Programs
in
Assistive Technology Education
for End-Users in Europe
A provider of health and social services mainly involved in education/training, information/advice, production/sale of products and public awareness raising. Educational activities, which began less than 5 years ago, include the issues of independent living, coping better with disability and AT, and are exclusively addressed to persons with disabilities.
The educational activities carried out over the past 5 years can be classified as follows:
AT plays a very important role in all these activities, which concentrate on communication and reading/writing.
Compared to the training courses described elsewhere, those listed
by this organisation have a special form in that they are defined
as "individual lessons", and are described as follows.
| ||||||
| Leçons individuelles
(Individual lessons in informatics) | n/r train. c. | persons with dis. | ||||
| Leçons individuelles
(Individual lessons in informatics) | n/r train. c. | persons with dis. |
Selection
The initiative was publicised through leaflets and by word of mouth, both of which proved to be effective methods; leaflets were distributed only to the social services in each municipality. Participants were chosen on the basis of their visual impairment (the only impairment type considered) and their personal interests. Teachers were selected within the organisation itself, but also according to their level of expertise; no preference for teachers with disability was expressed.
Organisation
The organisation set up a special space on its premises to develop these activities, and special attention was paid. to the general comfort level. Personal assistance was offered when needed, and each person was required to make an appointment for his/her lessons, paying a token participation fee of FF 250 for 16 hours. No particular teacher co-ordination was organised, since each teacher planned his/her own lesson individually on the basis of general guidelines; a teachers' secretariat was also set up.
Implementation
The sole method used was "learning by doing", because the objective of the individual lessons was that the participant should learn to use a computer with word-processing software and memory aids; a single teacher was assigned to each participant.
Information on participants was collected through a presentation form, which was then used to update the organisationÕs statistics; feedback was gathered by collecting personal impressions, which here again were used to update the organisation's statistics, but also to readjust the contents and methods of the next edition of the same course.
Finally, follow-up was carried out by direct contact.
Further remarks
The changes the organisation has made over the past few years mainly concern the implementation phase of its lessons: on the one hand a special pedagogical process has been developed to establish how and how deeply to teach text treatment; on the other hand technological issues have been considered, involving a shift from DOS to the WINDOWS environment.
In the future, the organisation wants to increase the number of participants (and hence also of teachers, given that the personal relationship is considered), but also feels the need to increase its knowledge of the adopted pedagogical approach, in accordance with the experience it has acquired; papers and software materials related to this teaching experience are foreseen.