The State of Accessibility in Blackboard: Survey and User Reviews Case Study
Wajdi Aljedaani, Mohammed Alkahtani, Stephanie Ludi, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Marcelo M. Eler, Marouane Kessentini, Ali Ouni · 2023 · Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A) · doi:10.1145/3587281.3587291
Summary
This paper investigates the accessibility of the Blackboard mobile app, one of the most widely used Learning Management Systems (LMS) in higher education, through a two-pronged methodology. First, the authors conducted a large-scale survey with 1,308 hearing students and 65 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students at the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC) in Saudi Arabia, supplemented by follow-up interviews with 8 students (4 hearing, 4 DHH). Second, they collected 15,478 user reviews from the Google Play Store and applied a multi-stage analysis pipeline to extract accessibility-specific feedback. The review data underwent preprocessing to remove emoji-only posts, non-English reviews, duplicates, and noise (reviews under five words), leaving 7,534 reviews. A machine learning classifier identified 3,813 (50.61%) as accessibility-related, which were then manually validated and categorized against the BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines across 11 guideline categories including principles, focus, notifications, design, forms, audio/video, links, dynamic content, images, structure, and text equivalence. The study was motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic's acceleration of online learning, which made LMS accessibility critical for all students, particularly those with disabilities.
Key findings
The survey results revealed a stark disparity: 85% of DHH students found Blackboard extremely difficult to use, compared to only 12.1% of hearing students who reported the same. Follow-up interviews uncovered specific barriers for DHH students, including missing video captions, inability to watch or download videos in the app, missing images in exam content, and difficulties with the visual interface layout. From the Google Play Store analysis, 2,302 reviews were confirmed as accessibility-related after manual validation. The most common violations were against the Principle guideline (46.13% of reviews) — covering general operability, understandability, and robustness — followed by Focus (24.15%) and Notifications (11.60%). Screen reader users reported that Blackboard did not function correctly with JAWS, requiring workarounds like double-tapping to activate controls. Users also reported 16 categories of specific issues, with the most frequent being notifications (436 reviews), grade visibility (220), assignments (179), and announcements (125). The study found that language switching was problematic in bilingual environments, and that the app lacked basic features like dark mode, customizable fonts, and persistent login.
Relevance
This research provides compelling evidence that mainstream educational technology fails to meet the needs of disabled students, particularly DHH learners. The 85% difficulty rate among DHH students versus 12.1% among hearing students is a striking quantification of the accessibility gap in a widely deployed platform. For accessibility practitioners, the BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines-based categorization of user reviews offers a practical framework for auditing mobile app accessibility through user feedback. The study's approach of mining app store reviews for accessibility insights is a scalable method that organizations could adopt to monitor the real-world accessibility of their applications. The findings carry direct implications for LMS developers: video captioning must be enforced (not optional), screen reader compatibility must be tested thoroughly, and notification systems need to work reliably. The work also highlights that accessibility problems in educational platforms have outsized consequences — they can exclude students from learning entirely, not merely inconvenience them.
Tags: mobile accessibility · learning management systems · deaf and hard of hearing · education accessibility · user reviews · app accessibility
Standards referenced: WCAG 2.1 · BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines