The role of assistive technology in renegotiating the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education in North Africa

ABSTRACT

This article considers the impact of a two-year collaborative European Union-funded project. The ‘Sustainable Ways to Increase Higher Education Students’ Equal Access to Learning Environments’ (SWING) project, brought together four European higher education institutions, one institution in Egypt and two in Morocco. It aimed to promote equal access to university education, and future career opportunities, for students with disabilities in the North African countries, using accessible assistive technology. Appreciative inquiry was used to explore the impact of the project processes and outcomes. We will share how the focus on assistive technology addressed the invisibility of students with disabilities by promoting individual and collective student agency. Students’ emerging sense of empowerment is attributed to two factors that inform the wider inclusive education debate: the power of technology as a mediator of change and the importance of a bottom-up/top-down dynamic.

KEYWORDS:

• Students with disabilities
• inclusive education
• assistive technologies
• agency

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the many students, members of the project team, and wider academic and professional services networks in Egypt, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Spain, for their contributions to the SWING project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Tempus was funded through the European Union Framework Programme but is now part of the Horizon2020 programme [grant number 543716-TEMPUS-1-2013-1-UK-TEMPUS-JPGR].