Environments) 1 was about exploring the terms on which young people with intellectual disability access and participate with e-Learning and the Web. The current study is one of a number of related studies. It explores the culture of information and communication technology (ICT) and the potential to support communication and empowerment. Materials and Methods Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 young people with intellectual disability. The interviews involved a low-technology, augmentative communication method called Talking Mats (Murphy & Cameron 2002).Findings Information and communication technology and rich and multiple media featured in the participants' narratives and contributed to self-concept and inclusive communication. Positive value was attributed to ICT options by many, although some difficulties were expressed with regard to operational aspects of the technology.Conclusions The lives of young people with intellectual disability provide a fertile culture for developments in this area, offering some new opportunities for communication and empowerment.

We extended 'littleBits' electronic components by attaching them to a larger base that was designed to help make them easier to pick up and handle, and easier to assemble into circuits for people with learning disabilities. A pilot study with a group of students with learning disabilities was very positive. There were fewer difficulties in assembling the components into circuits, and problems such as attempting to connect them the wrong way round or the wrong way up were eliminated completely.

In this project we explore how to enhance the experience and understanding of cultural heritage in museums and heritage sites by creating interactive multisensory objects collaboratively with artists, technologists and people with learning disabilities. We focus here on workshops conducted during the first year of a three year project in which people with learning disabilities each constructed a 'sensory box' to represent their experiences of Speke Hall, a heritage site in the UK. The box is developed further in later workshops which explore aspects of physicality and how to appeal to the entire range of senses, making use of Arduino technology and basic sensors to enable an interactive user experience.

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Project @pple (Access & Participation for People with intellectual disability in Learning Environments) was about exploring the terms for access and participation in e-learning and the World Wide Web. The current study aimed to explore the role of human mediation in student use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the special needs classroom. Video ethnography was employed to capture user engagement with ICT in a special secondary school for children with severe intellectual disability in the U.K. Five single cases were identified and the data were sampled, transcribed and evaluated for interactional structure and modes of communication. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences between teacher and student communication on all the measures. Teachers occupied significantly more turns than students. There were relatively few opportunities for the student to make a contribution to the interaction process with requests from teachers dominating the dialogues. The teachers communicated through speech mainly, with some gestural support towards aspects of the computer-based activity. This small scale study is illustrative of characteristics found in teacher-talk in other studies of classroom discourse. Engagement in computer-based activities appears to be inseparable from the communication context determined by the type of linguistic support given by the teacher.