Today, December 3, is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, declared by the United Nations in 1992 to fight against all forms of discrimination.
"The global Covid-19 crisis is making existing inequalities even worse. Individuals with disabilities (ca. one billion around the world), explains the United Nations, are one of the most excluded groups in society, and one of the most hard hit by the current crisis in terms of victims. We need an integrated approach to guarantee that individuals with disabilities are not left behind.”
What is happening to school during the health emergency? According to the forecasts made by Tuttoscuola, 117,000 students out of 269,000 with disabilities are currently attending school through distance learning courses. Since the last policy measures were announced, 74,000 support teachers are also operating remotely to help students with disabilities, unless they are amongst the few still attending physical classes.
"December 3 must remind us of the importance of every individual and that we need to remove the barriers that limit fundamental rights, such as access to health, education and work opportunities, by ramping up essential services and information sources. We must eliminate the obstacles that people with disabilities have to face daily,” writes Education Minister Lucia Azzolina in a note published for the event.
What can we do at the Fondazione Mondo Digitale? Until 2013, FMD has a specific area entitled “ICT for Students with Special Needs” that led to the development of a wide range of projects: Auxilia, Punto Acca, e-Care, Building Wings, Robotics Against Isolation. Then, with the reorganisation of our areas of activity (see Management Report 2013), our attention to special needs was integrated into all of our projects. We gathered a vast range of good practices developed by schools through the Global Junior Challenge International Competition and projects like eSkills4Change or Ambizione Italia for Schools, which promote the inclusive use of technology.
Research on custom-tailored learning for individuals with special needs and/or disabilities also continues at the Phyrtual Innovation Gym (Creative Aides), through Projects DisAbuse, Ideal, Mathisis and Mlearn, at the Euroepan level, and with the RomeCup. Diversity is the central issue of Project Google CS First and its creative contest [see news: CS First Becomes a Challenge].
And today, we would like to share this contribution by Prof. Caterina Coluzzi entitled “Diversity is Richness.”
