WeCanAccess Enabling Environments

The problem - neither teacher or parents have the tools to provide a supportive and accessible learning environment for pupils with additional needs and disabilities. Globally, persons with disabilities remain less likely to attend school.

The solution – enable people to create accessible and inclusive learning environments through practical toolkits, remote training and support networks. The focus is on accessibility and resources are easy to tailor to local needs. They do not rely on having access to expensive, complicated equipment, instead emphasising a simple change of approach in most cases.

The impact –By enabling teachers and parents to create accessible learning environments, children in all regions, who have previously been excluded from education will be provided with new life chances, lifting them out of poverty and enabling them to access healthcare, jobs, participate in and contribute to society. 

Inclusion and access are the biggest challenges we face during the Covid pandemic. Additional educational needs have always been seen as a problem which requires specialist professionals and special environment. The current approach is a call for exclusion and demands extra resources in the world where the preservation of resources is needed more than ever.

Around 1/5 of the world’s population has a recognised disability, with disabled people facing higher levels of poverty and barriers to participation in society. Access to education is particularly poor;1 in 3 people with a disability do not attend school, compared to 1 in 7 for children without disabilities. In some countries, more than 10% of disabled people are refused entry into school just because of their (sometimes perceived) disability. Teaching practices can also reinforce cultural attitudes to disability, forcing pupils to keep their disabilities hidden and preventing them from achieving their potential. Lack of access to physical and virtual environments, assistive technologies or essential services compounds the problem. By failing to achieve even basic literacy, stereotypes and attitudes around the abilities of those with additional needs are perpetuated, along with their poor prospects for participating in and contributing to community life. 

We provide practical, straight forward toolkits, backed up by a supportive online platform, that provide teachers and parents with the tools they need to develop positive working relationships, and learning environments that can support not only those children with additional needs but also the wider class. The toolkits are universal in nature and can be applied whether you are and educator in a UK school or in Pakistan working to provide street children an enabling educational environment. These toolkits show how improved accessibility can benefit all pupils and teachers alike, and how it does not require expensive and extensive resources. 

The supporting platform, www.wecanaccess.com, uses software that translates text into 100 languages and reads it out loud in 40 of those. This enables as many people as possible to join the conversation and ensures that teachers and parents are not making changes alone. The site provides additional materials and a discussion area where teachers, parents, carers and educational professionals can interact and find support from peers, discuss issues and find solutions.  

We are also looking to deliver the toolkits through radio, text messages and WhatsApp discussions, to ensure as wide a reach as possible.

The solution serves:

• Pupils and students
• Educators
• Parents

The aim of WeCanAccess is to:

-enable teachers and parents to understand and reflect on their practice and how the pupils interact with the learning environment, be it at school or home.

- see improved learning, with pupils better able to understand or focus on what is being taught. 

-give pupils some input into how their learning is delivered. This not only provides pupils with some ownership over their education but will also improve their learning experience.  

-see improved behaviour within the classroom - with better accessibility and ownership, pupils will be more engaged. 

-with changing practices and improved results comes changing attitudes. These toolkits show how improved accessibility can benefit all pupils and teachers alike, and how it does not require expensive and extensive resources. It is expected that this will allow pupils, previously excluded because of disability, to be able to attend school. 

Pupils with learning needs and disabilities have not been specified as a group at a particular disadvantage in the description of this challenge. However, not only are they significantly disadvantaged in relation to their access to education but by ensuring better accessibility to learning environments for pupils with additional learning and physical needs, you are ensuring better accessibility to quality, safe and equitable learning for all pupils. Moreover, these toolkits have a universal approach, so that they can be used by an educator in Pakistan working with street children as easily as a teacher in a school in the UK.

We have tested the toolkits with Ifield School, an outstanding school for children with special needs in England. We have also extensively tested the training with parents in England and with selected, experienced, special needs teachers in England, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, Pakistan, the UEA, Portugal, Nigeria, Cameroon and Jamaica. The feedback has been exciting and positive, and the need for the product has been achingly clear. At of the time of writing we are running pilots with 150 parents and teachers in the following countries, via civil societies; Mexico (ACC Especialistas), Nigeria (Initiative for National Growth Africa) and Cameroon (LiSy Creative Education Cameroon). Furthermore, we are working with experienced partners across the globe to further refine the toolkits, tailor them to local needs and explore options for introducing the toolkits to other areas including Pakistan and the UEA. 

