Functional diversity in higher education: curriculum accommodation for people with vision disability or hearing impairment in the English as a Foreign Language classroom

Abstract

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Begoña Bellés-Fortuño, who guided me throughout this project. This dissertation could not have been possible without her invaluable advice and continuous support. I also wish to acknowledge the help and guidance provided by Dr Lucía Bellés-Calvera, from whom I have learnt so much in the past years. Furthermore, I would like to show my deep appreciation to Dr Robert Martínez-Carrasco for always seeing my potential and encouraging me to pursue a PhD. Thank you, truly, to Begoña, Lucía and Robert, three people I can proudly call friends in the world of academia. Moreover, I am profoundly grateful to the personnel at the Diversity and Disability Unit at Universitat Jaume I, headed by Olga Carbó Badal, as my research would have been impossible without their aid. By the same token, I would also like to extend my thanks to the students and lecturers who participated in the study, and to the teacher at ONCE who offered some guidelines in exam adaptations for blind or partially blind students. I am also indebted to Professor Ruslan Mitkov and all the members of the Research Group in Computational Linguistics at the University of Wolverhampton, England, who welcomed me during my research stay.Getting through my dissertation required more than academic support. None of this could have happened without the unwavering support and belief in me from my family and friends. I would like to thank my partner, Pau, for making me laugh whenever I needed it most and putting up with me sitting in front of my computer for hours on end. Also, thanks to my dearest friend, Luci, who always found the right words of encouragement to keep me afloat. Moreover, my thanks would not be complete without acknowledging the role of my English teacher, and great friend, Pilar, who has always been an inspiration.