National Policy on ICT in School Education

National Policy on ICT in Education India

Articulate a progressive vision, objectives, guidelines and promising directions for building the ICT in Education Policy Framework

Vision
At a national policy level, ICT in education should consider people with disabilities. This population is generally ignored. ICT is an enabler in the case of people with disabilities. It can make a large impact and can help by breaking the barriers and letting people get educated irrespective of their disability.

For example, a learner who can’t hear can read the transcript, or a learner who can’t see can listen to the text on the screen.

All the policies should be formulated keeping this population in mind. All guidelines and standards should be created ensuring that the learning in inclusive and provides assistance to persons with disabilities.

Our vision is that the persons with disabilities would no longer be dependent on society but would be a contributing part of society.

Objectives

The objectives of the national policy should include assistance and education of the persons with disabilities. This should be measured to ensure that the implementation can be documented.

Guidelines

In the case of ICT in Education, there are numerous guidelines that can help from different spheres.
1. ICT Infrastructure – The infrastructure in the school should be accessible to learners with disabilities. There should be an assistive technology lab so that the learners have access to the aids that they need such as screen readers, learning disability aids such as word prediction software, adaptable keyboards and joysticks. Every district should have an assistive technology lab.

2. Content Management Systems & Learning Management Systems – These should be in accordance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by the World Wide Web consortium. Before the National policy adopts any technology, it should be tested for its accessibility and only then procured.

3. Content & Courseware development – The courseware being developed should look at the needs of the persons with disabilities. If this is taken care at the design stage, and in the framework of the learning, it is cost effective and will have a long term impact on the learning. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by the World Wide Web consortium should be followed for the development. In addition, this is not restricted to only HTML but even the flash content should be made accessible for the persons with disabilities. The National policy can also draft guidelines and specifications that must be adhered to, so that standards are maintained.

4. Testing Facilities: The same should be made accessible to the persons with disabilities. Strategies should be developed keeping in mind the disabilities that can then be adopted in the testing aids.

5. Teachers training: Teachers should be exposed to the techniques of teaching students with disabilities ICT. Teachers should be given training on the different methodologies and a handbook for the same should be created to show them direction on how to handle the situations and support the learner.

The guidelines for all of this needs to set at the National Policy, so that this can be adopted and an equal opportunity for education can be provided for people with disabilities

Contributing Member

Ms. Shilpi Kedia is the Managing Director of Barrierbreak technologies and founded the first company in India providing services in the area of web accessibility and design. We have been working in the area of creating e-learning that is accessible.

She setup the first ever computer training centre in Mumbai in 1997 and has written a training manual to teach computers to the visually impaired.