C. Stephanidis and M. Antona (Eds.): UAHCI/HCII 2013, Part III, LNCS 8011, pp. 231–240, 2013. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Addressing Learning Disabilities in Ambient Intelligence Educational Environments Stavroula Ntoa 1 , Margherita Antona 1 , George Margetis 1 , and Constantine Stephanidis 1,2 1 Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) - Institute of Computer Science N. Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, 700 13 Heraklion, Crete, Greece 2 University of Crete, Department of Computer Science {stant,antona,gmarget,cs}@ics.forth.gr Abstract. Learning disabilities (LD) affect not only an individual’s academic skills, but also many aspects of life for a large population percentage. As a re- sult, understanding individuals with learning disabilities and addressing their needs is an active topic of research, although it has been studied for several years. On the other hand, Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is an emerging field of research. AmI environments are claimed to be among other things sensitive, caring and adaptive to their inhabitants. In the context of education, AmI can adopt a student-centric approach and support the education activities that are taking place adapting to the individual learner’s needs. This paper proposes an approach for AmI educational environments to assist in identifying, monitoring, and providing adapted instruction to students with LDs. Keywords: learning disabilities, ambient intelligence, smart classroom. 1 Introduction Learning disabilities (LDs) are gaining increased interest during the last decades, as they affect a large population percentage. According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services [1], in 2010 almost 5 million children aged 3-17 had a learning disability (8%). Furthermore, learning disabilities constitute the most common disa- bility among 3- to 21-year-olds served under the Individuals with Disabilities Educa- tion Act (IDEA) [2]. LD is a lifelong disorder that affects individual’s academic skills and can impede learning to read, write, or compute. As a result, LD affects many parts of a person's life, such as school or work, daily routines, family life, and social contexts. For in- stance, according to a study carried out by the U.S. National Center for Learning Dis- abilities [3], students with LD go on to postsecondary education at a much lower rate than their nondisabled peers, and of those who do, few seek support in college and few earn undergraduate or advanced degrees. According to the same study, while more than two-thirds (69%) of students with LD had a transition goal of obtaining competitive employment after high school, only 46% had regular paid employment when surveyed within two years of leaving school. However, with appropriate support