Topical Sections

1. Standards of Universal Learning Design at Universities and Testing of Persons with Special Needs
2. Linguistic Competence of the Hearing Impaired and the Role of Sign Languages and the Text Reporting in Tertiary Education
3. Universal Design of Electronic Documents and Public Electronic Libraries for Purposes of Tertiary Education
4. Compensation Tools for the Specific Learning Disorders and Other Types of Diversity in Tertiary Education

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

The section focuses on:

• Legislative, methodological and technological standards of universal design and individual accommodation for persons with visual, hearing or mobility impairment, neurodiversity and chronic diseases.
• 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.

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

The section focuses on:

• 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.
• Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in sign languages and testing of linguistic competences in these languages.
• 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

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 etc. to E-learning environments and specialized documents.
• 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; public library catalogues and their accessibility, sharing and internationalization.
• Cataloguing of digital documents as well as tactile, audio and graphical documents.
• Copyright issues related to universal design and individual accommodation of documents and individual access at national and international levels.

4 Compensation Tools for the Specific Learning Disorders and Other Types of Diversity in Tertiary Education

The section focuses on:

• 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.