Stretch: Supporting Human Diversity through Inclusive Design

** November 25th 2007

Stretch is a proposal submitted (last 21th) to the iCURA public call, coordinated by Jutta, from the University of Toronto. One of the main focus is the use of adaptive technology for education with special emphasis on children with disabilities. If we pass the first phase of this call (results will be announced next March/08) we will receive a grant (9 projects will be supported in this phase) to support meetings and wrokshops in order to elaborate the final proposal which deadilne in October 22th, 2008. The iCURA's call will support 3 projects with up to 2 million canadian dollars, per 5 years.

The partners on this proposal we have:

from Canada: Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (University of Toronto), Easter Seals Canada, TakingITGlobal

from Brazil: IPTI, UNIT, Humbiumbi

aditional partner: OLPC (MIT)

We elaborated a scenario about the impact of this project:
“Maria is 12 years old and attending 7th grade in the small community of Crasto in Brazil. She has a passion for cartoons and animation. Maria pushes her wheelchair backward using her feet. She uses a headstick to write and type on a keyboard. With the modified OLPC laptop mounted on her chair she is able take pictures, and with the accessible Scratch program she is able to animate her pictures together with objects she finds on the Web to create an animated story that tells about her village. She shares this with kids in Brazil and Canada on the Stretch website. Through the website forum she becomes acquainted with a student in at Sunnyview school in Toronto that controls the computer the same way. Together they create an animated story about the importance of making computers accessible. With a team of science classmates Maria also helps equip the school with talking signs, using smart environmental tags, for a classmate who is blind.”