Good Practice Catalogue

This is a study that was conducted under the auspices of the National University of Ireland Galway. The purpose of this pilot that was published in 2021 in an academic journal, was to evaluate the effectiveness of the E-IDEAS curriculum. This curriculum was specifically designed for workplace inclusion of young persons with intellectual disabilities. The pilot aimed for the transfer of social, communication, independent living and employment skills and it was attended by five participants who were supported in five different work-placements. The duration of the study was a total of four months. The work-placements took place across a period of three months out of the total four months of the pilot. The training in the use of tablets for the educational platform AVAIL had a frequency of two hours, for two days per week. This training took place during the classroom activities at the training center and during the participants’ work-placement, with the support of job coaches. The participants were supported for a total of 96 hours.

This project was implemented in 2021, with the collaboration of the regional Center for Support of the Inclusive Education Process in Sofia, the ministry of Education and Science and UNICEF. "Support Me" provides video learning materials and resources for children with special educational needs, developed by specialists and teachers. They are located in the Resources section of the platform and are structured in two sections - educational and therapeutic resources, some of which are publicly available, and others, which are more specialized, require a request from the parent. All resources in the platform are free for use.

In 2021, the organisation Leib&Söl Styria launched this project, aiming at the development of technology-supported learning games that are intended to the improvement of digitization skills of persons with disabilities. Special learning training and support offered in day-care centers are being developed for practical use. The aim of the project is to increase the opportunities for equal participation in society.

SMART created in 2020 a platform for digital learning, which includes: games, quizzes, questions and answers and evaluation of progress. The online lessons can be self-made.

Since May 2019, there have been education and inclusion experts at the TUD. At the beginning, they were called education specialists, but they have changed their name. QuaBIS means "Qualification of Education and Inclusion Officers in Saxony" and is an acronym in German. In the QuaBIS project, people with experience of disability work from Monday to Friday. They do a kind of training at the TUD and learn how to combine their knowledge with topics that are important, for example, for teacher education. They learn and work at the same time. The project also exists in Leipzig. What is special about this project is that it is part of the university, where member parts of committees do research and design their own seminars. In this way, they influence knowledge and help the TUD to implement the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Escola Profissional Amar Terra Verde provided to their students’ digital content through digital platforms. They also provided teacher training and worked for the creation of guiding principles for the organization of the new teaching modality (remote). Their priority was to ensure that all students, with special focus on students with disabilities were in permanent contact with their teachers in order to continue their learning process and avoid dropout. Their first move was a detailed inquiry of these cases, which was conducted through a telephone survey. In this first contact, the recordings concerned the conditions of internet access and the existence, or lack thereof, of technological means that the students had at their disposal to attend remote classes. Solutions were found for 27 students, six of whom did not have any computer equipment at home and no Internet access, and four of whom lived in places without access to landline or mobile Internet. Computers or tablets with mobile internet access were lent or offered to them. For the cases of students who lived in areas without access to any kind of network, the solution was to make available/deliver to their homes, personally or by mail, all the study materials in a printed format. This work was conducted in a personalized and differentiated way, articulating it with all the elements of the Pedagogical Team. Contact was made regularly during the week, in which small study manuals were delivered (by mail or personally at their homes), with a compilation of the tasks and learning activities to be conducted. During this personal and permanent contact, the students received feedback on the tasks completed in the previous week and were oriented and clarified about the tasks and learning activities they had to develop during the following week. In a second phase, the priority was no longer “to develop the cognitive skills of acquisition and understanding of these students, through oral, reading, writing and logical-abstract reasoning training.” The issues were the constant and permanent supervision and clarification of doubts that arose in the performance of learning tasks, through video calls, phone calls and the TEAMS platform.

Kahoot! (2019) is a global learning platform company that wants to empower everyone, including children, students, and employees, to unlock their full learning potential and thus offers digital learning solutions.

JAMBA is a job-searching platform, which was launched in Bulgaria in 2018, developed by JAMBA nonprofit organisation, persons with disabilities and employers. The platform provides access to education, skills acquisition, and career start for people with various levels of abilities. Also, the platform addresses accessibility and inclusive education issues by offering online courses and training targeted to the attainment of professional or technical skills in various fields. The platform focuses on development of soft skills, as well as preparation for job interviews and practices of successful methods for integration in the workplace. Jamba supports persons with disabilities in their attainment of key skills and competencies in different professional fields, through trainings and internships. As a next step, the organization assists with their inclusion in the job market and even in their career advancement. The JAMBA site is accessible for people with vision impairment through software that includes text to speech functionality, is dyslexia friendly, includes interactive vocabulary and has translation functionality.

The Italian organization Piazza dei Mestieri supports young persons in their training for an occupation and their search for a job placement that fulfils their aspirations. The aim of the specific project that was implemented during the school year 2020-2021 was to foster digital competences in order to guarantee and improve the inclusion of vulnerable students, especially migrants and students with disabilities. The project foresaw different activities: 1) Teachers' training with the aim of encouraging the exchange of knowledge and experience on new models of educational intervention, in order to allow the replication and development of the project. 2) Students' training aimed at developing computational thinking and knowledge of digital tools and social media for teaching purposes. 3) Digital education and infopoints for families. The project gave the opportunity to families who do not have the possibility to borrow digital instruments.

In 2018, the Union of the Deaf in Bulgaria, the University of Social Sciences in Poland, the Polish Association of the Deaf Lodz Department, the Public Institution Valakupiai Rehabilitation Centre (VRC) in Lithuania, the National and Speech Institute of Iceland and the University of Iceland, created a platform that works as an online learning environment for a practice-oriented learning course. The platform aims at providing integrated support tailored to the needs and specificities of people with hearing impairments, through the development of innovative training tools and materials, so as to increase their motivation and self-awareness, and create incentives for their acquiring of new soft skills necessary for efficient job search and employment performance.