The contribution of ICTs to the delivery of special educational needs in Ghana: practices and potential

Abstract

This paper explores three main issues in the context of Ghana: constraints on the delivery of effective special educational needs (SEN); the range of information and communication technologies (ICT)-based needs identified by teachers, pupils and organizations involved in the delivery of SEN; and existing practices in the use of ICTs in SEN in the country. It concludes that people with disabilities continue to be highly marginalized, both in terms of policy and practice. Those involved in delivering SEN nevertheless recognize that ICTs can indeed contribute significantly to the learning processes of people with disabilities. Governments across Africa must take positive action to ensure that such experience with ICTs can be used to enable those with SEN to achieve their full potential, whether in special schools or included within mainstream education.

Keywords:

• IT ethics and development
• IT and the emergence of the knowledge society
• IT strategies for development (national and sectoral)

Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to all those who took time to respond to our enquiries, to the referees whose comments on an earlier draft of this paper have helped us improve its intelligibility, and also to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and Royal Holloway, University of London, for providing financial support for this research. This paper builds on the dissertation submitted by one of us (Godfred Bonnah Nkansah) as partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Science in Practising Sustainable Development at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Notes

Richard T. Watson is the accepting Guest Editor for this article.

Assistive technologies are here considered to be devices that assist people with disabilities to perform functions that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for them to perform.

All web links were checked for accuracy in January 2010.