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The socio-economic situation of students with disabilities

Elisabeth Unterfrauner

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Overview

1. Project EU4ALL

2. The socio-economic situation of people with disabilities with special focus on educational attainment

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1. General project information

Contract nº. 034778

Priority - Strategic Objective

Sixth Framework Programme -- Priority 2 Information Society Technologies

Total project Cost. 10.663.606,60 €

EC funding 7.400.000 €

Duration 48 Months

Start 1st. October 2006

Project Full Title European Unified Approach for Accessible Lifelong Learning

EU4ALLProject Acronym

Project Website www.eu4all-project.eu

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2. Partner

Stakeholder from different areasEducation: Open University UK, UNED, University of York, University Rome „La Sapienza“, EADTU, CTAD

Technological Development: Atos, Indra, Giunti, Fraunhofer FIT

User Representatives/ Interest Groups:Disabled People International Italy, disabled students of universities

Social Science: Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)

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3. EU4ALL target group

Target groups

Students with visual, hearing, mobile and cognitive disabilities and mature students

Lecturers, counsellors, and tutors

Technical support staff (LMS, Content and Services)

Administrative staff

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4. EU4ALL aims

Aims and gainsEU4ALL is anchored in the tertiary and distance education sector, but might be interesting for all institutions which have a substantial number of students with disabilities and which offer technical enhanced courses (e-learning).

Research & Development projectDevelopment of open, flexible, standards oriented architecture complementing functionalities of platforms. Moodle and .lrn will be used in the EU4ALL project.

Human FocusBased on users’ needs -> user requirements

Adaptability and accessibility for individual students (personalisation)

Adaptability for institutions

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5. Project activities

Surveys and interviews with students with disabilities and with university staff: needs and challenges (individual perspective)

Analysis of offered services at different institutions from enrolment until graduation (institutional perspective)

Development of first prototypes (Guidance for All Package, ePortfolio, Content Personalisation..)

Evaluation of prototypes with experts and end-users

Results feed back into design process (usability and accessibility) -> eventual redesign of prototypes

Large scale evaluation of implemented services at UNED and OUUK

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6. UNED Scenario

This Scenario is drawn from the Spanish distance university UNED. It serves as Good Practice example, which makes the potential of EU4ALL visible. The pontential of EU4ALL comes true when accessibility at an institution is of strategic relevance.

ScenarioMartha is a deaf student. It would be helpful to her to have visual alternatives to acoustic material, to get support in text comprehension und written assignments, to have more time disposable at exams and have access to glossaries and online dictionaries.

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7. UNED Scenario

At UNED lecturers are responsible for their courses. They receive support in planning accessible courses. Special attention is paid to accessible learning materials.

PROCESS

Martha registers for a course, and

receives an account for a programme explaining to her how to use the platform,

Lecturers are supported in course planning,

provision of accessible course and assessment.

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8. UNED Scenario

REALISATION IN DETAIL• Lector have access to a list of accommodations which the registered students

require

• Lector checks the availability of accessible learning materials that meet all requirements (UNED e-spacio tool). In case of unavailability of accessible materials sends a request to transformation-service

– Through Guidance for ALL (G4ALL) tool lector gets all the

needed information related to deaf students (Martha) in learning situations

– Search for alternative materials in database (e-Spacio) – Request to transformation-service– Material can be provided on platform and course is realised.

• Martha receives a video with subtitles to achieve the aimed learning outcome.

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The socio-economic situation of people with disabilities with special focus on educational attainment

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9. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

Aim:Are there differences between persons with and without

disabilities concerning education, living standard and employment?

Are there differences between students with and without disabilities in tertiary education?

EU-SILC

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10. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

0 1 2 3 4 5

LSHPD

no LSHPD

Proportion of people with and without disability by highest ISCED level

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11. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

0 1 2 3 4 5

male LSHPD

male no LSHPD

female LSHPD

female no LSHPD

Proportion of attained ISCED level by gender and disability

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12. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78

ISCED 5

ISCED 4

ISCED 3

ISCED 2

ISCED 1

ISCED 0

Proportion of attained ISCED levels of persons with LSHPD by age

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13. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

Tertiary education:

Students with disabilities are in average 4 years older than their peers (!)

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14. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

Education as protecting factor …the unemployment rates of persons with and without

disabilities do not differ significantly if they acquired a tertiary education degree but differ in all other levels

…the higher the attained ISCED level, the lower the risk of poverty

…the higher the attained ISCED level, the higher the income

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15. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

Median gross income in Euro of persons with (blue) and without LSHPD (red) working 40 hours by gender

1100

648.41

1200

800

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

m ale female

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16. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

Österreich spezifisch

0

5 0 0

1 0 0 0

1 5 0 0

2 0 0 0

2 5 0 0

3 0 0 0

3 5 0 0

AT B E E S G R IE IS IT P L P T U K

m a le L S H P D

m a le n o L S H P D

fe m a le L S H P D

fe m a le n o L S H P D

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17. Analysis of socio-economic situation of people with disabilities

• Differences concerning education between persons with and without LSHPD (despite improvements)

• No gender differences in persons with and without LSHPD in higher education

• Students with disabilities older than their peers

• Tertiary education serves as protceting factor

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18. Contact information

Elisabeth Unterfrauner | Centre for Social Innovation, Vienna

Phone

Fax +43 1 49 50 442 41

+43 1 49 50 442 54

Address Linke Wienzeile 246A- 1150 Vienna

e-Mail unterfrauner@zsi.at

Project Web www.eu4all-project.eu