Programs in
Assistive Technology Education
for End-Users in Europe

Name of the organisation
    INDEPENDENCE FIRST
    Assistive Technology First
Address
    600 W. Virginia St., Ste 301
    Milwaukee
    USA
    Telephone: +414 2917520
    Fax: +414 2917525
Key Person of the organisation
    Cindi Pichler, assistive technology co-ordinator

This is an organisation of persons with disabilities - a Centre for Independent Living - mainly involved in information/advice and pressure group activities. Training activities, which began 5-10 years ago, are also organised, addressed to persons with disabilities and to personal assistants. In these activities AT (especially computers) is strongly emphasised as a support for independent living and for coping better with disability.

The educational activities carried out over the past 5 years can be classified as follows:

  • training courses, exclusively in non-residential form, addressed to a target of end-users (persons with disabilities, families, the elderly) and professionals (rehabilitation and education);
  • seminars, in the form of monographic seminars;
  • information activities, in the form of conferences, exhibitions, exchange of experiences, addressed to the above-mentioned target and to technologists;
  • activities addressed to the individual, in all the possible forms;

The role played by AT in these initiatives differs according to their typology: it is very important in the activities addressed to the individual and in the information activities, but low to relevant in the courses and workshops. Similarly, the considered AT-related areas differ in the two cases: in the former, household activities, health maintenance, self-care, recreation, as well as communication, mobility, general accessibility issues, cognition, reading/writing and learning are covered. In the latter health maintenance, recreation, employment, mobility, communication and general accessibility issues are covered, while the monographic seminars concentrate exclusively on legislation issues.

TRAINING COURSES AND SEMINARS

Some educational activities have been listed, and these are outlined below.
Title of the initiative
Typology
Year
Duration

(in hrs.)
Number partic.
Target
Number teachers
PAS trainingnon-res. train. c.
1995
40
300
pers. ass.
3
Seminars for persons who are deaf & deaf-blind series of seminars
1997
3
118
 pers. with disab.
4

Selection

Posters and a newsletters were the main instruments for publicising the initiative; the newsletter was sent out to the organisation's database and to rehabilitation centres, as well as being handed out at congresses and exhibitions; the other approach used for publicity was word of mouth. No special criteria were adopted for selecting participants, while the teachers (selected with a preference for persons with disabilities) were chosen for their level of expertise.

Organisation

The educational activities took place both on the organisation's premises and in different place, found as needed and chosen on the basis of general comfort, overall accessibility, accessibility of bathrooms, and seating arrangements for participants. Course organisation included personal assistance when needed, coffee and lunch break, as well as welcome and farewell sessions. Participants were charged a token enrolment fee, which varies in amount. A co-ordinator was appointed for the whole process and preparatory meetings were also held to ensure a good level of teacher co-ordination for the whole activity.

Implementation

The initiatives were based on lectures supported by all the possible educational aids (overhead projection, slides, video, software for content presentation and handouts for the participants), and accompanied by group discussions and simulation sessions. Hands-on sessions were also organised, in which products were presented, demonstrated and experimented with. The main pedagogical focus was on participation, since interactivity and learning by doing are the key-words chosen by the compiler. Participants presented themselves on the opening day, and the information collected in this way is used to update the organisation's statistics and readjust contents on the basis of the real target. A co-ordinator was responsible for transmitting information between teachers during this phase. A final questionnaire was distributed for collecting feedback from the participants.