Education should be considered a basic right, but many disabled people experience barriers in accessing it. The focus of these sessions will be ICT-based learning technologies for disabled students and the associated pedagogical issues. In addition to computer based and multi-media learning technologies, mobile learning using smart phones and PDAs is now feasible. Disabled people may require access to both purely learning technologies and assistive technologies to to obtain the full benefit from education.
The two sessions have brought together a wide range of different types of papers (listed below). They cover technologies which are assistive in terms of giving access to either other technologies or education in general and technologies which directly support learning. The technologies address a wide range of educational contexts, including classrooms, mobile learning and the workplace. They comprise both technologies for disabled people in general and ICT solutions for specific groups of disabled people, including those with learning difficulties, hearing impairments and visual impairments. Learning topics and applications include sign language dictionaries, literacy support, independent living skills, on the job mentoring and training for assistive technology trainers for blind people. There are two papers which overview ICT learning technologies for disabled people, arising from the Enable Network for ICT Learning for Disabled People, one of which considers a new approach to classification of learning technologies, and the other a number of case studies of the use of ICT learning technologies. The papers also have a wide geographical spread, covering five European countries (Austria, Germany, Italy, Scotland (UK), Spain and three outside Europe (Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia).
The oral presentation session comprises the following six papers:
• Declarative transcription system for sign language dictionaries creation
• Classification of ICT-Based Learning Technologies for Disabled People: Outcomes of Enable Network Project
• A Web-based Interactive Multimedia Application to Support Independent Living at Home for Youth and Adults with Intellectual Disabilities.
• Innovative ICT solutions supporting students with Learning Disability and Hearing Impairments during classes
• A Virtual Hearing-impaired Listener (VHI)
• Mobile technology for illiterate education
The poster session comprises the following four papers:
• A new approach for animating 3D signing avatars
• IT4Blind
• Supporting mentoring on the job through social media
• ENABLE – collection and user evaluation of ict assisted learning for disabled persons in europe