Union education minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, approved guidelines to develop e-content for children with disabilities with the objectives of promoting inclusive education.
PM eVidya programme
PM e-Vidya programme was launched by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on May 17, 2020 as a COVID-19 relief measures. Under the programme, expert committee has made detailed recommendations on creating accessible special e-content for Divyang, or children with disabilities.
What are those recommendations?
- Committee presented the report called ‘Guidelines for the Development of e-Content for Children with Disabilities’. It has eleven sections and two appendices on creating e-content for visually and hearing-impaired students.
- Report laid special emphasis on extensive use of radio, community radio and podcasts. It also recommends to upload QR-coded digital textbooks.
- Content must comply with “international accessibility standards” and recommends “reasonable pedagogical accommodations” in case of special disabilities.
- Content should be provided in multiple formats viz., text, video, audio, sign language with turn-on and turn-off features.
- e-learning platforms like DIKSHA and e-pathshala must comply with technical standards.
- Content must be provided with descriptive hyperlinks to access additional information on internet.
e-modules for training
Committee also recommends to create e-modules to train the content developers and curators to create and curate accessible content. This will enhance acceptability compliance. It will be mandatory for all content developers and curators to go through training modules.