Outline

1. Importance of Accessibility for LearningICT FOR INFORMATION ACCESSIBILITY IN LEARNING GUIDELINE DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPLisbon, Portugal19-21 June 2013By Licia SbattellaMember of the G3ict Steering Committee andChair of the G3ict Education Task Forcelicia.sbattella@polimi.it- www.g3ict.org

2. Outline • The G3ict mission & CRPD • ICT Accessibility and Assistive Technologies • Education (Primary and Secondary School, Academic, …) • CRPD - Art. 9 and Art. 24 • Three different view points • (1) G3ict – Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The 2012 ICT Accessibility Progress Report • (2) Accessible Academic Life @ Politecnico di Milano • [3] Multimodal artistic pathways for kids with intellectual impairments @ Esagramma in Milano • Conclusions • References & Annexes

3. 1. G3ict: the 2012 ICT Accessibility Progress Report • The 2012 G3ict CRPD Accessibility Progress Report (second edition) • identifies the degree to which each of the dispositions of the CRPD on accessible ICTs and AT is actually enacted in local laws, policies and regulations and their impact. It includes 57 data points relative to the status of ICT and AT accessibility for each country surveyed • Data is collected and presented within the following three clusters of data points: • State Party CRPD legal and programmatic commitments; • State Party capacity for implementation; • Assessment of the State’s implementation and actual results for persons with disabilities

4. 1. G3ict –CRPD: the 2012 ICT Accessibility Progress Report • Important notes[1][3]: • 2) In general, the major obstacle to deploy accessible ICT products and services standards is the severe lack of awareness and expertise about disability and accessibility in civil society and among information technology professionals and web producers: according to this report 80.4 percent of States Parties do not have mandatory training programs (at universities, vocational schools, etc.) for future professionals about digital accessibility with disabilities.

5. 1. G3ict –CRPD: the 2012 ICT Accessibility Progress Report • Important notes[1][3]: • 3) Critical to the proper deployment of AT are the training and support of users and the maintenance of technology. Without proper support resources, the deployment of AT and their effective adoption by persons with disabilities can only fail. • Helping the development of an adequate national AT ‘eco-system’, including skilled professionals, is an important objective for States Parties to the CRPD. This requires inter-ministerial agency coordination and cooperation with the private sector and education institutions since, AT are primarily deployed in the context of education, the workplace and rehabilitation service.

6. 1. G3ict –CRPD: the 2012 ICT Accessibility Progress Report • Important notes[1][3]: • 4) Even when mobile accessible technologies is available and applications for persons with disabilities are inexpensive or free, they are not necessarily reaching persons with disabilities. Often policy cannot keep pace with the emerging technologies • 5) Governments should ensure that accessible contents and services and AT are made available to students with disabilities throughout their education system. • Such model policy should include procurement criteria based upon standards including but not limited to the DAISY/ePUB3 and W3c-WAI guidelines as an incentive for publishers, information services, web services and hardware vendors to develop accessible education tools and contents

7. 1. G3ict –CRPD: the 2012 ICT Accessibility Progress Report • Important notes [2] • 6) National policies for ICT in Education exist in all European countries and usually cover the complete learning process • There is no great disparity between school in availability of ICT equipment but there is a lack of educational software and support staff • ICT is widely promoted by central authorities as a tool for teaching and learning but large implementation gaps remain

8. 2. Accessible Academic Life @ Politecnico di Milano • MultiChancePoliTeam • Politecnico di Milano: a university for Engineers, Architects and Designers (200 students with sensorial, physical, and psychiatric disabilities, 70 students with dyslexia) • Three main ideas: • We encourage everybody to use a personalized ‘object’ • We make ‘accessible’ a specialized team of experts • We adopt a multi-stakeholder approach based upon co-operation and information exchange • We encourage strict relationships with Research & Development for policy design, implementation and evaluation • Compliance to policy is systematically monitored

9. 2. Accessible Academic Life @ Politecnico di Milano • At Politecnico di Milano: MultiChancePoliTeam is the group of specialists which guarantees services to students with disabilities (www.polimi.it/disabilita) • A psycho-educational counseling  Personalized policies with the student who is always the main protagonist of his/her strategies. Self defined ICF* profiles • University attendance support (admission test, tutoring, personalized examinations, accessibility to the campus, administrative, accommodation and studying supports) • Teaching aids: conditions specifically suited to maximize the benefit of classroom and laboratory work by means of personalized and innovative technological teaching aids (Multimodality Techniques and transformations: Text To Speech & Automatic Speech Recognition technologies)

10. 2. Accessible Academic Life @ Politecnico di Milano • The MultiChancePoliTeam guarantees services to the students with disability: • Technological aids (HW and SW solutions for personal needs) / Research and Development • The Wireless Campus allows a personalized fruition of classrooms and laboratory activities, Internet and local services. (Special Projects: UbiCampus, PoliNotes, PoliLips, PoliEdit, …) • Accessible material (DAISY/ePUB – open PDF, …) • At a national governmental level we are trying to face the Intellectual Property Rights problem • Distance Learning (only when strictly needed) • International mobility / distance and emergency support • Placement and employment policies for a personalized Professional Style

11. Conclusions • The ‘ecosystem’ of production and consumption of material which need to be accessible • Production of information • Authoring • Distribution • Ease of information being found by consumer • Rendering system • Consume and consumption of produced information • Accessibility is vital in every step of this cycle of information production and consumption

12. Conclusions • Availability, interoperability, affordability and awareness of accessible ICT solutions is vital in every step of this cycle of information production and consumption[1][3]. • To achieve this, all policy efforts must continue to take an open and holistic approach across all policy sectors with the active participation of all stakeholders involved[1][3].

13. PUBLICATIONS SPONSORS CO-HOSTS Thank You! www.g3ict.org licia.sbattella@polimi.it +39 3348109755

14. References • [1] 2012 G3ict CRPD Accessibility Progress Report (second edition) • [2] 2011 Eurydice Report Key Data on Learning and Innovation through ICT • [3] (DRAFT) G3ict, UNESCO, Microsoft: Model Policy on Accessible ICTs in Education