In January 2018 the iExpress Partnership finished the first iExpress Myself project aimed at MDVI (Multiple Disabled Visually Impaired) children and their use of ICT and assistive devices. iExpress II is a logical and desirable follow-up. Persons with MDVI are facing major challenges in expressing themselves, in communication and learning. Only a small number of institutes in Europe is using digital screening instruments for testing ICT skills of MDVI children and there is no universal tool to test and train them. Nowadays, special teachers are working with a set of different tools from different companies resulting in high expenses or limited usability of those tools related to MDVI education. In addition to the screening tool for MDVI professionals that was developed and validated under iExpress I, this project delivers a comprehensive toolkit that provides MDVI professionals with guidelines and innovative tools to use the validated screening instrument to test and train MDVI children and to increase children's ICT skills and capabilities with assistive devices. The solution will include the function of an individual ICT plan to plan next steps after assessment and to monitor the child’s progress over time. The applications will be, as much as possible, language free so it will enable the use by any professional. The objectives are: 1) Designed and developed innovative software that allows professionals working with MDVI to use the validated screening instrument to test and train MDVI children (developmental age 0-4) and to increase the children's ICT skills and capabilities with assistive devices. 2) The creation of a toolkit including guidelines for the validated screening instrument for using assistive devices for MDVI children, Individual ICT Plan instructions, training manuals and recommendations for use. 3) Increased awareness of teachers, trainers and professionals working with MDVI about possibilities for making learning easier for the target group. The direct target group consists of MDVI professionals (trainers, teachers). During the project 15-30 professionals will be trained and part of this group will take part in the test pilot. After the project, any professional working with MDVI children can easily download and use the final product and support parents and children to use and train by using developed applications. Since the toolkit also includes training materials, guidelines and recommendations for use, it is a complete set for immediate use. Through the partner’s local, regional, national and European networks the results will be disseminated on a large scale during and after the project. The group of MDVI children is relatively small and rather complex, however we may expect that in the longer term, in the years after the project has ended, over a hundred professionals and over a thousand children and family members will benefit. In the first phase of the project we will capture the requirements and needs for the applications. This will be done in a structured way while organising weekly sessions between the developers and the MDVI experts from the partnering organisations. The software applications are developed alongside the development of the screening instrument guidelines which will include recommendations for use and provisions to create more awareness on the problems and possibilities of MDVI children in relation to ICT skills and the use of assistive devices. After a first group of trainers from Hungary, Iceland and the Netherlands is trained, these trainers will train other colleagues in their own organisations and a pilot will start. In this pilot professionals will assess and train MDVI children in their schools to test the newly developed applications, integrated screening guidelines and individual ICT plan. Once the pilot is evaluated, the applications will be updated and a final test will be executed. Professionals working with MDVI children, inside and outside the partnership, will have access to a ready-to-use-toolkit to use in their daily work. The main contents are: the screening list and a software that is built on the screening list components, supporting the user to work with the instrument and the ultimate target group. The individual ICT plan will benefit each child, since the intervention is based on their measured skills. Children will be screened more objectively, since there will be metrics with high precision recorded in every child’s profile, according to the European Data Protection Regulation. Further studies on usability and effect can be done from the retrieved data, which will affect in a positive way both users and professionals, helping to build the best strategy fitting each profile individually. The toolkit will be widely distributed and promoted through the relevant online and offline channels of the partnering organisations to reach MDVI professionals in blind (education) organisations and other organisations interested worldwide.
MDVI students (Multiple Disabled and Visually Impaired) face major challenges in expressing themselves, in communication and learning. Using ICT can support them greatly and make them feel more socially included. We aimed to support professionals to test, train and monitor the ICT skills of their students in a standardized, effective and easy way and make them more aware of the possibilities for making learning easier for the target group with one comprehensible tool. And to give MDVI students opportunities to increase their capabilities to communicate and interact through the use of ICT to make them more self-reliant and improve their overall wellbeing. Also we expected parents to have more options to train and support their children. We can confidently say these aims were reached. A parent said: “Communication options [by use of ICT] offer him more opportunities to show us what he wants. This makes him happier.” A professional: “He has severe motor, speech and visual problems, but his cognitive skills are probably better then we know. With the ICT options we can now find out better what he really understands and wants to tell us.” In iExpress I a screening instrument for using ICT and assistive devices for MDVI children was developed and validated. Now the partners made a toolkit containing an innovative standardized digital tool to measure, train and monitor their students’ progress. The software is accessible for professionals working with MDVI students to increase their ICT skills and capabilities with assistive devices. It is downloadable for free (Play Store, iTunes and Web for desktop app).The solution includes an individual ICT plan to plan next steps after assessment and to monitor progress. We also developed guidelines on how to use the software and screening correctly. They also contain specifics on how to work with the target group and use of devices and provisions on the problems and possibilities of MDVI children in relation to ICT skills and assistive devices. It finally includes recommendations for different target groups and requirements for professionals. The complete toolkit can be found on the iExpress web platform. Here, one can also access the secured database and view screening results. In a 6 month pilot we tested the functionality and usability of the applications to apply and facilitate working with the screening instrument in the daily work of the MDVI teachers/professionals. 10 professionals from the iExpress team were trained to train 31 other professionals in 3 partner organisations INIB (Iceland), Budapest School for the Blind (Hungary) and Royal Dutch Visio (Netherlands) to use the iExpress toolkit. During the pilot the trainees screened 32 students. After the pilot, we made final improvements to the toolkit. It turned out that using the toolkit makes professionals more effective and efficient in their research and training of ICT skills with the target group. They spend less time setting goals and monitoring the progress of the students. Also students are screened in a more objective way and their evolution can be easily and closely monitored, allowing professionals to have a clear plan for following up of the abilities of the users. All staff members of the multi-disciplinary team and parents now have the opportunity to work in the same way by using the toolkit while working on the same objectives. The iExpress tool offers MDVI students opportunities to increase their capabilities to interact through the use of ICT which will make them more self-reliant and improve their wellbeing. Parents have improved options to support the students' development and progress. While in the pilot data we sometimes noticed only little improvement, parents indicate that they experience these little steps as a big achievement for their children. And this is the core. The steps might seem small, but they have a huge impact on the students’ quality of life. As we can see in the iExpress animation movie: Kate's siblings can now play games with her because she can control the dice using a touchscreen. Isn’t that what we want for all students? While the project was originally focused on MDVI students (developmental age 0-4), it can be applied to a much wider target group. Also children and adults with the same developmental age but no visual impairment can be screened and trained in their ICT skills, as well as MDVI children and adults with moderate to severe motor disabilities, but with a higher developmental age and young children (calendar age between 0-8) with severe motor disabilities and severe visual impairment or other physical impairments, but without intellectual disabilities. At the start of the project we stated: the group of MDVI students is relatively small and rather complex, however we may expect that in the long term over a hundred professionals and over a thousand children and family members will benefit. Now, we expect these numbers to be higher.