Projects

Technology Assisted Inclusive Education

Background

Global Recognition of importance of Inclusive Education for people with Disabilities: Education in general and Inclusive education in particular has long been declared as one of the basic human right declarations. The UN Convention Article 24 the Rights of Persons with Disabilities( UNCRPD, 2006), and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2015) Goal 4 call for countries to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ with emphasizes inclusive education for people with disabilities. UNESCO (1994; cited in Tefera 2005) underscores that ’Inclusive education as ethically acceptable, psycho-socially sound, pedagogically commendable and cost effective. In line with this, the Ethiopian government and its Ministry of Education have also incorporated in the constitution and the educational strategic plan the rights of people with disabilities to have special and inclusive education.

Challenges: Despite the fact that there are positive initiatives towards inclusive education, at global and national levels, access to education for people with disabilities is still lagging behind. One of the impediments to inclusive education are critical shortage of equitable access to education in general and quality learning materials in particular. These problems are more severe in schools in rural areas. Moreover, those who suffer at most are female students with disabilities, due to prevailing cultural stigmatization and economic burdens. In a nut shell, today Ethiopia education at all levels suffers from quality resources.

The Scene in Ethiopian Rural High Schools: Reports show that the number of the dropout rate of visually impaired high school students (i.e. from grade 9 to 12) in rural areas of Ethiopia, particularly female students is alarming. One of the most serve factors that contribute to dropout is access to quality and equitable educational materials, such as textbooks, references and reading materials which to suit individual needs. It is also hardly possible to find quality learning and reading materials for visually impaired students, such as Brail and audio books in school libraries or bookshops.

Non-inclusiveness access to Educational Materials: As a result, visually impaired students depend merely on colleagues or paid readers. This is not only mostly unaffordable, but also exposes female visually impaired students to Sexual Harassment. In short, visually impaired female secondary students are facing multiple problems and various life challenges, due to the complex socio-economic factors, which results in higher rate of dropout. The overall vicious problems lie on the non-inclusiveness of the education system, i.e. one form of exclusion of citizens from equal access to education.

Proposed Solutions: To tackle this sever problem Bridge Resource Delivery Gap in Education (BRDGE), a registered charitable association has started digitization of textbooks and additional reading materials and reference books for Ethiopian high schools. BRDGE provided a ‘one stop shopping’ integrated educational resources system, interactive, individualized self-paced reflective learning environment, flexibly accessible (offline-on campus, online) content and learning management system, school curriculum and digital educational resources integrated into tablets and mobile devices. Hence, the digital audio resources BRDGE developed, can assist female visually impaired high school students in rural areas, and at large, schools to boast quality educational resources and diversify access to education.

We have successfully piloted and implemented our Speed School initiative in two schools in Semen Gonder, specifically Dabat and Debark high schools. These schools were selected because they have a higher number of visually impaired female students. The pilot test, conducted with funding from the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), yielded remarkable results for the students and the school communities. While initially implemented for female students in grades 9 and 10, this solution can be adapted for use by all students, regardless of gender, in schools nationwide.