Project website
What research questions the project addresses, aims & themes
The European Unified Framework for Accessible Lifelong Learning Project is about accommodating and supporting the diversity of ways people interact with technology for learning. The EU4ALL project was a major European Commission funded eInclusion project; that run from 2006 to 2011. Its remit was to research and then develop ways to make Life Long Learning (at Higher Education level) accessible to disabled people. The budget for EU4ALL was about €10 million and that funded an effort of approximately 100 person-years.
From a technological point of view, EU4ALL offers components and services that can be adopted by universities to improve their offering and make it more accessible. The goal is to offer a framework to support accessible lifelong learning paradigm... but the big question is: are universities ready to adopt such a solution and offer Lifelong Learning services accessible to all?
The readiness of institutions is not only related to technical aspects, but depends principally on social, political, organisational and management issues.
Since October 2006, companies, universities and organisations in the EU4ALL consortium have provided a set of services that can be integrated within virtual learning environments in a transparent way allowing everyone to have access to the educational resources by adapting them to the student's preferences and/or needs.
How the research questions are addressed by the project (methodology and activity/environment)
The project consisted of:
- Social-cultural-economic background research
- Requirements capture and specification
- Technical development
- Standards work
- Evaluation
- and Exploitation planning
Findings and outputs
- Socio-economic reports and data framing
- Specifications
- Content Personalisation System and eServices
- Evaluation Reports
Project impact
The project finished in 2011 and we are only beginning to see evidence of its impact beyond the consortium but this is now real.
Publications
Douce, Christopher; Porch, Wendy and Cooper, Martyn (2010). Adapting e-learning and learning services for people with disabilities. In: 1st International AEGIS Conference: Access for All in the Desktop, Web and Mobile Field: an End-User and Developer Perspective, 7-8 October 2010, Seville, Spain.
Cooper, M. and Heath, A. (2009). Access For all to eLearning. In: Méndez-Vilas, A.; Solano Martín, A.; Mesa González, J. A. and Mesa González, J. eds. Research Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education. FORMATEX, Badajoz, Spain, pp. 1139-1143.
Douce, Christopher and Porch, Wendy (2009). Evaluating accessible adaptable e-learning. In: Towards User Modeling and Adaptive Systems for All (TUMAS-A 2009): Modeling and Evaluation of Accessible Intelligent Learning Systems, 6 July 2009, Brighton, UK.
Douce, Christopher (2008). Considering the dimensions of life-long learning tools. In: Proceedings of the TenCompetence Open Workshop, 10-11 Apr 2010, Madrid, Spain.
Douce, Christopher; Cooper, Martyn; Porch, Wendy; White, Juliette and Heath, Andrew (2008). Exploring the extension of learning technology systems for accessibility (ALT-C 2008). In: ALT-C 2008: Rethinking the digital divide, 9-11 September 2008, University of Leeds, UK.
Douce, Christopher (2007). Adaptable accessible resources: a technology perspective. In: Towards User Modelling and Adaptive Systems for All (TUMAS-A), 26 June 2007, Corfu, Greece.
Douce, Christopher (2007). Introducing EU4ALL: connecting accessibility and e-learning. In: HEA e-Teaching and Learning Workshop, 9 June 2007, University of Greenwich, Greenwich, UK.
Boticario, J. G.; Cooper, M.; Montandon, L. and van Dorp, K. J. (2006). Towards an open, standard-based, reusable and extensible architecture of services for Accessible Lifelong Learning: an introduction to the EU4ALL Project. In: EADTU Conference, 23-23 November 2006, Tallin, Estonia.
Cooper, M.; Boticario, J. G. and Montandon, L. (2006). An introduction to Accessible Lifelong Learning (ALL) - a strategy for research and development uniting accessible technology, services, and e-learning infrastructure. In: European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) Research Workshop, 27 October 2006, Barcelona.
Keywords
Accessibility, educational technology, lifelong learning
People involved
Martyn Cooper, IET, The Open University
Project partners and links
Atos Origin SAE
UNED (SpanishNationalUniversity of Distance Learning)
The University of York
The Open University
Disabled Peoples' International (DPI Italia)
Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)
Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca per lo Sviluppo Sostenible, Universitá degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza": CIRPS
The European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU)
eXact Learning Solutions
Tribal
INDRA Software Lab
FhG / FIT :The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (FhG)
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV)
Instituto Politecnico de Leiria
Information Society Open to Impairments E-ISOTIS
Funder(s)
European Commission
Start Date and duration
1 January 2007 - 31 December 2010