Intellectual disabled people must be integral part of the society. ICT skills are gateway to today’s world and information society also for intellectual disabled people. There are some ICT school programmes for this target group, but majority of young disabled people gets informal education in using new technology. There is a lack of formal structures and tools to assess their ICT skills acquired through formal, non-formal and informal education.

The overall aim of the project is to include mentally disabled people in the information society and in this way decrease e-skills gap (digital divide) which is being particularly noticeable among this target group. To include mentally disabled people in the information society means also to make the society aware of such a possibility. The partnership will prepare diagnostic tool to assess ICT skills of the young intellectual disabled people and then procedures for certification .

Target groups:

• youngsters who are intellectual disabled, who would like to proof their ICT skills
• parents who might be interested in measuring the ICT competences of their disabled children
• institutions (mainly educational) which would like to start running certificate examinations.
• teachers (especially IT teachers), assistants, school managers, and also therapists who run rehabilitation based on ICT
• higher education institutions, which may take the decision of becoming certification centres.

Innovative character of the project

New idea – project develops new idea on assessing ICT skills of mentally disabled by establishing patterns of assessment and possible ways of certification. The project focuses on practically unexplored subject of ICT for the benefit of mentally disabled people. ICT skills of this target group neither have been formally assessed so far, nor certificated in any way, especially in the framework of internationally recognized certificate. This outcome refers definitely to the second aspect of innovation - new method – nobody tried to assess ICT skills of this group in the scope of the certified examinations and with the support of the online tool. New device - The project will provide mentally disabled youngsters with online tool which is totally new, created especially for the purpose of the project. The tool will be constructed in a way which will allow even users with no reading skills use it and take benefits of it.