Towards an inclusive learning experience: proposing a checklist to assess digital textbooks

We here describe a checklist to be shared with teachers and editors for assessing features that contribute to the usability and accessibility of digital textbooks. These are organised in five main dimensions. Customisation as the ability to adjust how content can be presented to agree with individual needs. Multimodality to allow for the use of different media to represent the same content. Format to describe how presentation supports the semantic of the content. Accessibility listing elements of assistive technology to make content available to all, and Training to describe how the interactive elements of the textbook are helpful in order to promote self-assessment. This checklist offers teachers an easy-to-use tool for evaluating textbooks when deciding on their adoption while stimulating the discussion on usability and accessibility, essential for an inclusive learning experience in this community. The five dimensions are based on existing literature and are tailored to the specific needs of the targeted teaching community. Therefore, in this paper, we start by providing the state of the art, then discuss data gathered previously with an initial pilot, and end by fully describing the proposed checklist and its dimensions. Keywords: digital textbook, e-schoolbooks, inclusion, accessibility, checklist, multimodality, learning, special educational needs.