Includ-ed, red europea de educación inclusiva

Summary

DICE is helping people with disabilities build digital literacy skills needed to transition from VET centre training to mainstream education and employment. DICE is creating an online community based on a peer support model, promoted and sustained by Digital Inclusion Champions called Digiplace4all. Digiplace4all provides user-generated information about disability, technology and digital inclusion along with mechanisms and guidance for accessing and providing peer support within stakeholder groups (people with disabilities, digital skills trainers, mainstream educators, employers). It includes social media tools for discussion, sharing, uploading of user generated content and webinar hosting. DICE addresses the inherently ad hoc nature of peer support for students with visual impairment learning ICT skills by providing a space where people with disabilities are linked with the information and supports they need. DICE will create peer support networks and initially appoint 3-4 Champions of each stakeholder type in each partner country. It will also set up a new network in at least one other European country during the funding period via a ‘twinning’ model of peer support among VET centres. Motivations and drivers for becoming a Champion include networking and public recognition (e.g. on the website and at project events). For students, it will make their digital skills more visible. To educators it will provide exposure in the inclusive education field. Employers will see it as contributing to their Corporate social responsibility.

Project object:

DICE aims to help people with disabilities build the digital literacy skills needed to transition from VET centre training to mainstream education and employment, by creating an online community based on a peer support model, promoted and sustained by Digital Inclusion Champions.

Methodology

The DICE partnership elaborated a Stakeholder goals and requirements survey which reporting the findings of the stakeholder requirements gathering study in all four partner countries and is intended as an internal document to inform the design of the DICE community website, now called DigiPlace4all. For each country, there are separate individual National Reports. They describe the requirements and motivations (including learning, social and personal needs) of each type of stakeholder - digital skills students with disabilities, digital skills trainers, mainstream educators and employers in that country. They describe the digital technologies and services they use, their needs for information and support regarding digital inclusion and skills building and the various sources of information they have  available to them. They draw conclusions about what information and supports are currently missing and how these can be provided within a peer support model. Where possible, they include an inventory of  useful existing peer support networks and relationships, information resources, forums, groups and other initiatives that DICE can link into, reference, use or reproduce. The findings have greatly influenced the design, functionality and content of the DigiPlace4all community website. In particular, the decision to adopt a discussion-based approach by using only dynamic user-generated content submitted through public blog-style interfaces and no static content such as was provided on Gateway2AT.org. Also, the decision to put more effort into creating a dynamic, modern, colourful, 'cool' looking website featuring video content.

The DigiPlace4all website allows members to post offers of support or requests for one-to-one support by filling in an online form stating the nature of the support, how long needed, preferred communications mechanism, etc. It also allows members to respond in private to these requests. Short introductory videos are being created to introduce members to each of the main sections – Get & Give One-to-One Support, Create and Share, Support in Education and Support in Employment. These are placed at the top of the DigiPlace4all home page. So far, one video has been created.

Target

People with disabilities

VET digital skills trainers

Mainstream educators

Employers

Good practice innovations

The project products intend to expand the assistive technology focus to tackle digital literacy and inclusion for people with disabilities. It also focus in much more detail on all key stakeholders involved in digital inclusion and work to create supports within each group but also we aim to establish relationships and supports across stakeholder groups. In addition, Digiplace4all propose adding accessible social networking and management functions in order to create mechanisms that can build and support a community that is interactive, self-managing, sustainable and flexible. Carrying out DICE within a European consortium has added value compared with a purely national based initiative, as the contexts for developing digital literacy among students with disabilities will vary between countries. This variation occurs due to differences in technological infrastructures, existing levels of social inclusion and digital inclusion of people with disabilities, availability of expertise and supports, social cohesion among disability groups, prevalence of mobile technologies and social media, and other socio-cultural and economic factors. This may lead to variations in what are the most appropriate and effective information, supports and facilitations. Carrying out DICE on such a transnational basis enables discovery of a wider range of approaches and for each country to learn from the others’ experiences. This will in turn make the results more valuable and applicable at European level. DICE also offers the potential to explore innovative ‘digital twinning’ approaches in which VET institutions in countries outside our partner countries enter into sharing and supporting relationships. This approach can help facilitate transnational learning, further supporting the dissemination of the approach to new countries, as well as enriching and increasing the social participation of students with disabilities at all of Europe. Finally, the results of DICE will be made available in languages of all partner countries.

