The emergence of the internet and the prevalence of personal computers in almost every sphere of human activity has also made its foray into the academic sector and a new concept has been introduced, this latest innovation is referred to as online learning or e-learning and it promotes online education to all those individuals having access to a computer and it involves learning through interaction with qualified tutors online and upon the conclusion of the course, online degrees are handed over to the selected successful candidates. It is interesting to note that unlike traditional educational system by means of which knowledge is imparted to the students manually, here interaction is based on a medium which facilitates transfer of knowledge. Therefore there is required certain tools which would aid in this mode of online learning. Such tools are known as learning management systems which comprise of a set of software applications which in their turn provide certain functions which are extremely beneficial in contributing to the cause of online learning. One of the most popular among the various learning management content systems or LCMS is known as ATutor and it is also an open source application which came into being for the first time in 2002 and there are multifarious reasons because of which ATutor is considered to be one of the most prominent online learning management systems. ATutor is distinguished to be the first among the learning content management systems to abide by the various accessibility specifications laid down by the W3C WCAG 1.0 and XHTML 1.0. While the latter allows ATutor to be displayed in all similar technological specifications, the former enables this learning content management system to gain access to the various categories of its operation at any point of time by any user.



In terms of adaptability functions, it is to be noted that ATutor can function in any given learning or teaching environment and there are certain features which reflect its mode fo functioning. These include themes and tool modules as well as study groups and other privileges. For long, it was considered to be a shortcoming on the part of the learning management systems as they were unable to provide the benefits of online learning to the blind and disabled candidates. But applications at ATutor has enabled these disabled candidates in gaining the advantages of online learning and it also provides various professional development courses designed for the teachers and researchers as well.