1 Standards of Universal Learning Design at Universities and Testing of Persons with Special Needs

Chair/Keynote speaker:

Alan Hurst
Skill: National Bureau for Students with Disabilities, London

Keynote speaker:

Joachim Klaus
Study Centre for Visually Impaired Students,
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

The section focuses on:

• The concept of a special need, diversity and its categories.
• Design for All (DfA), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Universal Learning Design (ULD), Universal Design for Instruction (UDI) and Universal Instructional Design (UID).
• The confines of universal design and individual accommodation, the right for a universal learning design and its enforceability, the right for an individual accommodation and its eligibility, rights and duties of parties at a case.
• Legislative, methodological and technological standards of universal design and individual accommodation for persons with visual, hearing or mobility impairment, neurodiversity and chronic diseases.
• Management and financing of services providing universal learning design and individual accommodation in tertiary education.
• Universal design of Learning Potential Tests and Qualification Tests, standards for individual accommodations of partial sub-tests, and measurably of results.
• Universal design in national and international contexts: cooperation of schools during transition between various levels of education; school networks providing students’ mobility.
• Universal design of science and research.

2 Linguistic Competence of the Hearing Impaired and the Role of Sign Languages in Tertiary Education

Chair/Keynote speaker:

Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen
Department of Special Needs Education,
Faculty of Educational Sciences,
University of Oslo

• The issue of native language and language of communication among persons with severe hearing impairment; the issue of official, instruction, foreign and world languages of persons with severe hearing impairment compared to other linguistic minorities.
• Linguistic standard and linguistic diversity in speaking and writing of persons with severe hearing impairment.
• Language instruction and the achievement of prescribed linguistic competences of persons with severe hearing impairment.
• Spoken language visualisation, speech-to-text reporting, and other systems of communication for persons with hearing impairment usable in tertiary education.
• E-learning systems, videoconferencing and instant messaging in sign languages.
• Sign language as a tool in tertiary education and specialized communication, its stylistic diversity and standards.
• Application of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages on sign languages and testing of linguistic competences in these languages.
• Phonology, morphology and syntax of sign languages, their interference with spoken languages and influence on communication within a university environment.
• Lexicology and lexicography of sign languages, development of vocabulary, issues with terminology and internationalisms.
• Sign languages recording and noting systems, creation of databases and linguistic corpora, software tools for handling databases and corpora.
• Linguistic, organizational, didactic and legal issues of translation and interpreting in academic settings.

3 Universal Design of Electronic Documents and Public Electronic Libraries for Purposes of Tertiary Education

Chair/Keynote speaker:

Klaus Miesenberger
Institute “Integrated Study”,
Johannes Kepler University Linz

The section focuses on:

• WCAG and comparable documents, their enforceability, advantages and imperfections in relation to persons with various types of special needs; web accessibility and usability.
• Transferability of WCAG and comparable documents to E-learning environments and digital documents; accessibility, readability and content comprehensibility of official and specialized documents.
• Standards for digital documents intended for tactile or auditory perception, hybrid documents and the Digital Talking Book.
• Digital documents intended for reproduction of tactile, audio or visual documents, hybrid documents and DAISY.
• Universal design of video and audio formats.
• HTML, XML, MathML standards and digital tools for handling mathematical, physical, chemical and other symbolic notations via tactile or audio outputs.
• Digital libraries and their accessibility, digitization and standards for conversions among formats.
• Copyright issues related to universal design and individual accommodation of documents and individual access at national and international levels.
• Public library catalogues and their accessibility, sharing and internationalization.
• Cataloguing of tactile, audio and graphical documents; cataloguing of digital documents intended for individual reproduction of tactile, audio or graphical documents; cataloguing of the Web.
• IT literacy of persons with special needs, its standardization for individual impairment categories and academic public’s awareness of the specifics of such literacy.

4 Specific Learning Disorders and Other Types of Neurodiversity in Tertiary Education and Compensation Devices

Chair/Keynote speaker:

Willy Aastrup
Counselling and Support Centre of the Danish School of Education,
University of Aarhus

• Typology of specific learning disabilities and other types of neurodiversity, testing and measuring of these among adults.
• Compensation strategies, their practicing and approach to persons with a compensatory disability.
• Individual accommodation of testing environment and technological compensatory devices.
• Differences in work with a screen reader, voice output and electronic formats between persons with specific learning disorders and the visually impaired.
• Electronic libraries and their usability by persons with specific learning disorders, digitization and standards for conversion among formats.
• Copyright issues related to universal design of documents for persons with specific learning disorders.