Educational-didactic design of a digital facilitator for the inclusion of a student with visual impairment

Abstract

The article illustrates the design of a digital facilitator for a visually impaired student, with the aim of facilitating her inclusion process within the educational‐scholastic context.
Starting from the reflections promoted by the Disability Studies, according to which each physical, social and technological context can enable or disable the participation and educational success of people with special educational needs, it is presented the design and use of a hypermedia e‐book, used as a digital facilitator by a student with visual impairment, to prepare her oral interview of the final secondary school exam. The personalized digital facilitator, incorporating multimodal content (text, images, video, audio, graphics, etc.) ensured easy access to study content and at the same time strengthened the student's study autonomy. On the one hand, the designed e‐book eliminated the barriers related to the sensory impairment, on the other hand it improved the quality of learning, enhancing cognitive skills and promoting the active participation of the student during the teaching/learning process. The design of the digital facilitator proved to be an effective strategy to implement an effective inclusive teaching within the classroom context, as well as to promote the educational success of the person with special educational needs.