Topical Sections

1. Standards of Universal Learning Design at Universities and Testing of Persons with Special Needs
2. Linguistic Competence of the Hearing Impaired and the Role of Sign Languages and the Text Reporting in Tertiary Education
3. Universal Design of Electronic Documents and Public Electronic Libraries for Purposes of Tertiary Education
4. Compensation Tools for the Specific Learning Disorders and Other Types of Diversity in Tertiary Education

Keynotes

1 Standards of Universal Learning Design at Universities and Testing of Persons with Special Needs

The section focuses on:

• The concept of a special need, diversity and its categories.
• Design for All (DfA), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Universal Learning Design (ULD), Universal Design for Instruction (UDI) and Universal Instructional Design (UID).
• The confines of universal design and individual accommodation, the right for a universal learning design and its enforceability, the right for an individual accommodation and its eligibility, rights and duties of parties at a case.
• Legislative, methodological and technological standards of universal design and individual accommodation for persons with visual, hearing or mobility impairment, neurodiversity and chronic diseases.
• Management and financing of services providing universal learning design and individual accommodation in tertiary education.
• Universal design of Learning Potential Tests and Qualification Tests, standards for individual accommodations of partial sub-tests, and measurably of results.
• Universal design in national and international contexts: cooperation of schools during transition between various levels of education; school networks providing students’ mobility.
• Universal design of science and research.

2 Linguistic Competence of the Hearing Impaired and the Role of Sign Languages and the Text Reporting in Tertiary Education

The section focuses on:

• The issue of native language and language of communication among persons with severe hearing impairment; the issue of official, instruction, foreign and world languages of persons with severe hearing impairment compared to other linguistic minorities.
• Linguistic standard and linguistic diversity in speaking and writing of persons with severe hearing impairment.
• Language instruction and the achievement of prescribed linguistic competences of persons with severe hearing impairment.
• Spoken language visualisation, speech-to-text reporting, and other systems of communication for persons with hearing impairment usable in tertiary education.
• E-learning systems, videoconferencing and instant messaging in sign languages.
• Sign language as a tool in tertiary education and specialized communication, its stylistic diversity and standards.
• Application of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages on sign languages and testing of linguistic competences in these languages.
• Phonology, morphology and syntax of sign languages, their interference with spoken languages and influence on communication within a university environment.
• Lexicology and lexicography of sign languages, development of vocabulary, issues with terminology and internationalisms.
• Sign languages recording and noting systems, creation of databases and linguistic corpora, software tools for handling databases and corpora.
• Linguistic, organizational, didactic and legal issues of translation and interpreting in academic settings.

3 Universal Design of Electronic Documents and Public Electronic Libraries for Purposes of Tertiary Education

The section focuses on:

• WCAG and comparable documents, their enforceability, advantages and imperfections in relation to persons with various types of special needs; web accessibility and usability.
• Transferability of WCAG and comparable documents to E-learning environments and digital documents; accessibility, readability and content comprehensibility of official and specialized documents.
• Standards for digital documents intended for tactile or auditory perception, hybrid documents and the Digital Talking Book.
• Digital documents intended for reproduction of tactile, audio or visual documents, hybrid documents and DAISY.
• Universal design of video and audio formats.
• HTML, XML, MathML standards and digital tools for handling mathematical, physical, chemical and other symbolic notations via tactile or audio outputs.
• Digital libraries and their accessibility, digitization and standards for conversions among formats.
• Copyright issues related to universal design and individual accommodation of documents and individual access at national and international levels.
• Public library catalogues and their accessibility, sharing and internationalization.
• Cataloguing of tactile, audio and graphical documents; cataloguing of digital documents intended for individual reproduction of tactile, audio or graphical documents; cataloguing of the Web.
• IT literacy of persons with special needs, its standardization for individual impairment categories and academic public’s awareness of the specifics of such literacy.

4 Compensation Tools for the Specific Learning Disorders and Other Types of Diversity in Tertiary Education

The section focuses on:

• Typology of specific learning disabilities and other types of neurodiversity, testing and measuring of these among adults.
• Compensation strategies, their practicing and approach to persons with a compensatory disability.
• Individual accommodation of testing environment and technological compensatory devices.
• Differences in work with a screen reader, voice output and electronic formats between persons with specific learning disorders and the visually impaired.
• Electronic libraries and their usability by persons with specific learning disorders, digitization and standards for conversion among formats.
• Copyright issues related to universal design of documents for persons with specific learning disorders.

Keynotes

Universal Learning Design: A View from Conceptual Goals to the Actual Implementation

Arthur I. Karshmer

Department of Analytics & Technology
School of Management
University of San Francisco

From “Hearing Impairment” to “Deaf-Gain”: A Theoretical Framework for Universal Design for Learning?

H-Dirksen L. Bauman

Gallaudet University

Melissa Malzkuhn

Gallaudet University

Organising Student support using accessible electronic documents, e-books and audiobooks: an overview

Jan Engelen

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Dyslexia friendly tertiary education

Kate Saunders

British Dyslexia Association