aclJohn's Inclusion Finds

Careers Wales has produced a great website for young people with a learning difficulties; called My Future it has information and games to help learners plan their future.

Content includes...

• What am I like?
  • What do I need to know about myself? - How does this help me? - Who else needs to know? - How can I tell them?
    
• Exploring options
  • Staying in school - Local College - Specialist College - Work - Work-based learning - Daytime opportunities - Volunteering - Job leaflet...

"Standards make the world accessible for all'.

The video embedded below -- which includes strong and interesting statements from many authoritative contributors -- was shown during the European Commission's World Standards Day 2010 'Accessibility for all' conference in Brussels on 14th October 2010.

"People have different needs and abilities", says BSI Film Producer Sofie Sandell. "In this video we want to give them a voice to make sure that their needs are heard and fulfilled...

The Equality Act 2010, now puts the onus on learning providers to take reasonable steps to ensure that their information is accessible.

The good news is - Create & Convert has been designed specifically to help learning providers comply with this Act.

Create & Convert...

• is a free tool;
• can convert digital documents, like MS Office, Open Office etc., into ePublications or talking books;
• is a suite of free software tools that learning providers can use to support learners who...
  ...

As you will all be aware, under the requirements of the Disability Equality Duty (DED) learning providers/public bodies such as universities and colleges are required to produce either a dedicated Disability Equality Scheme (DES) or a broader Single Equality Scheme (SES) covering all strands of equality.

These should...

• contain an Action Plan that is updated on an annual basis; and
• be reviewed every 3 years.
  

Two experts in accessibility...

• Glenda Watson Hyatt (who has cerebral palsy); and
  
• Lorelle VanFossen (who has traumatic brain injury)

They discuss specific steps website managers and bloggers can take to make their sites and blogs accessible, including adding simple things like alt tags, captions and underlined links...

Enhancing website accessibility from JD L...

Picto selector is a Word based programme for preparing schedules and other materials for...

• children ;and
• young people with autism.
  

Picto selector is available in a number of different languages by going to the home page of "PECS for All" at http://www.pecsforall.com/index.html.

SwitchMusic...

• is a scanning menu of "teen appropriate music videos";
• works with a switch set to "mouse click" with the cursor left over the image of a switch;
• is self-explanatory, go give it a try!

Note: sorry to those of you who block YouTube in your teaching environments as this will not work for you.

ITV's Signed Stories provides free videos featuring children's stories accompanied by subtitles and sign language.

All of the stories feature someone signing the story (in British Sign Language). In addition to sign language many of the stories also offer subtitles.

The videos on Signed Stories are organized into seven themes...

• Baby & Toddler;
• Adventure;
• Funny;
• Families & Friendships;
• Fairytales & Folktales;
• Open House; and
• Slimy Scary. 

With the exception of the Baby and Toddler section ...

do2learn is a website that provides special learning resources for individuals with disabilities.

The philosophy of "this website is dedicated to those individuals who see the world in different ways..." Software is available for purchase, but do2learn also offers several free learning games. Many of these free games work very well with an Interactive White Board (IWB)

Visit http://www.do2learn.com/games/learningames.htm to find out more and/or to try out the free games.

MyStudyBar is a comprehensive set of open source and freeware applications to support learners with literacy difficulties.

This short video clip provides an introductory overview of its main features (can also be watched at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8yBchrTRgQ)...

Although MyStudyBar is designed to work with Windows Vista and Windows 7, mainly because of the improved SAPI 5 voice (Anna) and of course the excellent Windows Speech Recognition, it will also run on Windows XP, but th...