Language learning through online tools has become customary, especially during COVID-19 pandemic, but this type of education does not always consider the requirements for students with special educational needs (SEN) despite teachers struggle to include disabled students in online teaching. This article presents the educational potential of using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to help SEN students learn English. First, a theoretical framework that covers the basis of the En-Abilities project and the UDL pedagogical principles that sustain the platform organisation and contents is provided. Then, practical examples of some of the activities and the results gathered after its practical implementation are shown. In the conclusions, achievements are summarised and new paths to explore in the field of foreign languages learning for students with SEN are foreseen.

Normal People, the TV series, aired in Ireland during the pandemic lockdown in spring 2020 and became an instant hit. This romantic drama, based on Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel, offers an updated representation of the tensions inherent in the process of growing up for Irish youth, a context extensive to other Western countries. The aim of this article is to explore the critique behind the romance through an in-depth interpretation of the protagonists’ problematic process of coming-of-age. For this purpose, the dramatic aspects of this cinematic narrative are explored in terms of composition, narration and focalization. Under the critical lens of postfeminism, this article analyses how psychological violence and explicit and rough sex are used in the series as forms of (mis)communication, with a particular interest in the combination of camera work, dialogues and silences. Finally, this article assesses to what extent Normal People naturalizes mundane life and succeeds in adhering to the romantic plot within the frame of neoliberal and postfeminist values.

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The history of the African American community has been inexorably bound to the concepts of oppression, downgrading, racism, hatred and trauma. Although the association between racism and concomitant negative psychological outcome has been widely assessed, little work has been done to study the role of literature as a cultural means to promote resilience among this oppressed group. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) stands out as a novelist, poet and playwright, and is one of the primary contributors to the Harlem Renaissance movement. Following the framework of theories of resilience, this article analyses the representation of adversity and positive adaptation in Langston Hughes’s early stage poetry, and assesses his contribution to resilience among the African American people at a time of hardship and oppression.