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Research aiming to transform lives of disabled learners

Researchers at º£½ÇÖ±²¥ have been awarded a £50,000 grant to help transform the lives of disabled learners.

The Widget Design Authoring Toolkit (WIDGaT) project aims to explore, design, develop and evaluate an authoring toolkit to support a range of learning opportunities. It will seek to develop a series of widgets, similar to iPhone applications, which will help to create an adaptable personal learning environment to support particularly, but not exclusively, the needs and preferences of disabled students.

This innovative project will be led by the Accessibility Research Centre within the University’s School of Computing.

It follows on from a similar successful research project last year, when researchers were awarded a £30,000 grant to develop a series of high-quality widgets. The WIDGaT project will develop and enhance the previous research.

Making a real difference to disabled students Dr Elaine Pearson, Principal Lecturer in the Digital Futures Institute, said: ‘We are really excited about this project because it means we can take a community approach to make a real difference to disabled students across higher and further education.’

Funding was secured through the JISC Learning and Teaching Innovation Programme and WIDGaT is one of only six projects from 83 proposals that was successful in the funding application process.

The £50,000 grant will provide bursaries for two researchers and enable the involvement of design and technical experts, teachers and educational developers.

The one year WIDGaT project runs from 1 June 2011.

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