From Technical Innovation to Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities

Since 2005, public policy in France has strongly been encouraging young people with disabilities inclusion within the regular school system. This has found a direct application through technical innovation, intended to help students being more independent within their learning activities. The purpose of this presentation is to underline the manner in which using assistive information and communication technologies may improve the inclusive education for people with disabilities.

Moreover, we will base our work on the distinction between technical invention and technical innovation. If technical invention is generally responding to a need at some precise moment, and is sometimes identifying itself with an unique user and use (Simondon, 1968), the technical innovation has a more collective and social dimension (Mulkay, 1972). Hence, we analyse the use of a software and hardware assistive kit intended for students with disabilities who have visual and hearing impairments, as well as learning disabilities.

A hundred students from Paris area are expected to use this technology within classes during 2013-2014 school year. The study is then both based on quantitative and qualitative methods, including log folder analysis, questionnaires, interviews and participant observations. We eventually submit that the assistive technology kit becomes a kind of « prosthetic device », intended to improve cognitive performances. Nonetheless, the technical abilities of its users (Dodier, 1993), as well as the environmental conditions have to be taken into consideration. Technical innovation could, at some point, be seen as a first step towards social innovation, and therefore towards social inclusion of young people with disabilities.