According to modern analysis, more students with a disability are going to university than ever before. Going to university is no longer the preserve of a privileged few - anyone who aspires to a higher education can achieve it. Students of all backgrounds and circumstances are unlocking the potential of a university education and widening their horizons. This includes record numbers of
students with a disability.

The Europe 2020 strategy aims to increase the share of the population aged 30-34 having completed tertiary education to at least 40 %. About 36 % of people aged 30-34 without disabilities attained this educational level in 2011, compared with less than 24 % for those having a basic activity difficulty and around 22 % for those having a limitation in work caused by a longstanding health problem and/or a basic activity difficulty.

Students with learning disabilities may find it difficult to acquire knowledge or skills in the same ways as their peers. This could mean they struggle to learn through traditional teaching methods, or that they wrestle with a curriculum designed for students their age. What is more, students with learning disabilities have much higher rates of dropout than their counterparts. According to researches, only 34% of these students have completed a four-year  degree eight years after their high school graduation. Students with learning disabilities may face extra challenges and hurdles, with modified teaching and learning techniques, technologicaladvancements etc.

 

Furthermore, from the sociological point of view, the process of social cognition helps to select, interpret, remember and use information in order to make judgment and decisions on social world (Aronso, Wilson, Akert 1997). Such activity bases on simplification. Very often it deforms the image as it enables to create wrong opinions on other people, categorizing them and even creates stereotypes and prejudices. According to researches on stereotypical approach to disabled people, disabled person is: weak, withdrawn, frightened, failure-liable, unsuccessful, help and support needed rather than being treated like a partner. Due to the fact those stereotypes emphasize wrong, inadequate specifics of disabled people, they influence interpersonal reactions and social contacts. Project main aim is to break this approach and build the image of disabled person as an equal member of university society.

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Goals of the project are to:
- Equip didactics, academic teachers with the knowledge on how to organize and coordinate education processes for students with special needs and disabilities, with the use of modern technologies
- Support academics on how to diagnose and develop educational programmes responding to needs of disabled students
- Tailor education strategies and methods to different types of disabilities: blindness, deafness, mental disorders, autism, socially awkward, other difficulties

- Raise awareness of university community (didactics, administratives and students) on the presence of disabled students at the university

- Increase the quality of studying and feeling of self-confidence of students with disabilities
- Increase the quality of teaching by developing new approaches in teaching programmes including the concept of universal design

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