With a view to ensuring accessible e-content amid the pandemic, the education ministry has released guidelines for development of e-content for children with special needs.
“The Indian education system had to make a shift to online learning at very short notice due to Covid-19.
While many students faced challenges in making this transition due to lack of familiarity with the mode, inadequate access to high quality internet access and the teachers’ limited experience in teaching online, students with disabilities faced special problems of their own.
The guidelines by the government is a welcome move as it will take into account all the disabilities listed in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act,” says Rishikesha T Krishnan, director, IIM Bangalore, who is also a part of the advisory board of AssisTech Foundation, an assistive technology focussed ecosystem to promote disability technology startups.
Compliance is essential “Millions of special needs children with benchmark and identified disabilities and borderline and unidentified disabilities have scope for benefiting from these guidelines, provided schools and the Boards comply to them,” says Himangshu Das, director, National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities (NIEPVD), (Dehradun).
The process of e-content development is very long and continued efforts of the ministry and various departments and institutes who have been working on this is a must.
All the National Institutes of Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) are actively engaged in the process of resource development, however, a strong collaborative effort of NCERT and SCERT and national institutes will speed up the process,” says Das.
Congratulations!You have successfully cast your voteLogin to view resultThe guidelines have stated that the e-content including text, tables, diagrams, visuals, audios, videos etc should comply with national and international accessibility standards.
Learners differ in the ways they perceive or comprehend information, and may require different ways of approaching content.
It is essential that the content comply to accessibility standards to help establish uniformity across various digital platforms, Das says.
“International technical standards and guidelines like WCAG for web content accessibility; ePub for digital publishing; DAISY for accessible educational materials; Unicode for written characters and text; and Indian standards like GIGW guidelines for government websites etc all provide a criteria that can be used as guidelines for ensuring accessibility of content, products, processes etc being developed,” Das adds.
The ministry’s guidelines also state that the distribution platforms on which content are uploaded (such as DIKSHA) and reading platforms/devices on which content is accessed (such as e-pathshala) must comply with technical standards.
‘DIKSHA and e-pathshala while promoting e-learning and accessibility for persons with special needs, need constant updation and upgradation through skilled workforce and social audits.
Every disability in relation to its severity and secondary conditions will need pedagogical adaptations for each subject and level of education; which is a complex and dynamic process,” Das says.
“Most of these learning platforms need to be popularised to sensitise parents who can access them.
More importantly, we need to create digital learning resources in regional languages as well to widen their reach across a wider cross-section,” says Hemlata, director, National Centre for Disability Studies, IGNOU.
E-content for the specially abled children was available even before the pandemic, but in the current crisis, it has become all the more relevant, says Anuradha Bagchi, director (Education), Helen Keller Institute for Deaf & Deafblind, Mumbai, that has been guiding parents on different modalities and hand-holding of their children.
The School has been conducting simulation sessions with blind folds and ear plugs for the parents to maximise the e-learning outcomes of their children.
Emphasising that children with special needs have been feeling lost without a routine, Bagchi says that feelings of boredom and frustration, fear of exploration of both persons and objects are all too common now.
Lack of resources and infrastructure Digital resources may be an enabler of children’s education across the spectrum, but in India, where 69% of the population reside in the rural sector, dissemination of knowledge through e-content can be a huge challenge,” says Hemlata.
Learning interventions, according to her, need to be customised to suit the learning styles, pace and needs of each learner.
“If the child is visually challenged, we need to have more descriptive and verbal content, while those with hearing impairment would need more visual content,” she adds.
In the rural sector, the less privileged children do not have a conducive learning environment.
“Many of our institute’s students attend e-classes sitting in their kitchens with the sound of pots and pans disrupting their lessons,” says B Elangovan, principal, JSS Polytechnic for the Differently Abled, Mysuru.
He stresses at the need for creating Learning Management Systems (LMS) exclusively for the specially abled, and better equipped teachers.
“The lack of proper digital resources has led to complacency among students who believe they can get away without attending the evaluation sessions.
The brighter among the lot are struggling with communication issues as the scope for doubt-clearing is limited in online classes.”
E-books in multiple formats
The guidelines mention adapting textbooks into accessible digital textbooks (ADTs) in multiple formats (text, audio, video, sign language etc) with turn-on and turn-off features with flexibility to CwDs to respond to its content/exercises in multiple ways, Elangovan says its implementation will take time specially since many of the institutes offering free education suffer from funds crunch.
“Government support for such digital aids can help bridge the gap.” ADTS for single disability children are still available, but a lot of work needs to be done for students with multiple disabilities including deafblindness, says Bagchi.
Students with disabilities have a right to receive information in a way they understand.
“The content must be presented in a manner that students with all types of disabilities are able to comprehend, process and respond to appropriately,” Das adds.
