You Need
Spreading the Word
June 2001
Gyrating in June. The more people who know about Special Needs resources the more abundant, available and the less expensive they become. Martin Littler gives this virtuous gyroscope a spin.
| Once Local Education Authorities, produced their own computer resources - including special needs resources. Leaders like Clywd in Wales and Derbyshire in England would create resources based on the special needs of a particular child. In a contrary world, this process produced My World perhaps the most universally used mainstream educational IT resource ever produced in the UK. But elsewhere, square wheels were re-invented when perfectly good round wheels existed across the county line. In the eighties the SEMERCs (Special Education Micro-Electronic Resource Centres) were set up to collect and promote the best special needs computer learning resources available from across the UK. The market got bigger; the resources got better and less expensive. Everybody benefited - particularly learners with Special Needs. |  Mick Archer (centre) of Special Children, with Martin Littler and Ruth Ziolkowski, the President of Don Johnston Inc at Special Needs IT in Bolton |
This same process continues on a larger scale today. It is essential. The quality threshold for new resources, hardware or software, is so high that producers and publishers need to spread their development costs across the maximum number of users - or nobody will be able to buy what they make. Meanwhile teachers and publishers in the smaller markets need to be kept updated on resources produced elsewhere - particularly in North America, Britain, Scandinavia and Australia.
Exhibitions, conferences, catalogues, seminars, training and the educational press drive the whole process. It costs at least as much effort to tell the world that you have a product to meet special needs as it does to develop that product in the first place. Over the years we have oiled the (round) wheels by cataloging the very best both at SEMERC and, since 1996, at Inclusive Technology. For seven years I organised the Micros for Special Needs Exhibition in Oldham and the Special Needs Village at BETT while sponsoring the first NASEN conference and every ONSEC for the last twelve years.
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 John Simnett ran the Antarctic Marathon, sponsored by Inclusive Technology's "Not at BETT" Exhibition and Seminars. Gt. Ormond Street's Kids Kidney Appeal gains £5,050. Left to Right: Prof Woolf, Research S/r Carol Hutchinson, John Simnett, Martin Littler, Trish Hornsey |
Now, at Inclusive Technology, we have Special Needs IT in Bolton each May and in Islington each November (1/2/3 November in 2001). More than 5,000 came to Bolton last week with 650 giving us an hour of their time at the How-IT-Works seminars and Presidents' Presentations. The third event in our calendar will be the Special Needs Fringe (formerly Not at BETT) in the Kensington Olympia Hilton next door to the BETT 2002 exhibition at Olympia.
Coincidentally, the United States has three major "Assistive Technology" exhibitions - they would call them conferences: ATIA in Orlando (January), CSUN in Los Angeles (March) and Closing the Gap in Minneapolis (October). Each of these has a large British contingent looking for the next IntelliKeys or Co:Writer. In short, each of us hunting out new American resources which could be adapted and localized for use in the UK.
Inclusive Technology is one of a number of British companies that has been exhibiting at these conferences for some years. I covered Closing the Gap for the Times Education Supplement in 1994 and have been going to this Conference ever since. Our products have always aroused interest. Much of our SwitchIt! software is published under license by IntelliTools and our keyguards are sold by Zygo and Mayer-Johnson. Our huge range of LäraMera software (like Teddy Games and Abrakadabra) is not available in the US nor is SwitchIt! Maker or ChooseIt! Maker. VariTech adjustable height computer tables cause gasps of admiration, but cannot be bought in the US. Nor can SwITchbox, SwITchboard and much, much more. The best we have been able to offer is a catalogue in British £'s - not a catalog in $USD. This will change this autumn (sorry, this fall) when we set up our United States office and mail 220,000 copies of our American catalogue (sorry, catalog).
So that's British, American, Australian and Swedish special needs information and resources coming into Britain and now into North America too. What about the rest of the World?
Well computer related special needs resources are currently plentiful in English speaking markets (including Scandinavia) and in relatively well off countries. Localization continues apace: most remarkably with Mayer-Johnson's BoardMaker. This industry standard symbol picture communication tool is already available for fifteen languages and on track for one hundred and fifty languages! Meanwhile we know that more knowledge of special needs and the expertise and resources available to students and their teachers will excite interest and allow prices to fall and distribution channels to open and flow.
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Our work sponsoring ONSEC over twelve years led to an opportunity to sponsor the International Special Education Conference (ISEC) for last year's ISEC 2000. After six months of excruciatingly hard work we have published the proceedings of this most important international gathering on the Internet. These proceeding will be published in July as a CD-ROM, ISBN: 1-903618-13-4. |
| You may wonder why materials available on the Internet also need publishing on CD-ROM. Well the massive volume of materials available would mean hours and hours of on-line time. This would be slow for researchers and expensive for all users both in the West and in the South. |  |
 ISEC 2000. Princess Anne receives a £2,000 Inclusive Technology donation for Save the Children |
 Inclusive Directors Trish Hornsey and Martin Littler with Prof Peter Mittler and HRH the Princess Royal |
The one thousand delegates from one hundred countries who attended ISEC 2000 will be surprised to receive an ISEC CD-ROM free of charge, as additional sponsorship from Inclusive Technology. Those who have already pre-paid for a copy will be getting a welcome surprise too. In addition we will be sending the papers and proceedings of ISEC 2000 on CD-ROM, free of charge, to eleven hundred people, all over the world, on the Enabling Education Network (EENET) database.
Inclusive Technology has sponsored EENET for five years now. As fellow collectors and disseminators of special needs information we felt an immediate warmth towards them. As part of our EENET sponsorship we are also publishing all of the EENET materials that we have put on the Internet - again as a CD-ROM. To balance the information flow we are sending this CD to ISEC delegates as well as to our EENET contacts.
It is all part of the dissemination of special needs information worldwide. Happy Browsing!
Martin Littler
5th June 2001