ICT in special education needs: Europe vs USA

1. Introduction

The Information Society opens up new possibilities and new challenges to social inclusion of disabled people. In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and Director of W3C: "The power of the Web lies in its universality. Access of all people regardless of disability it is an essential aspect.".

Over the last few years it has shown the potential of information and communications technology (ICT) to eliminate related to mobility and geographic distance, facilitating access to Information Society barriers. Aware of this situation, have prompted the European authorities, in the framework of the e-Europe 2005 strategy, initiatives such as the eAccessibility action plan and horizontal e-inclusion, which includes actions in the social, regional and technology.

2. Disability and the digital gap.

The participation of disabled people in the Information Society is quite low when compared with the figures of penetration in the rest of the population. So, approximately a 33% of the European disabled uses a computer regularly against just under 60 percent for the rest of the population (figure 1). The gap between the two groups is attenuated by the use of the Internet and that 29 percent of Europeans regular user is declared disabled compared with 50 percent among non-disabled; and further reducing the availability of access to the Internet from home, 32 percent versus 46 percent.

If these figures with those of the United States a higher penetration rates among Americans with disabilities are observed are compared.

In analyzing the situation for countries in the field of the future Europe of 25, a positive correlation between Internet penetration rates of disabled and non-disabled observed, showing that the higher Internet penetration among the non-disabled population it is also higher among the disabled.

Thus, in Sweden and Denmark Internet penetration in the group of the disabled than 50 percent (figure 2). This is because these are two of the most advanced not only in the area of the European Union but also worldwide digital societies. However is not the case with Finland, which although it is normally placed as the first European country, and even as the first in the world in terms of Internet penetration, with rates exceeding 70 percent, this situation is not remains in the field of the disabled, for which no penetration rate in 2002 reached 30 percent, that is, less than half the rate of non-disabled.

In the case of Spain, the figures available show a very low participation of this group with only 12 percent penetration rate, a matching level with some of the enlargement countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia. While lower levels of penetration corresponding to the enlargement countries, Portugal and Greece are also in the lower part of the distribution, which means that the group of disabled is largely being excluded in these countries the development of the Information Society.

3. Graphics:

If the above two graphs are compared it is seen that, in general, the perceived importance for companies in terms of accessibility for the physically disabled is similar to that corresponding to the visually impaired, although there are some countries such as Greece and France with a higher percentage of companies considered high priority accessibility for the disabled.

However it should be noted that among the companies that exhibit a high or medium priority, only 10 per cent in all the seven countries studied have adopted some formal guidelines issued for accessibility (Figure 7). Spain is slightly above the average of the seven countries with 11 percent of companies adhering to the standards.

Despite the pessimism of previous results can envision certain positive aspects, such as the fact that around 40 percent of European companies for which the availability is not a priority state that they could adapt their websites without much difficulty (Figure 8). In Spain this figure is 45 percent, while 28 percent say they would be difficult and only 2 percent said it would be impossible. (Figure 7).

4. Formative and employment strategies.

4.1. Formation

The central role of education to move towards the Information Society is clearly reflected in the Action Plan e-Europe and EU action in your specific e-Learning, which refers explicitly to the need to reduce disparities and inequalities individuals or groups, that is, the digital divide.  According to information from Eurydice (2001), in the European Union there are 84 million students - about 22 percent of the school-aged population requiring some form of special education well in ordinary classrooms, special classrooms or in specific institutions.

Nowadays, educational provision for pupils with special needs varies across Europe according to different educational policies, but it is common in all the 13 consideration of the individual educational needs of each student as an important element of guarantee quality of life. In this context ICT is configured as a valuable tool because the role can play in the development of flexible and individualized education, while facilitating increased autonomy and improved social integration and interpersonal communication students with special educational needs.

Thus, according to the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2003) ICT can be used with a wide variety of functions in special education, among which we can highlight its use as a teaching tool, learning tool, learning environment , communication tool, therapeutic help, diagnostic aid and even as a tool for administrative tasks. Aware of such functions, EU countries have implemented policies in recent years aimed at the application of ICT in special education.

5.Conclusion

In this work we have undertaken an analysis of the situation of disabled people in the Information Society. In terms of access and use of ICT it shows that penetration levels in this group are much lower than the rest of the population. But the digital divide on grounds of disability is less than those due to education or income, among others. In terms of accessibility, while the Public Administrations have adopted the established guidelines, the involvement of business is for the moment quite low. On the other hand, policies for the application of ICT in special education were initially oriented infrastructures, beginning now to intensify the aspects related to the use and exploitation of the possibilities of e learning to erase barriers due to problems of mobility and facilitate access to information and knowledge. Finally in the area of employment, ICT is seen as a valuable tool for the employment of disabled people who start from a very low participation in the labor market. In this sense we can highlight the initiatives in creating virtual meeting places between buyers and sellers of employment.