New Modalities to Increase the Accessibility of Students with Visually Impaired to Education Using ICT

Abstract

Educational, vocational, and social inclusion is one of the fundamental principles that ensure people with disabilities a chance to have as a normal life as possible. In turn, accessibility is one of the most important components of inclusion and could be defined as the right of people with disabilities to benefit of the same products and services as all other community members. According to government data from 2015, in Romania 752 931 were people with disabilities, 60 289 were children and 13.9% had various forms of visual impairment. For these people, any limitation in accessibility means isolation and discrimination. On the other hand, education and new technologies can increase the accessibility of people with visual impairment to quality products and services in society. Therefore, the purpose of this research was the identification of attitude and training level of teachers in the educational process accessibility for students with visual impairment using ICT. The sample consisted of 210 professors who teach in pre-academic learning system in Bihor, Romania and research tool - a questionnaire composed of 76 multiple choice items – it was administered online by the end of 2016. The results of the research show that, even if they want to support inclusion of people with visual impairment using ICT in teaching/learning, most teachers do not have professional skills in that field and do not know how to use educational software or to adapt a scholar curriculum for this category of students.

Keywords: accessibility; educational inclusion; new Technology;