ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter looks at the potential for social media, and specifi cally Facebook, to be used to provide greater accessibility for people with disabilities to online or eLearning, particularly in a tertiary environment. It begins by providing a brief overview of the developing area of eLearning and its potential appeal and utility for people with disabilities. It will then look at the potential for social media and specifi cally the social networking site Facebook – how it could play an effective role in an online tertiary learning environment, both as an important social space and also as an effective tool in the formal learning and teaching process. The fi nal section of this chapter will then look at a specifi c case study regarding students with disabilities who were studying fully online through Open Universities Australia (OUA). The students were surveyed to determine the accessibility of different online platforms they used in their learning and teaching, and specifi cally to compare the largest of the formal online learning management systems, Blackboard, with Facebook. It was found that, in addition to the latter being more accessible to these students with disabilities than Blackboard overall, this was also the case in seven of the eight broad impairment categories that the survey explored. The chapter then concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the fi ndings for the development of accessible online learning environments for people with disabilities.