Good practice achievements

Project documents:

• - Stakeholder goals and support requirements for digital inclusion
• - Guidance in accessing and providing peer supports for digital inclusion.
• - Guide to webcasting and social media content creation.
• - Criteria and Guidance for Digital Inclusion Champions.
• - Peer Support Community Building Experiences document.
• - National dissemination materials.
• - DICE sustainability plan.
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Link of the project and organization: www.dice-project.eu ; www.digiplace4all.eu ; www.interprojects.bg, www.phoenixkm.eu, www.ncbi.ie, www.iadt.ie, www.firr.org.pl

Project partners and other stakeholders

National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI), Ireland:

The National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) is the primary service provider to the blind and partially sighted population in the Republic of Ireland, providing vision assessment, information, advice and support. It has a nationwide network of community resource workers and trainers who provide rehabilitation, counselling, employment support and training in mobility, daily living skills, computer skills and the use of assistive technologies. NCBI sells, supports and maintains assistive hardware and software. The NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT) is a centre of excellence in digital inclusion and accessibility of digital technologies, websites and online services. CFIT provides consultancy services in accessibility assessment and user testing of websites and online applications and has a fixed user testing facility. NCBI has significant experience working on EU funded projects under Leonardo, Socrates, IST FP4-7, ESF main claim, Employment Initiative and others.

Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT), Ireland:

IADT is a Higher Education Institute established under the Institutes of Technology Acts 1992-2006. The Institute has approximately 2,500 students and 400 staff. IADT’s vision is to be at the forefront of teaching, research and innovation and to contribute to Ireland’s development as a creative knowledge economy. IADT has undergraduate & postgraduate programmes in creative media, multimedia technology, enterprise and psychology that are linked to its strengths in film and television broadcasting production. IADT specialise in teaching, research & innovation at the convergence of the arts, technology & enterprise.

PhoenixKM, Belgium:

PhoenixKM BVBA has extensive expertise in the fields of accessibility consultancy. It is focused towards the integration of people with disabilities in every aspect of daily life, and aims to achieve its goal by aggregating knowledge, expertise and experience in the field of education, training, and employment, and making it available to the targeted user groups through well-defined consultancy services, as well as private and publicly funded projects by its dedicated experts. PhoenixKM carries out these services and initiatives throughout Europe, but also beyond. They also have a new department that provides advice on the successful usage of social media in various business domains (media, music, service provision). Increasingly, this knowledge is being applied in all business domains in which PhoenixKM is being active, including the accessibility ones, hence also focus on accessibility training for social media usage and document creation. These trainings are provided to private and public sector.

Fundacja Instytut Rozwoju Regionalnego (FIRR), Poland:

FIRR is Polish non-profit NGO with a status of the public benefit organization. FIRR interest is related to groups in situation of social exclusion, especially disabled people. Our clients are mostly visually impaired people. We put our effort to enable them to fully participate in all daily activities. FIRR provides them with trainings in the following areas: foreign languages: English and German, information technology and assistive technologies, image creation, etc. We also provide individual consultations, mainly supporting in the use of modern information technologies. Modern technologies are among our main fields of interest as a tool to quality, independent, inclusive and active life. In all those areas access to information is one of main fields of our interest. FIRR has initialised many projects, actions and partnerships aiming to promote, teach and enforce implementation of accessibility standards of web content, services and interfaces for people with disabilities.

Interprojects, Bulgaria:

 INTERPROJECTS Ltd. is a training provider, having its activities fully directed towards people with disabilities and elderly people. The company was established in 2006 and up to this moment in our business activities involves more than 8562 diabetics, 10% of which are children, 2000 disabled people (including mild disability) and 453 women with breast cancer. They all have been instructed how to use their aid equipment, have been given health consulting and tutoring in prophylactics of their diseases. The team of INTERPROJECTS has managed and participated during several national and international projects in the field of accessibility issues, career orientation and guidance, employment, mentoring, e-games and networks of employers of disability, education, and unemployment mostly for people with disabilities, particularly at graduate and managerial levels, and all have had an emphasis on IT and web-resources, paper-based materials and Braille.

Good practice testimonial

Not available yet, will be available on www.digiplace4all.eu.

Evaluation

Quality Assurance is on-going with partners giving feedback via tri-monthly questionnaires on progress, management and any issues or difficulties arising. The coordinator has responded to all issues raised and all difficulties have been addressed. The project has had three consortium meetings, in Dublin, Krakow and Plovdiv, and these have been very successful. Partners discuss and agree work at weekly Telco’s. The first three of the planned evaluation activates have been completed and the results fed back into the website design. The expert heuristic evaluation was carried out by all partners as well as an accessibility audit which was carried out by NCBI team. Tests of responsive design (does the website display correctly on all platforms - PC, tablet, smartphone - and screen resolutions?) has been elaborated as well.

All partners have been using the website since the delivery of version, uploading test content and using all the functionality.  Faults, issues and recommendations have been logged continuously in an online bug tracking tool based on Bug Genie. The testing has resulted in numerous recommendations for redesign and additional functionality. These are too numerous to mention here but are included in full in the reports of the expert heuristic evaluation, accessibility audit and responsive design tests.

 A QA Evaluation Plan and Framework has been produced. This includes a template for a tri-monthly questionnaire to monitor project progress and an audit checklist on agreed deliverables. The tri-monthly questionnaire has been completed by all partners and feedback has been acted on by the project coordinator. The Audit Checklist for Deliverables has been used on regular base.