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Technical University of Munich

Accessibility of Digital Credentials in the Context of Higher Education Institutions

Thesis Typ (BA/MA)

Betreuer: Dr. Matthias Gottlieb

Context

Digital Credentials are a topic of increasing importance. Not only for student mobility, but also for subsequent processes at the processing level, for example, when verifying and displaying digital education certificates. The EU regulates barrier-free access to the websites and mobile applications of public bodies in EU Directive 2016/2102. In simplified terms, digital education credentials are values stored in a specific machine-readable format. Against this background, one of the questions that arises is that of accessibility and what would need to be considered in this context.
Based on the whitepaper "Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future" (2020) of the DCC, a proof of concept (PoC) for various use cases at German universities is being conducted in the BMBF-funded project DiBiHo. One use case is "Diploma". Diploma stands for the digital transformation of the analog certificate to a Verifiable Credential using the example of TUM with the IT systems there.
One basis for this is the work being done in the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC): in 2018, twelve leading international universities, including MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, TU Delft, HPI, and TUM, founded the Digital Credential Consortium (https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/) (2020) to design and build forgery-proof credentials using blockchain technology and aiming for a global standard for a trustworthy infrastructure to exchange digital credentials and academic achievement certificates.

Task(s)

As part of the work you will explore:

  • Defining accessibility terms and eliciting technology requirements for ensuring accessibility.
  • Survey of accessibility requirements for digital credentials in higher education institutions.
  • Creation of a concept for accessibility for digital credentials in higher education institutions.
  • Evaluation and selection of suitable technologies for accessibility of digital credentials in higher education institutions.

Possible Questions

  • What is the state of the art in accessibility research?
  • What are the accessibility requirements for digital credentials in higher education?
  • What is a concept for verifying accessibility compliance for digital credentials in higher education institutions?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of the found solution?

Further Information

The work can be written in English or German. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me directly. Please send your application with a current "Notenauszug" from TUMonline, and your CV to matthias.gottlieb(at)tum.de. Please note that we can only consider applications with complete documents.

References

  1. Balzert, H. (2010). Lehrbuch der Softwaretechnik: Basiskonzepte und Requirements Engineering, Springer-Verlag.
  2. Balzert, H. (2011). Lehrbuch der Softwaretechnik: Entwurf, Implementierung, Installation und Betrieb, Springer-Verlag.
  3. Digital Credential Consortium. (2020). Offical Website. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/
  4. Duffy, K. H., Pongratz, H. & Schmidt, P. (2020). Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future. https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/white-paper-building-digital-credential-infrastructure-future.pdf
  5. EU Richtlinie 2016/2102. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016L2102

Further Literature

  1. Sedlmeir, J., Smethurst, R., Rieger, A. & Fridgen, G. (2021). Digital Identities and Verifiable Credentials. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 63(5), 603–613. doi.org/10.1007/s12599-021-00722-y
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