Students with intellectual disabilities frequently drop out of school early, due to a lack of adapted curricula and support. Lifelong learning programmes mostly do not consider the needs of people with intellectual disabilities needs, either, and so they are often systematically denied the opportunity to continue developing their skills and competences throughout life.
This situation significantly weakens their chances to compete in the labour market.
The project “Pathways II” aimed to make lifelong learning programs more accessible to people with intellectual disabilities. It was based on its predecessor “Pathways”, which had developed the tools to achieve this goal, namely
- European standards on how to make information easy to read and understand,
- A training programme as well as guidelines on how to involve people with intellectual disabilities in the writing easy-to-read texts
- A brochure called “Teaching can be easy” with recommendations for lifelong learning staff on how to make their courses more accessible.
- A check-list to evaluate the level of easy to read of a text.
Pathways II built on the heritage of the original Pathways project and multiplied its impact, making those materials available in many European countries.
| Implementation Period | 2011 – 2013 |
| Financed by | European Commission – under the “Lifelong Learning Programme“ |
| Project Coordinator | Inclusion Europe |
| Project Partners | Anffas |
Guidelines for easy-to-read texts
The project made the Pathways materials available to people with intellectual disabilities and adult education staff in many European countries, namely: Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain.
To ensure that as many people with intellectual disabilities as possible have access to lifelong learning programmes, emphasis was put on the dissemination aspect of the project. Several national-level training events were held in each of the country.
The project also targeted education providers and decision-makers to help them understand the how accessibility of lifelong learning programmes is to adults with intellectual disabilities.
In many countries
children and adults with intellectual disabilities
do not get a good education.
Many people with intellectual disabilities
don’t finish school.
If you don’t get a good education,
it is very hard
to find a good job.
The project Pathways II
makes education more accessible
for people with intellectual disabilities.
Here are some of the things that we did
during this project:
- we created rules for easy-to-read material
- we trained teachers on how to support
people with intellectual disabilities - we showed how to support people with intellectual disabilities
in writing their own easy-to-read texts.
The project lasted from 2011 to 2013.
