Installing apps and navigating the internet safely: project aims to facilitate access to the digital world for people with learning difficulties

Wheelchair users find stairs and steps difficult to navigate, preventing them from access to all areas. Similarly, people with impaired vision find life more difficult when there are no tactile floor markings. Kathrin Arndt is a student member of the EU Erasmus+ Project INDICO, which aims to make it easier for people with learning difficulties to access the digital world. In response to the question of what the metaphorical stairs and missing floor markings represent for people with learning difficulties, we learn: “For our target group, the language we use online is a barrier. If we want to enable people with learning difficulties to participate in the digital space on an equal footing, we need what is known as simple language.”

The European Commission wants to ensure that 80 percent of adult EU citizens have at least basic digital skills by 2030. People with learning difficulties face particular challenges in this regard. Even the assessment tools that already exist to evaluate one’s own digital skills are not available in simple language. “The digital world is not an inclusive space,” says Kathrin Arndt. The project initially aims to develop a framework for digital skills for this target group: “We want to understand what digital skills people with learning difficulties need and how to classify these skills.” To this end, the team is conducting interviews with experts and people with learning difficulties. The ultimate goal is to develop a methodology for assessing skills. With the help of a tool based on this methodology, people will be able to work with their support providers to determine their digital skills.

“Our aim is to raise awareness of the barriers to access in the digital sphere,” Kathrin Arndt explains. This issue affects not only people with learning difficulties, but also those who require basic education, i.e. those who struggle with reading and writing, and people whose first language is not German. We ask Kathrin Arndt how she defines the group of people with learning difficulties and she explains: “We had to come up with a definition for the project. However, I believe that everyone who needs it and thinks it could be beneficial to them should be able to use the service we are developing as part of INDICO. Definitions often lead us into restrictive, pigeonholed thinking, which is not helpful for people with learning difficulties.” The INDICO project is just one of several initiatives through which researchers in the field of adult education and vocational training at the Department of Educational Science are working to promote social justice, inclusion and participation for all members of our society.

As a member of the project team, Kathrin Arndt can contribute a wealth of experience. She has been studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Education since February 2020, and her son was born in August 2020. Nevertheless, she managed to continue her studies and started working as a tutor in 2021, later becoming a teaching assistant. Her focus is on adult education. This is an area she knows well from her own experience: After graduating from secondary school, she started her professional life as a ‘typical working-class child’, which led her first into the hotel industry, then into bookkeeping and accounting, and finally to a tax consultancy firm. Later, she decided to study Social Work at the Carinthian University of Applied Sciences, but withdrew from the programme during her pregnancy. She subsequently transferred to the university due to the greater flexibility it offered. She plans to complete her studies in the summer semester of 2025: ‘Everything is going like clockwork so far,’ says Kathrin Arndt, who would like to follow up with a Master’s degree programme in Adult Education and Vocational Training.