The issues of inclusiveness and accessibility have long been on the first page of our agendas. In our, albeit small but important, field of trainers we do not want to see salmon rise, but to develop a learning activity with the current in favor, tailored to human beings, engaging, available and easy for everyone.
Our studies for the development of these themes within the learning projects are constantly evolving, and have also been presented internationally by Claudia Falconio as part of the 14th Edition of eLM 2022, International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning - eLmL 2022, held in Porto, Portugal, from 26 to 30 June 2022, during the Special Track EUEHL: Earning User Engagement in Hybrid Adult Learning, in which the Product Demo “Engagement as Accessibility and Inclusion” was illustrated.
Let's take a cue from the demo presented at eLmL to reiterate the main guidelines for the development of inclusive and accessible training for all:
- Making a course accessible means exploiting all the potential of the new ones technologies to carry out a broader strategy of social inclusion through training;
- To include means to make it possible for anyone toaccesso to all information and resources that are important for daily life and for active social participation;
- The initial basis for inclusive development is the spread of content
Then there are some simple but important developments that can be specifically dedicated to the specific needs dictated by different types of disabilities.
Just to give some examples:
- implement automatic setting mechanisms for different types of disabilities,
- provide for each course a podcast version dedicated to the blind, enriching the audio text with appropriate evocative descriptions to replace the images,
- provide for the translation with sign language for each course (in Italy LIS), which in addition to the gesture translation includes the use of mimicry, imitation and facial expressiveness, dedicated to the use of the courses by people with hearing disabilities .
The path towards inclusive training is not trivial, but it is worthwhile to follow it with conviction.