Inclusive education technologies: emerging opportunities for people with visual impairments

Technology has become central to many activities of learning, ranging from its use in classroom education to work training, mastering a new hobby, or acquiring new skills of living. While digitally-enhanced learning tools can provide valuable access to information and personalised support, people with specific accessibility needs, such as low or no vision, can often be excluded from their use. This requires technology developers to build more inclusive designs and to offer learning experiences that can be shared by people with mixed-visual abilities. There is also scope to integrate DIY approaches and provide specialised teachers with the ability to design their own low cost educational tools, adapted to pedagogical objectives and to the variety of visual and cognitive abilities of their students. For researchers, this invites new challenges of how to best support technology adoption and its evaluation in often complex educational settings. This workshop seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in accessibility and education to share best practices and lessons learnt for technology in this space; and to jointly discuss and develop future directions for the next generation design of inclusive and effective education technologies

Investigating teaching strategies that ensure the inclusivity of learners with physical and/ or mental impairments in Lesotho

Thesis ( M. Ed.(Educational Management)) - Central University of technology, Free State, 2011The purpose of this study is to investigate teaching strategies that ensure the inclusivity of learners with physical and/or mental impairments in the mainstream schools in Lesotho. The intention being to equip educators with strategies that can be employed in order to address this didactical challenge at mainstream schools. The inclusion of impaired learners can be achieved only if teachers understand the purpose of inclusive education as defined by Van Rooyen and De Beer (2006) that inclusive education is an education system that ensures that all children learn and participate regardless of their disabilities. The study followed a mixed method approach, in the form of a survey, that is semi-structured questionnaire for teacher respondents while an observation coupled with informal discussion was utilized for the learner respondents. Population and sampling consisted of 211 teachers randomly drawn from 23 primary schools found in Berea and Maseru districts of Lesotho. The completed questionnaires were collected and analysed. The study found that there are challenges experienced by physically and/or mentally impaired learners with their teachers and peers. According to the findings of the research, Lesotho teachers in mainstream classes do not have enough training to work with impaired learners. Given this situation, it is not only recommended that the current group of teachers are re-skilled and re-trained through short courses and workshops, but also that teacher training colleges and university in Lesotho are encouraged to constantly review and update their programmes so that they are responsive to the professional needs of educators. Appropriate inclusive teaching strategies are also recommended to assist in addressing this challenge. Educators should be sufficiently supported by the para-professionals in order to make inclusive education successful. Government experts should work collaboratively with the Lesotho College of Education and the National University of Lesotho with regard to the attainment of these skills and competencies, in order to improve the work of the educators at schools. At school level, special educators should be hired in order to identify learners with impairments

When Accessibility of Public Space Excludes: Shopping experience of people with vision impairments

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) recognises access to consumer goods and services in the mainstream private market as essential for full participation in society. Nevertheless, people with impairments rarely enjoy the same rights and consumer experience as non-disabled individuals. This paper argues that (in)accessibility of public space is an important factor shaping how accessible the private market is for people who do not ‘fit’ conventional norms and standards. It demonstrates how category-driven accessibility provisions in some geographical areas and not in others segregate disabled people within certain providers, create social and consumer isolation, and become a marker that accentuates difference and separation between disabled consumers who live in accessible districts, and the rest of the population. To illustrate the case, the paper uses empirical evidence from mystery shopping in retail outlets and qualitative interviews with people with vision impairments who live in the ‘Blind district’ in Lithuania. The district was developed by the Soviet Union (1949-1990) to boost people with vision impairments’ participation in the socialist labour market economy

Culturally Affirmative & Mobile Psychological Assessment Program for Children with Hearing Loss or Combined Hearing and Vision Loss in Rural Areas

Parents of children with hearing loss often struggle to obtain appropriate psychological evaluations due to a shortage of psychologists with appropriate training and experience. In an effort to fill this void, the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division (DHHSD) has been awarding a state grant since 1998 (except 2010-2012 due to budget constraints) to support programs that provide culturally affirmative psychological assessments to this population. This article provides a summary of the history of the programs supported by this state grant, the current program model and recommendations to other parties that may be considering developing a similar program