ICTs have critical role in education and social development for people with disabilities, confirms study

For most under-resourced schools across Africa, the gift of a computer from a philanthropist or international organisation quickly becomes a welcome addition to the classroom. A monitor, keyboard and hard drive, no matter how archaic its Pentium processor, is an invaluable aid for improving literacy and numeracy and allowing children to learn twenty-first century skills.

But for the hundreds of special needs schools across the continent who cater for students with visual, hearing or intellectual impairments, a PC is only one item on a long shopping list of so-called information and communication technologies (ICTs) essential to enable learning; these include hearing aids, speech software, Braille embossers, radios, voice recorders and even TVs.

In the West African country of Ghana, itself often held up to be a model of development on the continent, there are an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 disabled children of schooling age. Yet, according to figures from the Ghana Education Service, only around 5,000 – 0.6 per cent – are actually enrolled in formal education.

Greater investment in ICTs for people with disabilities could dramatically transform their educational experiences. According to Professor Tim Unwin, UNESCO Chair in ICT for Development at Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom, and Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, “ICTs can transform the lives of people with greater disabilities far more than they can the lives of those of us with fewer disabilities. We need to pay much greater explicit attention to using them effectively to support the education of some of the most disadvantaged people in Africa.”

Together with Professor Unwin, Godfred Bonnah Nkansah, a researcher now based in Ghana and previously a holder of a Commonwealth Shared Scholarship, has been exploring the often-overlooked subject of ICTs in special needs education.

Conducting a series of interviews with teachers and school children in four special schools in the Eastern and Ashanti regions of the country, Mr Bonnah Nkansah found that the cost and lack of skilled personnel were the biggest obstacles to the deployment of ICTs in Ghana's education system.

As a result, for reasons of simple affordability, disabled children are unable to get the learning equipment they need. A Braille embosser, for instance, which allows the blind to print and read text, costs £3,000 in Ghana. An installation disk for speech software meanwhile can set a school back £600.

But despite the outlay required, Mr Bonnah Nkansah asserts that investment in ICTs is essential if the outlook and opportunities for people with disabilities can be improved. As he argues, “ICTs are equalisers of opportunities for persons with disabilities. They increase their employability and give them the independence to bring out outputs of comparable quality to those produced by persons with fewer disabilities.”

He continues: “It is important for us to acknowledge that disability is not inability, and that persons with disabilities are equally capable. What they need are the opportunities to showcase these capabilities.”

Together the two researchers argue that ICTs need to be used creatively to show others in society that people with disabilities are not incapable and that there needs to be investment in support staff as well as technology. They also argue that governments need to identify and push for increased funding of ICTs for people with disabilities.

“We need to have a change in global mindsets,” says Professor Unwin. “If you receive an email from a blind person, there is no way that you would know they were blind. A text message on the phone from a deaf person, is the same as a text message from someone who can hear. ICTs are a crucial way through which traditional definitions of disability can be challenged and overcome.”

The study – ‘The contribution of ICTs to the delivery of special educational needs in Ghana: practices and potential’ – is published in the latest edition of the Information Technology for Development journal, by Routledge and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Related Websites:

• Commonwealth Publications