By Rohit Manglik
Digital technologies has emerged as a panacea for sustaining continuity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of the suspension of classroom teaching, e-mastering has come to the rescue of students. By enabling anytime, anyplace, access to lessons, e-mastering, along with emerging technologies, have a tremendous prospective to integrate the issues of differently-abled kids into mainstream education.
Unfortunately, this objective of e-mastering is however to be accomplished each inside and outdoors classrooms. According to the 2011 Census, only 57% of differently-abled males involving the age of 5 and 19 years attend schools. The predicament is grimmer for female students who are at a larger threat of discrimination owing to their disability as properly as gender issues.
A report by Disability Legislation Unit of Eastern India and Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR) highlighted that 77% of differently-abled students, teachers and their parents could lag in mastering as they have been unable to access distance mastering solutions whereas 56.5% admitted to not attending classes often throughout the pandemic. The findings are contrary to the simplistic assumption that student-teacher connect devoid of any discrimination present in classrooms, would function in favour of these students throughout the lockdown.
The findings indicate that India nevertheless has a lengthy way to go to upgrade the infrastructure and adopt assisted technologies to foster an inclusive education program. E-mastering leveraging multimedia technologies and video lectures will not only allow improved comprehension for differently-abled but also tends to make lessons interactive and immersive for them. It is to be noted that differently-abled students kind a broad group with varying levels of disabilities. These disabilities can be physical such as hearing-impaired, visually-impaired, or mental such as autism, dyslexia, amongst other folks. Technology is a excellent leveller to bridge inequity in access to education. But the sort of technologies to be employed varies on a case-to-case basis. For instance: audiobooks and adaptive keyboards will make certain seamless mastering knowledge for orthopedically- challenged students. The text-to-speech computer software and voice recognition will be beneficial for visually-challenged students in listening to their lessons or taking assignments. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence along with Machine Learning can be leveraged to draw customized modules for these students to allow mastering at their pace.
Edtech organizations can play a pivotal part in devising curriculum and pedagogy catering to the desires of differently-abled. Relevant stakeholders such as parents, schools and healthcare practitioners need to come collectively to chalk out a roadmap with revolutionary options such as soon after-college assistance in the kind of on the net coaching, counselling for parents and wards and profession assistance cells that will go a lengthy way in bringing about a transformative transform.
At a policy level, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act is a complete policy that aims to make certain their integration into the mainstream. The National Education Policy 2020 also requires cognizance of the issues of differently-abled and encourages household-primarily based mastering for them. It is to be noted that e-mastering can not replace college education even for differently-abled in the lengthy-run. Moreover, this sort of mastering needs a higher capital investment into wise devices and for making sure higher Internet bandwidth and penetration. The public-private collaboration for scaling up infrastructure, generating curriculum readily available in option formats, and making sure access to unique instructors for these students is the way forward.
India’s education policies need to have to be revamped to reflect the commitment towards mainstreaming the differently-abled in letter and spirit. The National Policy on ICT in School Education need to incorporate complete recommendations on the accessibility of digital education, specially for differently-abled. Similarly, the RTE Act desires to be amended to lay down requirements on inclusive digital education.
Another significant situation is the lack of sensitivity towards their issues which can be addressed if disability education is incorporated ideal from the college curriculum level onwards on the lines of gender education.
And these measures will not be fruitful alone. What we need to have as a society is a sense of collective conscience that nudges us positively towards enhancing the educational facilities for differently-abled students to give them a ideal to reside with dignity and make certain their vibrant future.
(The author is CEO of EduGorilla. Views expressed are individual.)