To have access to information is important for people with intellectual disability; it allows to learn, to have an active role in the society, to be aware of their rights and to fight for them, to take decisions and make conscious choices. People with intellectual disability have the right to receive information that are easy to read and understand, but that at the same time are adequate to their adult age. We live in the information era, but the information is delivered in a very complex way: the needed simplification requires huge efforts but it is extremely important both for adult people with disability and for the social workers who could be very facilitated in the conduction of educational activities. The result of this lack of accessibility is the low rates of participation to cultural activities (reading, visiting a museum, participation to trainings etc.) or events (seminars, openigs etc.) by people with intellectual disability, lack of knowledge and understanding of topical issues or news stories. Accessible Information Material is even more relevant if we consider that in Europe, one in five16-65 year-olds have poor reading skills (PIAAC): it means that not just people with intellectual disabilities but also a wider range of adult people could benefit from the accessible information material we want to create during the project. Accessible Information Material is a strategic partnership for innovation among 4 organizations from Italy, Estonia, Portugal and Poland, all of them working at different level in the field of social inclusion of people with disability, 1 organization from Lithuania working in the field of youth and migration and school from Spain who provide secondary education and VET courses in the social field and the University of Catania. It will run for 28 months (september 2019- December 2021) and it wants to provide to the involved organizations and educational institutes a stage to acquire the necessary competences to apply and spread the easy to read language at a local, regional and national level and to produce some easy to read resources able to raise social awareness on the importance of accessibility even in culture and information. This result will be reached through the implementation of a short term joint staff training event for 21 participants among staff members and people with intellectual disability on the principles and practice of easy to read language. Subsequently the partners will cooperate for the creation of an easy to read manual about the basics of ICT, that will be tested thanks to a blended mobility for adult learners with low literacy skills - 4 adult people with intellectual disability or low literacy skills and 2 accompanying persons per each of the five partners directly working with people with disability and migrants, and some guidelines for trainers about how to manage an easy to understand training on the basics of ICT that will be organized in an e-learning course. The implementation of the project will be based on a collaborative approach among the partners so each one of them will be responsible of specific actions in order to reach the foreseen results for each project activity. The results of the local activities will be constantly shared inside the partnership. The process of validation, the great potential in terms of transferability and the innovation of the created tools ensures the ability of the project to reach beneficiaries from all over Europe and beyond; the project dissemination strategy will be enhanced by the realization of a cycle of webinars (to reach professionals from all over the Europe and beyond) and 4 national seminars (to reach people with low literacy skills, their family members and professionals in the social field at regional level). The project will have a strong personal and social impact on the participants in terms of knowledge and know how, it will improve the quality of the services offered by the participating organizations and it will strengthen their cooperation; the project results will represent a concrete support to the organizations working in the field of education of adults with low literacy skills and to social professionals and students in the social field but also to those people with disability or low literacy skills who are going to approach information and culture indipendently. The wide process of dissemination, the actual application of the project results in the partner organizations and the concrete planning of an extended project able to expand the operating range of the project will ensure the sustainability of the project impact.
- to provide to the involved organizations and educational institutes a stage to acquire the necessary competences to apply and spread the easy to read language at a local, regional and national level - to produce some easy to read resources able to raise social awareness on the importance of accessibility even in culture and information - to promote the digital literacy of people with low literacy skills through concrete tools to be used for self learning or as handbook in a class setting - to promote a complete methodology addressing professionals in adult education to organize and manage individual and/or group trainings on ICT for people with low literacy skills. - to promote a social change based on the recognition of the rights of people with disability, and more in general with low literacy skills, to find out and to know using materials disigned for adult people - to identify effective, shared and generalizable operative strategies and tools in the perspective of a European Strategy for social inclusion of people with disability in terms of accessibility of information
People with intellectual disability and people with low literacy skills, as migrantsor elderly people, have the right to receive information that is easy to read and understand, and even adequate to their adult age. Accessible Information Material origintes from the will to provide an answer to: - the need expressed by the adult users with disability of the 4 partner organizations who work in the field of disability: to have an opinion on relevant topics, to learn and gain skills on specific subjects as ICT and culture but through instruments that are interesting and understandable for them - the need of adequate approach and tools expressed by occupational terapists, educators, social workers and students in this project consortium who work or are in training to work with people with low literacy skills (people with intellectual disability or migrants or even elderly people): they need guidelines about how to create really inclusive learning settings starting from an accessible communication able to transfer contents but also to avoid attitudes and kind of talks appropriate when you are talking with children and they need concrete manuals to use in order to easily manage trainings addressing adult people with low literacy skills.