Access to people with inatellectual disabiliities to the Information Society
No gap 2.0 arises from the BIT Project, project created in 1999 by the Orange Foundation, Carlos III University of adrid and Down Syndrome Foundation of Madrid. The objective of this project is to open new ways for the social integration, education and labor of people with Down's syndrome and/or intellectual disabilities through the use of information and communications technology. It is a Project I+D+i of technological an educational character.
Although there are legal regulations, both at Europrean level and at Spanish level, concerning to guarantee the access to people with disability to the differente environments, buildings, transport, etc,; it is also true that in many cases it does not solve the difficultuies that people with disability find every day. This consideration is even bigger, being the access to information.
While in other disabiliteis ther are adaptations and/or physical aids to ther technological environment, in the case of IDPs does not occur the samen. The access barriers that the technological environment presents to peopole with intellectual disability can be overcome thanks to the training systems and developments that guarantee the cognitive accesibility. In this way, they are learned attention problems, comprehension or navigation by the interface among others.
On the other hand it is evident that young people with disability, digital natives, must use ther own technological tools of the information society. And this is indispensable so do not beconme in "info-excluded".
For these reasons Down Madrid, through theri Project ICT "No gap 2.0" develops differents lines of action directed to facilitate the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in the digital society.
To overcome the digital gap that the information and communications technology presents to IDPs, from this Project we propose 3 objectives:
1. Train in ICT people with intellectual disability, professional and family
1.1. Create innovate spaces to develop the teaching activity.
1.2. Create technological classrooms
1.3. Develop a methodology of teaching-learning of specific ICT for people with intellectual disability.
1.4. Develop a technological competencies work of people with intellectual disability
1.5. Develop competencies of collaborative work trhrough ICT
1.6. Train other professionals on the use of technological tools 3.0
1.7. Sensitize families on the use of technological tools from an early age
2. Develpment of accesible tools for people with intellectual disability
3. Investigation
In the following lines, I will detail the number os total beneficiaries:
-Technological classroom Pio XII: 17 students
-Technological classroom 3 Olivos: 117 students
-The Lighted House classroom: 26 students
-Reddo classroom: 8 students
-Ocupational Center: 35 students
- Special education school Mª Isabel Zulueta: 105 students
- Special education school Carmen Fernández-Miranda 60 students
Total students: 368 students/month
People with intellectual disability are part of the actual society and the makes them in full rights cyber-citizens. Is our obligation, as an institution, develop all that activities that are precise to reach that they do not get locked out of this society in which they were born. For that, we must listen to them and make them participate of their information, of the designs and developments. It is indispensable, the forming part of the work team.