Project APPLE: Access and participation for people with cognitive disabilities in virtual learning environments

Project APPLE explores and evaluates the terms on which people with learning disabilities can access and participate in the range of opportunities presented by the World Wide Web and other multimedia, information and communication technologies. Project APPLE is a cross-disciplinary initiative bringing together researchers from the academic fields of Technology Studies, Psychology, Communications Science and Informatics Design, with multimedia producers, small and corporate business partners including Macromedia and the UK's leading learning disability charity, Mencap.

Project APPLE will produce a media-rich, online application for young people with cognitive difficulties to create multimedia 'passports' which express their identities, interests and preferences. These passports will then be used as a form of self-advocacy by the young people in the decisions that are made about their futures - decisions from which the young people themselves are often excluded, because of their difficulties with the spoken and written word. A key outcome of Project APPLE will be a proposed set of guidelines and standards regarding learning disability for agenda setters like the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative

Project APPLE builds on work carried out as part of Mencap's Transactive project. It is funded by PACCIT (People at the Centre of Communication and Information Technologies), a research programme supported by the dti (department of trade and industry), ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) and EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)