Our solution is innovative in that it is tackles issues from an accessibility standpoint NOT a disability perspective. This means that people who are unable to talk about disability due to personal, cultural and societal stigmas and assumptions about disability are able to discuss the issues. In some countries, children are refused entry to school because of real or even perceived disabilities. Costs of educating disabled children in these countries are disproportionately expensive. WeCanAccess examines how to improve accessibility to learning, NOT provision for the disabled. This means that actions arising from our toolkits, come from the staff and pupils themselves. This means they are built around available resources, so usually involve no cost or low-cost solutions to the schools, who face scarcity of resources and cannot afford to have specialists for different groups of disabilities. A practice of enabling environment for everyone in schools will be learnt by all the pupils and educators in the school as a culture, thereby sweeping through society and contributing to the ideal of an Inclusive Society.  By changing the language around disability, we aim to achieve a change in attitudes and perceptions, resulting in greater acceptance and accessibility.

We also take a holistic approach to accessibility, providing a platform that offers a place where people can discuss issues, learn more about accessibility, promote good practice and even show the economic benefits of inclusive practices.

So far this year, 160 people have completed the toolkits to date, from the UK, Ireland, UEA, Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan, Portugal, Israel, India, Australia and Mauritius. 

The WeCanAccess Platform has been accessed around 40,000 times in the last 2 years. 

We anticipate serving in 1 year - 10,000 people

We anticipate serving in 5 years - 1,000, 000 people

1. Numbers of educators completing the toolkits

2. Numbers of educators and parents participating in online discussions

3. Improvement in the educational achievements of children following teachers' completion of toolkit

4. Increase in the numbers of children with disabilities or learning difficulties attending school.

5. Increase in the number of children with disabilities or learning difficulties engaging with learning in school. 

6. Increase in the number of school leavers with disabilities attaining employment

2 Full-time staff

2 Part-time consultant

3-5 People are involved through 3 partnership organisations

David and Emma Bara are cofounders of WeCanAccess, a social enterprise focussed on improving accessibility, based in the UK. They are parents of two children with special needs. 

A. David was a former special needs teacher.  He is currently a Senior Lecturer of Special Needs, supporting over MA students globally. He is a reviewer for Cogent Education & Taylor Francis Group and guest speaker for MA students at HEC Paris on accessibility.

B. Emma Bara has over 20 years experience in sustainability, community capacity building and project management at grassroots and governmental levels in the UK, Thailand and Australia. 

C. Liliane Diffo Guemfo and Sylvain Wagoum Nodem are Co-founders of LiSy Creative Education (LCE) Cameroon, a non-profit institution whose main objective is to facilitate pupils’ social and professional integration following secondary school in Cameroon.

D. Racheal Inegbedion is Founder of the Initiative for National Growth Africa (INGA) in Nigeria. She is an internationally recognised social development professional advocating for persons living with special needs and disabilities.

E. Uzma Pirzada is a specialist in Inclusion and additional learning needs. She has developed and implemented projects, in the field of Non-formal Primary Education in Pakistan, and with children with Special Learning Needs in Abu Dhabi.

F. Paramita Banerjee is an Ashoka Fellow, Researcher, Trainer, Gender and Child Rights Activist; and founding member of DIKSHA, a rights-based programme for adolescents living in difficult situations. Paramita left academics three decades ago to work with young people towards a world where every young voice counts. 

Diversity is something we not only embrace and celebrate but that we know is essential for the success of our organisation. Recruiting and partnering directly from the countries and the communities that we work with is vital to ensuring we provide appropriate materials and products. It is essential to ensure the knowledge and experience we have in our team properly informs and directs the work we do.  We consider ourselves very privileged to have such a diverse team, which brings such knowledge and experience to the organisation. We cannot imagine working in any other way. 

To ensure that we continue to maintain our diversity we undertake to do the following: 

1. Continue to celebrate and publicise our diversity vision and strategy

2. Embed indicators and monitoring into our annual review process

3. Invest in leadership development for high performers and innovators within the organisation, particularly those who might be disadvantaged through disability or cultural background, for example.

4. Provide the additional resources and a supportive environment needed to support people with disabilities or access needs to accept employment, such as assistive technologies, and adjusting workspaces or behaviours, to ensure they are properly included members of the team.     

5. Continue the conversation with all levels of the organisation. Ensure that the work we do is collaborative, and people are consulted and included within key discussions regarding our project direction and delivery. 

Not only would the grant enable us to develop our work but we would greatly benefit from the 9 months of  support from Solve. We acknowledge that though we are using technological solutions that are well established and effective in many regions, we know that one size does not fit all and solutions still need to be identified that ensure as many people as possible are reached. For example, finding ways to reduce data needs for areas with low connectivity or high data charges. We realise that mentorship and connections through Solve would greatly increase knowledge in this area and enable us to use the most effective technology to achieve this goal. Mentorship would also enable us to refine our ability to measure and analyse the data gathered from training in order improve the training and develop further solutions based on the community we will be developing.

The Solve community would enable us to increase our network in order to reach more communities and our solutions could also benefit other Solve members and peers to support their communities and enhance the work they are doing.

The program would also enable us to increase our exposure internationally and so get more people involved and engaged in the project, and potential raise impact investment. 

