Many adult educators, professionals working with people with disabilities and parents feel the need to have more knowledge about the social media their students/adults are using and the short and long-term risks and opportunities related to it. As well they face the need to have competences to better support disabled young people in making appropriate use of social media. Policy makers and professionals in the media sector might be interested in the social media working methods and its impact on the way people think and live. The project aimed to respond to the young adults with disability need to get engaged with the social media competence and the new digital instruments available nowadays. Objectives: - To enhance digital media skills of adults with disabilities using interactive learning settings enabling actively and constructively contribute to a fairer and more pluralistic representation of disability in social media. - To fill the gaps in the professional adult educator’s preparation to better support young adults with disabilities in their engagement with social media. The results in the project have been achieved by the implementation of a number of interrelated activities that were designed and coherent with the objectives and the methodology. Those activities constituted of: - creation a sound knowledge base regarding the representation of disability and disabled persons as emerging from social media and the impact that social media have in people with disabilities’ life, especially regarding young adult with disability (18-30 years old). The consortium carried out a study that deeply focused on stereotypes, investigating how they are created and the way they are evolving due to the democratisation of digital media; - involved young adults with disabilities in the co-design and implementation of Social Media Training Labs in Italy, Portugal and Austria - physical places where peers with disabilities met and discussed their social media consumption and participation; - the MeMe Guidelines and Toolbox to facilitate access and presence in social media; - the Learning Programme for adult educators, people with disabilities educators and assistants; - the Serious Mobile game engaging targeted adults in interactive learning. To ensure the correspondence with the target group needs, the project followed participatory design principles, where the target group people were involved in the process from the very beginning and participated in all project activities. The project outcomes are relevant for many organisations and educational initiatives in different European Union (EU) countries and are in line with the implementation of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the Digital Agenda, the Disability Strategy, etc. The materials produced are translated and available at European union level ensuring a coherent action towards the partner countries.
Objectives: - To enhance digital media skills of adults with disabilities using interactive learning settings to actively and constructively contribute to a fairer and more pluralistic representation of disability in social media. - To fill the gaps in the professional adult educators preparation to better support young adults with disabilities in their engagement with digital (social) media. The project have tried to provide an answers to: - Is the promise of Internet and social media to impact on direct democracy and the opportunities offered to minority groups and individuals to share their own views and fight their own battles for equal participation in the public arena, becoming a reality and if not, how can this be furthered? - To what extent social media, or, more appropriately the mass of individuals using social media, have actually taking over the role of centralised media in reproducing stigma and what can be done to combat this? - Is the widespread use of social media by citizens actually changing the way people think about disability for the positive, or is there no advancement?
The project seeked to respond to the young adults with disability need to got engaged with a positive usage of the social media and the new digital instruments available nowadays. Many adult educators, PwD workers and parents feel the need to have more knowledge about the social media their students/adults are using and the short and long term risks and opportunities related to it;as well the need to have competences to better support disabled young people in making appropriate use of social media. Policy makers and professionals in the media sector might be interested in the working of modern social media and its impact on the way people think and live. Being implementation of UNCRPD, Digital Agenda, the Disability Strategy, etc. and discrimination vehicles by media being widespread - the project outcomes will be relevant for many organisations and educational initiatives in different EU countries. The materials produced is translated and available at EU level ensuring a coherent action towards the EU partner countries.