« return to listing

Project Details


Keywords: [Education, Training and Employment]
Name: ViPi - Virtual Portal for Interaction and ICT Training for People with Disabilities
Start Date: 1st Jan 11
End Date: 31st Dec 13
Total Project Fund: 428,931Euros
Background: An estimated 45 million people in Europe have a long term health condition or disability, with over 60% unemployed, according to figures from the Academic Network of European Disability experts (ANED). Many people with disabilities may have advanced skills but suffer significant barriers to employment.
Description: The aim of this project is to explore the ways in which ICT can be used to provide alternative and creative solutions for the employment of people with disabilities. The project will make available accessible and flexible training via an interactive portal and learning environment which is available online and via mobile phones. This online platform will offer disabled people access to a wide variety of ICT training courses and serious games for acquiring ICT skills. Trainers will be able to upload and download specific learning objects with the aid of specialist search software. The idea is to develop a large repository of learning objects that focus on basic ICT literacy, so that people with disabilities can pick up the core skills needed to enter the job market.
Objective: To support and facilitate the acquisition of basic ICT skills for those people with disabilities who lack them. The project outcome will be a basic ICT skills curriculum encompassing an entire set of applications and supporting services that will be streamlined via a blended educational and teaching framework, making full usage of the interaction possibilities offered by web 2.0 and Web 3.0. The curriculum will be tested, piloted and subsequently fine-tuned with end-user communities in Greece, Belgium, Lithuania, the UK and Cyprus.
Progress: Nov 2011: The web-based and mobile platforms are currently under development, and the research methodology and curriculum outline documents have been completed. A survey was undertaken to investigate the needs of the stakeholders in this project, the results of which will be published soon. Early next year the iterative development stage will begin, where the identified learning objects will begin to be developed by the ViPi partners. As of January 2013: a presentation on the project and an interview by the lead partner can be found in Publications below. The results of ViPi's survey into the experiences of disabled individuals and ICT can also be found in Publications.
General Info: Project consortium: PhoenixKM (Belgium); Hypertech Informatics & New Technologies (Greece); Steficon (Greece); VSI HITECO High Technologies for Cooperation (Lithuania); G.M. Eurocy Innovations Ltd (Cyprus). view link
Web Page: view website

Organisations Involved In This Project


The main contact(s) for this project are:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town Contact
ISRG - Interactive Systems Research Group - Nottingham Trent University
 Academic
 0115 848 6019
 Nottingham
 Professor David Brown

Participants:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town Contact
ISRG - Interactive Systems Research Group - Nottingham Trent University
 Academic
 0115 848 6019
 Nottingham
 Dr Lindsay Evett

Funding for this project includes a contribution from:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town
EU Lifelong Learning (Grundtvig) Programme
 Government


Publications that are an Outcome of this Project

Title Author / Editor Date Published
ViPi Stakeholder Survey – Consolidation and comparative analysis of findings: HERE
 9th Feb 12
ViPi - Need for basic ICT and AT training for people with disabilities: HERE
 3rd Dec 12
ViPi - ICT/AT training for people with disabilities: HERE
 2nd Dec 12