Public relations - we need particular assistance with marketing our toolkits and encouraging engagement in our online community. We have been building up a good, trusted brand and now we need to invite people to buy into that and participate both economically and socially.

Monitoring and Evaluation - we have some experience in monitoring and evaluation from ad NGO and academic perspective but collecting data isn't always the simplest thing to do. It would be advantageous to have assistance with putting robust data collection processes in place.

Technology - we need to refine the technology that we are using to deliver the services and change that we want to make. This would include revisiting the existing platforms we are using, as well as looking at different technologies to allow delivery and engagement of communities in remote/ poorer areas.   

1. Vodafone Americas Foundation - we believe as they have knowledge and skills in mobile communications and it would be beneficial to use their technical knowledge and skills. Many of the people who teach are woman and girls. Females who have access issues, are often more vulnerable to exclusion and abuse. Vodafone has a stated interest in supporting women and girls. We, therefore, believe we believe it would be a mutually beneficial relationship. 
2. KSF Impact - we would like to partner with them as our mission is to enable people to access the world physically, socially and economically. We are in the early stages/growth stage and we believe we can partner with KSF to achieve their goal in 'alleviating poverty, access to quality education and pathways to decent work and economic growth; and reduction of inequity and inequalities'. People with special needs and disabilities represent over 20 % of the global population and, we have the expertise to help support KSF Impact in delivering their aims.
3. Dubai Cares - We would like to partner with them to help support their work we are confident of this as not only have we been recommended to the https://www.khda.gov.ae/en, but our experts recognise that there is a clear need for the work we do in the communities they serve
4. Compassion International- We would like to partner with them as our resources can support their population. 
5. APCO Worldwide -We would value their support in order to communicate our message and increase our reach. 

We are qualified to use this prize as we have a global team that is already working towards delivering more accessible, equitable and inclusive classrooms, whether they are in affluent or poorer countries. Our team has also has a specific interest in STEM, in particular, INGA and LCE Cameroon have expertise in technological solutions and education. 

We would be particularly keen to use the GM prize to encourage students with disabilities, and their classmates, to come up with technological solutions to accessibility issues themselves. The best designs and ideas to help a community, often come from that community. From the study of simple machines, such as wheels and inclined planes, students could design their own ramps for easy access; to designing more complicated solutions, such as helpful software or adaptive hardware. There would also be potential for students to use their ideas to benefit with companies in their neighbourhood, improving accessibility outside of the classroom. Such collaborations could be held as examples of best practice, contributing to the local economy and improving the life chances of not only young designers but allowing better access to services/ participation in the local community for people with disabilities and access needs.

Such a program would enable STEM to be used to empower students to make a real difference to their own lives and those of their community.      

The UN Report on Disability (2018) shows that people with disabilities are significantly disadvantaged in education. However, that is further exacerbated, with women and girls with disabilities being further disadvantaged. Figures cited by the 2018 report suggest that compared with men without disabilities: women with disabilities are three times more likely to be illiterate; two times less likely to be employed and two times less likely to use the Internet.   

By improving accessibility in the classroom, and demonstrating that students with disabilities and additional needs can achieve academically, we will alter perceptions and help level the field for girls with disabilities in particular.

We also know that the carers of people with disabilities are more likely to be women, with many being unable to take paid employment. By making schools more accessible and having more children with disabilities in school, we are creating opportunities for women, who would otherwise be caring at home, to find employment or even return to their own studies. We would therefore use this fund to not only enable and encourage schools to create more accessible and inclusive environments for girls with disabilities but would also aim to engage directly with mothers and carers of those girls, providing support and guidance.  

Our team comprises knowledgeable, experienced and determined women, who are all positive role-models in their own right. They also have expertise that includes gender justice and child rights, child abuse prevention and intervention, academic mentoring of girls, and women's rights and empowerment. 

WeCanAccess Enabling Environments qualifies for the GSR award because the project meets all of GSR’s goals: supporting education, alleviating poverty, and contributing to a sustainable world, in a way that uses technology to deliver local solutions to local issues.

Through our toolkits we support education for people with disabilities, whether they are hidden, physical or undiagnosed/ unacknowledged. This is a significant group of people (around 1/5 of the global population) who are most likely to face difficulties accessing education and live in poverty. By using and adapting existing technologies, we can help improve their access to education and thereby improve their life chances. In addition, the program is expected to help change practices and attitudes in the wider community, giving disabled people a better chance of participating fully in society. When this starts to happen, people will see that inclusive practices are key to economic and social sustainability; particularly as people are living longer with chronic conditions (e.g. long covid).

We would use the GSR prize to assist the development of the technological solutions and set in place robust procedures that would allow members of the learning community to stay in touch with peers and keep up to date. It would also help create and establish those learning communities that are needed to support local changemakers and pioneers.