Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training

EASIT is a strategic partnership of stakeholders from different fields that addresses innovation in higher education, with a focus on one of the European priorities in the national context: social inclusion. Easy reading (ER) is an access service that guarantees access to those who may have difficulties reading or understanding texts such as persons with intellectual or sensory disabilities, persons with reading difficulties or persons learning a new language such as migrants, to name just a few. Hence, the professionals trained through EASIT open educational resources will be able to create accessible content that reduces social inequalities and guarantees access to information to all, with an emphasis on digital and audiovisual contents.
EASIT will define the skills of new professional profile(s) (IO3), will design a curriculum (IO4) and will develop innovative educational materials to train different trainee profiles in easy reading (IO5), while approaching assessment and certification (IO6). To define both the professional skills and the content of the open educational resources, it will be necessary to define a methodological framework for implementation, putting forward best practices in training and practice in ER (IO1) and exploring innovative best practices in audiovisual content (IO2).
EASIT will help approach diversity and promote values related to non-discrimination and social inclusion, as a necessary first step in the training will be to gain awareness on the needs of diverse users and also because self-advocates will be involved. The innovative open educational resources that will be created will enhance the development of social and intercultural skills because the project will adopt a multicultural approach generating open educational contents in different languages, many of them minority languages (Catalan, Galician, Swedish, Slovene).
EASIT will develop materials that are open, following the open-access approach promoted by the European Commission (COM2007/56, C2012/4890). EASIT is also in line with the EC’s initiative “An agenda for the modernisation of higher education” (28/02/2017, EACB1) since it aims to equip people with the right skills for our digital and modern society and tackle a skills mismatch. The open nature of the training materials will contribute to tackle social divisions and allow for a wider inclusion. At the same time, the easy to read and easy to understand contents future trainees will be able to create will also contribute to the same aim.
To sum up, EASIT will tackle multiple horizontal priorities: it will develop high-quality skills and competences and will support prospective trainees in acquiring and developing skills that will foster their employability and personal development. It will address social inclusion through innovative and integrated approaches, a priority at national level. And it will also deal with open education and innovative practices, by proposing new professional profile(s) and by developing training materials that aim at innovation and skills mismatch fulfillment, hence supporting employability and transfer between different jobs. Concerning the field-specific priorities, it will tackle a skills gap and mismatch by proposing a curriculum that meets learners, society and labour market needs. EASIT will support the use of digital technologies and online delivery at transnational level, while striving for excellence. Special emphasis will be put on developing, testing and implementing flexible and modular course designs to better adapt to the needs of diverse students. EASIT will also contribute to innovation by developing innovative ideas such as the hybridisation of easy reading in audiovisual environments and providing training for it. Easy reading will not only refer to the printed word but to digital contents that need to be easy to understand. All this will only be possible thanks to a combination of complementary partners coming from academia, the industry and end user associations.