LITERACY - Online portal for E-learning and supporting social inclusion of people with dyslexia

The aim of the project is to provide an ICT solution which will enable learning, skills acquisition, accommodation strategies and methods for people at risk of being marginalized. The self-learning ICT solution will enable dyslexic users to operate independently online by providing three inter-connected and interactive services:

1. comprehensive analysis of difficulties -which is the basis for the other two-,
2. personalized e-learning tools and
3. a Community Zone via special human -computer interfaces- tools for accommodation of dyslexia, services and social interaction.

While personalized e-learning typically includes exercises and tasks to be accomplished by an individual learner, the services of the Community Zone will help learners to socialize in ways they find meaningful. This can be to share their feelings and/or results while working with the tools or resolving difficulties, to play simple "serious games" set up for their learning, to coordinate (real or virtual) meetings, to assist each other, or to reflect on (group) therapy sessions they had and potentially share their expressions (voice, picture, figure, video, e-learning results, ...) with their therapists (or young therapists in training).

A goal is to collect and categorize existing e-learning materials, including methodologies skill building, and software tools in 4 languages (English, Hungarian, Czech, Hebrew) and adapt them for use over the Internet within a specialized interface which will be developed for the portal thus enabling dyslexic youth and adults to benefit from them in an independent way.

The Portal will initially be developed for users in four languages English, Hungarian, Czech and Hebrew based on the existing assessment tools, e-learning materials, and contact with end user populations within these countries. Since the common language in the consortium is English, the first Portal prototype will be in English thus enabling all partners to share and take part in joint development. The long term goal is to expand the Portal to include a specialised user interface, user assessment tools, E-learning content and Community Zone in all major European languages. Mainly this includes:

1. dentifying experts in dyslexia for each language who can create and adapt content (e.g. learning materials) to introduce (upload) to the site,
2. searching for all existing assistive technologies in each language (e- learning tools, text to voice translator etc).
3. characterization and categorization of materials,
4. evaluation of responses from dyslexic end users to assessment and e-learning processes,
5. modelling for each person's input to determine appropriate communication back to end user (dyslexic person, teacher, parent)
6. personalised user friendly interface for communication with customer and design of graphic presentation of results/instructions etc.

The project involves the use of existing multimedia technologies, the internet and other delivery channels to improve the quality of learning of the target group by accessing to resources and services and the provision of Community Zone which offers opportunity for collaborative and remote interactions.

LITERACY Project Web Pages