Conference & Workshop on Assistive Technologies for People with Vision & Hearing Impairments Assistive Technology for All Ages CVHI 2007, M.A. Hersh (ed.) TOWARDS A METHODOLOGY FOR EDUCATING STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Paloma Cantón 2 , Ángel Lucas González 1 , Gonzalo Mariscal 3 , Carlos Ruiz 3 1 Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Campus de Montegancedo, s/n. Boadilla del Monte - 28660, Madrid – Spain Phone: +34 91 336 74 11 – Ext. 18. Fax: +34 91 352 63 88, Email: agonzalez@fi.upm.es 2 Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid, Email: pcanton@educa.madrid.org 3 SETIAM – CETTICO, Fundación General UPM, Email: {gmariscal, cruiz}@cettico.fi.upm.es Abstract: Educating people with special educational needs (SEN) is a hot topic these days. Many multimedia educational tools have been generated with the support of ICT to assist children receiving SEN education. Teaching supported by new technologies should guarantee contents accessibility. However, these tools are not 100% suitable because the adaptation process they implement does not take into account all pupils’ educational needs. In this article, we argue that SEN teaching can be improved with a) better curriculum adaptations, and b) a better definition and use of accessible multimedia tools. We also think that it would be interesting to use semi-automatic tools to help educators to create or select adapted programmes of study for pupils with SEN. We present a framework to support teachers and multimedia educational tools developers in educating SEN pupils and its application to Proyecto Aprender (Learn Project). Keywords: E-learning, web accessibility, software accessibility, education. 1. Introduction Teaching pupils with SEN is a complex task. It involves implementing a teaching process and providing access to materials suited to pupils’ skills. This depends on each individual’s educational needs. For each pupil, this entails establishing a special-purpose and individualized programme of competencies selected from the standard curriculum. This is called “curriculum adaptation”. Additionally, pupils need to be given tools and materials adapted to their needs. Curriculum adaptation does not focus exclusively on learning objectives and contents. It also sets out all the access alterations required for curriculum development, like the environmental, material and personal conditions that improve the teaching process. We refer to such alterations (environment accessibility, materials, methodology, assessment, etc.) as “accessibility measures”, and they also need to be considered as part of the teaching/learning process for amendment. Additionally, remember that this adapted curriculum is sometimes far removed from the standard curriculum. It is a statement of the minimum abilities and skills that a pupil should/can acquire, with the necessary assistance, to be able to lead an autonomous life. Curriculum adaptation, and consequently the education of people with SEN, clearly involves many elements from the physical and social context. The integration of this context information would give educators of SEN pupils a reference for designing curriculum adaptations and provide intelligent systems with a source of reasoning, explanation and decision making for curriculum design. These ideas have led to partial solutions in this field like (Alonso et al., 2001), (Cantón et al., 2006). Digital media are a very useful tool for teachers to exploit in the classroom to educate SEN pupils. They offer multiple representations and manners of interacting with the content. However, there are few tools today that take into account all the factors involved in curriculum adaptation. Therefore,