Designing an Inclusive VET - Creating guidelines for accessible digital VET programmes for people with sensory impairment - DIVE

Digitalisation offers a lot of benefits – primarily, the growing variety of digital contents that are accessible virtually from every corner of the world. However, the limitations of this process are less obvious: due to missing equipment or poor Internet connection, technical arrangements or methodological/didactical design of online offers many population groups (incl. those with special needs) are left behind. This is true for various levels of education, incl. continuing VET and adult education. As a result, digital participation of persons with disabilities is lower than that of general population. Since the participation rate is relatively low, training institutions have little motivation to deepen their expertise on the topic and broaden the scope of their offers available to people with special needs. The project DIVE aimed to address this challenge by sensitizing the providers of CVET programmes and by equipping them with basic knowledge and competences needed to develop inclusive and barrier-free online offers. The increased number of digital offers geared towards the needs of people with sensory impairments should create more equal opportunities for their participation and raise their employability prospects.

The ultimate goal of DIVE project was to enhance the inclusiveness of digital training offers in continuing VET by providing recommendations and guidelines on design and delivery of barrier-free educational programmes for persons with sensory impairments (deaf persons). This goal was to be reached in several steps (by achieving the following objectives): - to explore the status quo of digital inclusiveness in continuing vocational education and training (C-VET) regarding persons with sensory impairments; - to test the collected insights/knowledge in real-life settings – that is, by conducting a pilot training with deaf persons; - to develop recommendations on organisation of bareer-free digital programmes taking into account technical, pedagogical and participative aspects. - to share the project results with a wide variety of actors and engage them in the discussion about the necessity to ensure equal access to training programmes.