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.

Services for people with dementia in the UK have developed piecemeal in the context of wider agency agendas. Health and social care agencies located in rural areas face particular challenges if they are to be able to support people with dementia within their communities. This article describes a piece of work carried out in three rural counties in East Anglia designed to map services across the statutory, voluntary and private sectors, and to describe the ways in which national policy is being interpreted to meet local need. Examples of innovative practice, as well as gaps in service design and delivery, were identified through an examination of local policy documents and qualitative interviews with strategic managers, frontline managers and practitioners, and local carers of people with dementia. The findings confirm that services for older people with dementia are under‐developed in comparison with services for older people generally, and in comparison with mental health services for working age adults. There are particular gaps with respect to rarer types of dementia, services for people with learning difficulties, and services for people from minority ethnic groups. Historically, a lack of strategic planning has meant that service development has been patchy and unco‐ordinated. Carers have been affected by a shortage of joined‐up information, high eligibility criteria and a change to short‐term working by practitioners. Nevertheless, the potential for developing community‐based and inclusive services for people with dementia is apparent, and the adaptability required of rural areas may, subject to further evaluation, provide a template for service development elsewhere.

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.

Health and social care agencies located in rural areas face particular challenges if they are to be able to effectively support people with dementia within their communities. Ann McDonald and Becky Heath describe a piece of work carried out in three rural counties in East Anglia that mapped services across the statutory, voluntary and private sectors and explored how national policy was being interpreted to meet local need. The findings confirm that services for older people with dementia are under-developed compared to those for older people generally, but reveal that there is the potential to develop community-based and inclusive services for people who have dementia.

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