moodle or Sakai (Santos et
al., 2007). One of the key features of dotLRN is
the commitment of its developer community to
produce an accessible LMS. Fully accessible LMS
are still not available due to several open issues
yet to be solved (Santos and Boticario, 2008c);
for example, controlling the accessibility of the
contributions by course designers, or the acces-
sibility of the existing players that deploy courses
built following specifications such as SCORM
or IMS-LD. However, due to the architectural
foundations and the release under open source
license of the OpenACS framework (upon which
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