An Information Service of Educational Software for the Disabled

Computers are increasingly being seen as potentially very important instruments for the disabled. These expectations arise from the new possibilities that computers offer the disabled to move beyond their limits to the point of relating to and communicating with the outside world. In addition there is also the hope that computers can be used as tools of 11learning" for the disabled. Today it is not uncommon, for example, for a disabled child to find a computer on the desk in front of him/her. However what exactly should we be asking of computers? Which are the correct objectives and which are likely to be set? Hardware and software - how do you make the most appropriate choices according to different specific needs and the proposed objectives? The only possible answer to all of these questions is "find out what tools are available, try them and evaluate them". Only then can you move towards making a definitive choice which will be exactly the right one. On the basis of these considerations, an experimental public service that deals solely with educational computer products for the disabled is being developed at the Institute of Educational Technology (ITD) in Genoa, Italy. The service is part of the Educational Software Library (BSD), in operation at IID since 1985. The Library contains educational software relating to all subjects in the school curriculum subdivided into different school levels.