On 26 October 2011, PhoenixKM provided a keynote speech at ITAG 2011 (Interactive Technologies and Games: Education, Health and Disability 2011) event in Nottingham, UK, entitled “The end-user at the centre of all AT developments”, also addressing ViPi.
After the presentation, NTU made an in-depth presentation on “Training on ICT skills for people with disabilities around Europe”, gathering the almost final results of the ViPi survey that was conducted by ViPi in 2011.
ViPi organised a successful national workshop in Larnaca, Cyprus on 3 October 2011, with following agenda:
14:00 – 14:30 Registration
14:30 – 14:35 Welcoming (George Milis, G.M EuroCy Innovations Ltd)
14:35 – 14.45 General introduction of the ViPi project (Karel Van Isacker, PhoenixKM) – ppt
Cyprus situation regarding education and employability of people with disabilities (invited talks by representatives):
14:45 – 15.05 The School for the Blind “Agios Varnavas” (Christina Eliadou and Anthias Paschalis) – ppt1 / ppt2
15:05 – 15:25 VIScientific (Stavros Papastavrou) – ppt
15:25 – 15:45 Muscular Dystrophy Association Cyprus (Stelios Stylianou)- ppt
15:45 – 16.00 Coffee-Break
Current project work and findings:
16:00 – 16:15 ViPi Survey (Andy Burton, Nottingham Trent University) – ppt
16:15 – 16:30 Basic ICT Training curriculum (Andy Burton, Nottingham Trent University) – ppt
16:30 – 16:45 ViPi platform technologies and integration pathway (Karel Van Isacker and Panagiotis Tsoris, PHOENIXKM/STEFICON) – ppt
16:45 – 17:00 Mobile applications (Panagiotis Tsoris, STEFICON) – ppt
17:00 – 17:15 Semantic Content Management enhancements (George Milis, G.M EuroCy Innovations Ltd) – ppt
17:15 – 18.15 Open (moderated) discussion among participants, to affect the present and future of the ViPi project
18:15 Wrap-up and closing
Below, you can see a short interview with Stelios Stylianou (Muscular Dystrophy Association Cyprus).
ViPi will present at the Accessibility Reaching Everywhere – AEGIS Workshop and International Conference, taking place in Brussels, Belgium on 28-30 November 2011.
The paper will focus on the impact of the economic and financial crisis on social services for people with disabilities, including the provision of assistive technologies that is affected in EU member states.
ViPi will attend and present at the “Interactive Technologies and Games: Education, Health and Disability 2011″ event in Nottingham on 25-26 October 2011, organised by Nottingham Trent University.
The aim of the conference is to bring together academics and practitioners working with interactive technologies to explore and innovate within the areas of Education, Health and Disability. The event has a particular focus on the use of gaming hardware and software to implement accessible solutions, interaction design using new input/output devices and the increasing impact of ubiquitous computing on our everyday well being.
More information can be found on the conference website.
We just also launched our mobile version of the ViPi website. You can now access our site with a mobile theme for visitors on Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.
ViPi project will attend the Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels on 16-17 June 2011. As part of public events around the Digital Agenda for Europe the European Commission is organising this event, which is expected to draw quite a large audience.
As part of that event, the European Commission are setting up a session which will take place in the morning of the 17th of June, and will address the “Digital literacy and e-Inclusion“. This workshop aims to create in-depth awareness and provide practical tools for the EU Member States to engage in structured, long term policies for digital literacy acquisition in the e-Inclusion context (Digital Agenda action 66).
Through a participative workshop in the form of a hands-on training centre, digital literacy courses of various levels (from basic to professional ICT skills), for various target groups and purposes will be available (e.g. employability, re-skilling, social inclusion).
Models of successful and relevant policies and funding mechanisms of all levels will be discussed. A set of stakeholder recommendations as to the remaining challenges to be addressed as priority will be drawn.
PhoenixKM (Belgium) coordinates the ViPi project that aims to provide a “one-stop-shop” interactive portal & learning environment, targeted towards trainers and trainees, with particular attention towards people with disabilities. The project partnership brings together organizations and companies from Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, UK and Lithuania.
BELGIUM, BRUSSELS – 26 January 2011 – An estimated 45 million people in Europe have a long-standing health problem or disability (LSHPD), being 16% of men and women aged 16-64 in the EU as a whole (2002 EU Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the 2004 EU Statistics on Incomes and Living Conditions).
33% of the people with LSHPD are not restricted in the kind or amount of work they could do or their mobility to and from work. Figures vary largely across EU members (10-50%).
This difference is directly linked to the level of prosperity and the assistance available. Of those that are considerably restricted in their ability to work, 28% were in employment, while for those that are not restricted in their ability to work, this is estimated at 68%.
Today the fast development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provides alternative and creative solutions for the employment of people with disabilities. Recent studies conducted by various projects such as ACCESSIBLE and AEGIS have highlighted that people with disabilities (PwD) can benefit enormously from digital competences which are core life and employability skills (see Lisbon Objectives). However, same and other studies revealed also that the main barrier is the lack of specific training support or material. In addition to that, a number of other skills such as literacy and numeracy skills equally form a potential barrier towards employment of PwD.
ViPi project envisages fulfilling the gap of accessible and flexible training, designed to meet the specific needs of people with disabilities, as well as the trainers themselves.
ViPi project will develop an interactive online platform where people with disabilities can access a wide variety of ICT training courses and serious games for acquiring ICT skills, while trainers will be able to upload and download specific learning objects, using a semantically enriched environment to improve the searchability, thus increasing the relevance of the results obtained.
ViPi platform will comprise a virtual collaborative learning environment for people with disabilities and their trainers to interact, providing a vast repository of learning objects (LOs) that focus on basic ICT literacy. This will allow people with disabilities to grasp these core skills and become able to enter or sustain their employment in the regular labour market. The platform will be enriched with intuitive and accessible mobile and Internet/PC based educational/serious games. Additionally, also a mobile Android based social application linked with ViPi platform will be deployed.
Furthermore, ViPi will also develop a customized and localized curriculum on ICT skills and training, with various additional training materials (different formats), and a trainer handbook. All project outcomes will initially be available in Dutch, English, Greek and Lithuanian languages.
The Project partnership consists of Steficon (Greece), Hypertech (Greece), Hiteco (Lithuania), Nottingham Trent University (the UK), and EuroCy Innovations Ltd. (Cyprus), while the Project Coordinator is PhoenixKM (Belgium). More information can be found on www.vipi-project.eu and twitter.com/ViPi_project.
The ViPi KA3 LLL project has been partially funded under the Lifelong Learning program, subprogramme KA3 ICT.
Events, News, Relevant events | admin | 
26/10/2011 5:17 am | 
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