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. This session is complementary to, but does not overlap with, the Universal Learning Design Track of the conference.
Topics covered include the following:
- Mobile learning technologies.
- Classification and evaluation of the different technologies.
- Case studies of new technologies and good practice.
- State of the art learning technologies.
- Pedagogical issues.
- Accessibility, usability and support issues.
- Design for all approaches to learning technologies.
- Educational games for disabled people.
- Designing new technologies.
- International comparisons.
Chair’s Brief Bio
Marion Hersh PhD is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Glasgow. Her main research interests are in the area of assistive technology, including inclusive learning technologies and pedagogies, with a secondary interest and ethics and social responsibility issues in science and engineering. Particular topics include inclusive approaches to the design of learning technologies for disabled and non-disabled people, mobility issues and assistive travel technology for blind people, communication devices for deafblind people, assistive technology to support leisure activities for blind people and the user-centred design of assistive technology.
She is co-editor and author of a book series on assistive technology, with two volumes on assistive technology for people with hearing impairments and visual impairments published to date by Springer Verlag. She recent completed a Research Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust for research on Mobility for Blind People: Current Strategies and Solutions. Dr Hersh has organised and chaired an EC funded conference series on assistive technology for people with sensory impairments, co-organised workshops on advanced learning technologies for disabled and non-disabled people at three IEEE International Conferences on Advanced Learning Technologies and organised a special session on ICT learning technologies for disabled people at the recent AAATE conference. She is one of a very small number of researchers investigating the accessibility and usability for disabled people of educational games and gaming environments.
Paper Submission
You should submit an extended abstract (2 to 4 pages including images, tables and references) and may want to include the following topics: the R & D or application idea; the state of the art in this area; the methodology used, the R & D work and results; the impact or contributions to the field; and discussion and conclusions and further work. Papers should be submitted online and indicate that they are for the SSTS on ICT-Based Learning Technologies for Disabled and Non-Disabled People. Please could you email me a copy of the extended abstract as well. Do contact me if you have any questions.
Chair
Dr Marion Hersh, University of Glasgow, marion.hersh@glasgow.ac.uk