What is the news : The Education Ministry has laid down new guidelines for producing digital education resources for children with disabilities, after a year in which the COVID-driven shift to online education has spotlighted the lacunae in such resources.

Details : The closure of regular schools and learning centres due to COVID-19 has led to special difficulties for many disabled children. For instance, a recent study by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy showed that more than half of the NCERT textbooks available on the government’s virtual education platform DIKSHA were not accessible for visually impaired students.

What is inside it:

The guidelines

• Are based on four guiding principles, stipulating that all resources must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for disabled students.
• Recommend that all textbooks be made digitally accessible in a phased manner, so that they are available in multiple formats such as text, audio, video and sign language with turn-on and turn-off features. Det ailed technical standards have been provided.
• Provide strategies to produce supplementary content for varying disabilities, including students who face visual and hearing challenges, those on the autism spectrum, those with intellectual or special learning disabilities, and those with multiple disabilities.
• Note that learning activities must include audio, visual and tactile experiences, while evaluation must be multimodal.