Access For All

The Lifelong Learning paradigm recognises that, in a knowledge based economy, education and work are integrated throughout people’s lives.

All citizens need ongoing access to learning to enable them to work. Technology is playing an increasing role in mediating this learning. However, if this technology is inappropriate and introduced with insufficient support, disabled people will face even further exclusion from the interlinked worlds of education and work.

To address this, EU4ALL (a four year project which started in october 2006) sets forward the concept of Accessible Lifelong Learning (ALL) uniting 3 key strategies:

1. That the technology that mediates lifelong learning does so accommodating the diversity of ways people interact with technology and the content and services it delivers
2. That this technology is used to bring support services to disabled learners
3. Providing support services and technical infrastructure that enable teaching, technical and administrative staff of educational institutions to offer their teaching and services in a way that is accessible to disabled learners

The aim of EU4ALL is to improve the efficiency and efficacy of implementing these strategies by developing an open service architecture for ALL. To achieve a wide impact the approach taken is not to develop a single EU4ALL system but a standards based framework that facilitates the integration of the approach with a wide range of eLearning systems.

More specifically the goals of EU4ALL are to:
* Design an open service-oriented architecture for ALL
* Develop the software infrastructure for ALL services (including content, support and access services)
* Provide technical standards/specifications for ALL applications integrated with current and emerging eLearning standards
* Validate the results in large-scale higher education settings

Two broad user groups benefit from the EU4ALL project:
1. End-users: Adult learners with disabilities, teachers, and tutors
2. System-users: Providers of eLearning systems, content and services

More information can be found on the project website.

The EMERGE project aims to support the activities of daily living of elderly people with an innovative monitoring system. With the use of ambient and unobtrusive sensors EMERGE plans to monitor activity, location and vital data of elderly people and detect deviations from typical behavior. The project engineers a prototype that treats emergencies with stepwise assistance. More specifically, the three steps involved are:
* To provide proactive assistance to the elderly people themselves and then integrate friends, family or caregivers, if necessary
* To contact the Emergency Medical Service (EMS), in case the emergency situation can not be resolved, and provide information about the medical situation of the affected person
* To resolve the situation through the involvement of EMS who provide medical care, telemedicine counseling or send a rescue team.

More information can be found on the project website.

The project will support participants in training and further training activities, in the acquisition and the use of knowledge, skills and qualifications to facilitate personal development, employability and participation in the European Labour Market.

In addition, GOAL aims to support improvements in quality and innovation in vocational education, training systems, institutions and practices as well as enhance the attractiveness of vocational education and training and mobility for employers and individuals and to facilitate the mobility of working trainees.

More information can be found on the project website.

The e-Access II Project provides the technical infrastructure (tools and services) and the training for developing and sharing of Accessible e-Training Resources and e-Training Courses that can be reusable between different e-Training Platforms and Programmes.

The main outcomes of the e-Access II project will be:
(a) the transfer of know-how across Europe on producing accessible e-Training Resources and Courses and providing e-Training services to People with Disabilities,
(b) the validation of the e-Access key results/outcomes in different European Settings and
(c) the transfer of innovative e-Training practices across Europe.

More information can be found on the project website.

Accessibility is an urgent issue nowadays. Authorities and experts are putting a lot of effort on pushing forward accessibility of software applications but, despite this fact, ICT applications and systems are not fully accessible yet. The triggering idea behind ACCESSIBLE is to contribute for better accessibility for all citizens, to increase the use of standards, and to develop an assessment simulation environment (including a suite of accessibility analysing tools as well as developer-aid tools) to assess efficiently, easily and rapidly the accessibility and viability of software applications for all user groups.

ACCESSIBLE will exploit the technologies behind the recent expansion of accessibility tools and standardisation methodologies, in order to provide an integrated simulation assessment environment for supporting the production of accessible software applications mobile or not.

This will enable large organisations, SMEs or individuals (developers, designers, etc.) to produce software products of superior accessibility and quality, accompanied with appropriate measures and proposals for best practice. The proposed system will be demonstrated in the four pilots of ACCESSIBLE for the assessment of: a) Mobile applications (including JavaFX Scripts), b) Web applications, c) Web services (mainly focusing on infomobility services), and d) description languages (e.g. UML, SDL, etc.).

More information can be found on the project website.

OASIS is an Integrated Project with the scope to revolutionise the interoperability, quality, breadth and usability of services for all daily activities of older people.

More specifically, OASIS targets to utilise ICT and other key technologies in order to provide holistic services to older people to support their physical and psychological independence, stimulate their social or psychological engagement and foster their emotional well being.

In doing so, OASIS thus addresses key areas of their activities encompassing: independent living and socialising, autonomous mobility, and flexible work-ability.

OASIS introduces an innovative, Ontology-driven, Open Reference Architecture and Platform, which will enable and facilitate interoperability, seamless connectivity and sharing of content between different services and ontologies in all application domains relevant to applications for the elderly and beyond. The OASIS platform is open, modular, holistic, easy to use and standards abiding. It includes a set of novel tools for content/services connection and management, for user interfaces creation and adaptation and for service personalization and integration. Through this new Architecture, over 12 different types of services are connected with the OASIS Platform for the benefit of the elderly, covering user needs and wants in terms of Independent Living Applications (nutritional advisor, activity coach, brain and skills trainers, social communities platform, health monitoring and environmental control), Autonomous Mobility and Smart Workplaces Applications (elderly-friendly transport information services, elderly-friendly route guidance, personal mobility services and smart workplace applications). Applications are all integrated as a unified, dynamic service batch, managed by the OASIS Service Centre and supporting all types of mobile devices (tablet PC, PDA, smartphone, automotive device, ITV, infokiosk, …) and all types of environments (living labs, sheltered homes, private homes, two car demonstrators, public transport, DSRT, etc.). As user friendliness and acceptability is a top priority for the project, a user-centred design approach is followed along the service and application development. Tested iteratively and thoroughly by hundreds of end users, their caregivers and other stakeholders, the OASIS platform and applications will be optimized and submitted for standardization by the purpose-established OASIS world-wide Industrial Forum.

The resulting integrated systems and services will be tested in four sites Europe-wide (UK, Germany, Italy and a combined eastern site in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria). This will be the ultimate step to evaluate the overall success of the reference architecture and tools, as well as each individual application and to get the required data to optimize OASIS system and services within the project and beyond.

More information can be found on the project website.