How ICT play vital role for differently abled students

INTRODUCTION- Children with disabilities in India are often left out of mainstream schools due to a variety of reasons, primarily the lack of awareness amongst educational organizations and teachers, near absence of infrastructural resources and lack of training in this regard. It is believed that barely two per cent of the 70 million disabled persons have access to education in India. Unless we take special efforts to remedy this situation by equipping teachers, educational institutions and the entire social infrastructure to adopt innovative, cost effective and technology based resources such as assistive technologies, ubiquitous Web, multiple platforms, social networks, online libraries and digital resources etc to enable access to education for disabled children, they will continue to remain excluded from social participation.

Benefits for pupils and teachers- There are may benefits to using ICT to teach literacy. It allows the teacher to produce and modify resources quickly and easily. It allows access to a wide range of information in different formats. The pupils can engage directly with the area of literacy they are focusing on. Teachers can use different drafts to assess how work is progressing and what input is needed. Some software is able to assess the children's work and provide useful information. Using a large screen or overhead projector the teacher can focus the children's attention on different aspects of the text. The number of activities and resources is vast. Teachers need to be able to make judgements about when and why they should use ICT. It is not always appropriate. It should be only used if it allows the teacher or children to do something they would not otherwise have been able to do, or if it improves the teaching or learning. Recent guidelines indicate that ICT should be used to support learning in specific subjects as well as being a subject in its own right. This has implications for management of time and resources.

Benefits of E-Inclusion

A report by FreshMinds Research[1] into the Economic benefits of digital inclusion was published in May 2008 by UK Online Centres.[2] The report outlines three key benefits of digital inclusion:

   * Digital inclusion is capable of enhancing opportunity for both individuals and organisations.

ICT-assisted learning has been shown not only to stimulate learning but can also be demonstrably related to academic achievement at GCSE level. Customer choice is also greatly enhanced through digital inclusion, which secures better deals for users while stimulating competition in the market. Commercial organisations also benefit hugely from digital inclusion in reaching out to more customers and attracting higher spend, in addition to the obvious internal benefits related to higher efficiencies.

   * Digital inclusion has immense potential in cutting the cost of public service delivery.

Examples of such savings include efficiencies stemming from new electronic processes replacing traditional services, which make customer interactions a lot cheaper. Such schemes are increasingly rolled out across different public sector services, ranging from health to vehicle licensing, and their full potential is likely to be much wider. In addition, there are potentially significant impacts for the wider economy – the Government anticipates public spending on e-government and digital literacy programmes to yield returns of between 1.1 and 1.5% of GDP increase in 2008-10.

   * There are multiple indications of digital inclusion’s ability to improve society.

Expanding access to ICT for marginalised groups is likely to reduce their social exclusion simply through facilitating access and participation, while the potential of the internet as a vehicle for expression and easier communication often translates to individuals who are more involved and communities that are more integrated. In addition, extended digital inclusion can mean a more flexible workforce, lower paper consumption, and reduced travel to work, all of which have the potential to foster happier workforces and a better natural environment.