The concept of Digital Inclusion comes from the idea that technology and the ubiquity of the Internet can bring challenges and new opportunities for communities and individuals alike and can reach all layers of the population. However, it is necessary to bring the technology to the people and train them properly in such a way that they begin to consider the technology as a social good. The digital challenges and opportunities are not evenly distributed, the access to it is not equitable and the participation in the online environment is not even for people with functional diversity, adding extra difficulties such as the need to develop specific digital or even social skills.
Social Accessibility is an approach to shorten the time to make web content more accessible by allowing volunteers to improve its quality in a collaborative manner. In this context new forms of volunteerism have emerged through the creative and innovative use of ICTs. The first action in social ICT volunteering at UNED, the largest public distance university in Spain, took place in 2013. The overall project aimed to improve the accessibility of user-generated video-classes contained in a multimedia repository commonly used by the vast community of quarter of a million students. The video classes were textually transcribed, subtitled and converted into mp3 audio, also improved its semantic labelling in the repository through volunteer’s metadata authoring. The experience has demonstrated the capacity of ICTs to promote social innovation at the universities and bring about citizen empowerment, in this case developing conscious awareness of the difficulties faced by people with disabilities and the theory of universal web accessibility, transforming user-generated video-classes into real accessible Collections of OERs. In year 2014, the second action has just started with promising outcomes.
