Using AI and the Techability Standards to create tailored guidance for organisations to improve their assistive technology provision
Presenters: Neil Harrod-Beck, Richard Greenwood and Tim Coughlan (OUUK)
There are life-changing opportunities for technologies to support study and training for students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. However staff at mainstream and specialist education providers struggle to develop the expertise and effective strategies for this to be fully realised. There is often a technology-first approach, buying inappropriate equipment, rather than understanding what would be pedagogically effective. TechAbility works to address this through its UK-wide Champions Network, training and consultation, but organisational learning and change is a persistent challenge where expertise is limited and there are continual advancements in technology.
The TechAbility Standards (https://www.techability.org.uk/techability-standards) have been developed to address this, providing structured guidance for use by staff and organisations to audit their current provision, identifying areas for improvement. Through a Knowledge Transfer Voucher collaboration between Techability, Natspec and the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University, we have developed and tested a prototype system that uses GPT to produce tailored reports for each institution, identifying areas for attention, potential actions and summarised guidance, based on the Standards.
This presentation will introduce the Techability Standards and the challenges they aim to tackle in supporting disabled learners, then describe our exploration of where AI can be employed to enhance the audit process with input and feedback from member organisations. We will highlight the wider potential implications for strategy development, quality assurance and enhancement using AI tools which can provide tailored advice based on standards and guidance.