Education should be considered a basic right, but many disabled people experience barriers in accessing it. Enablers to changing this include the use of technology, legislation and changes in attitudes. The focus of this session will be ICT-based learning technologies for disabled and non-disabled learners and the associated pedagogical issues which can act as barriers or enablers. 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 obtain the full benefit from education.
A short paper by the session chair ad coordinator Marion Hersch introduces four very different papers on the use of learning technologies to support inclusive learning. It presents a brief overview of the Entelis Network which is supporting the session. It is introduced by a brief discussion of the barriers still experienced by many disabled people to education and employment and the potential of learning technologies to overcome some of these barriers.
Session chair and author: Marion Hersch, Biomedical Engineering, University of Glasgow.