The Future of Education

Abstract

The International Classification of Functioning,  (WHO, 2001) claims that an individual’s functioning in a specific domain of activity is the product of the interaction between environmental and personal factors. In this model, barriers are factors in a person’s environment that limit functioning and experience disability. Ergonomic analysis and the persona technique where used to identify the barriers that are specific to cognitive activities. The most important barrier seems to be useless complexity, and the most frequent source of complexity is instability, an environmental factor with multiple dimensions.

Problem

Environmental obstacles specific to intellectual disabilities are unknown. We only know that cognitive limitations are the most forgotten in universal design (Chalghoumi, 2011; Adams, 2007; UNO, 1995). At best, a "simple and intuitive use" is prescribed, but without further specification (W3C, 2008). Since 1991, our research team tries to identify the nature of environmental that would be specific to intellectual disabilities. Usually, there is two easy ways to identify barrier factors in the environment. The first way is directly realysed by people who have disabilities. They have shown to be able to analyze the environment and identify themselves barrier factors. The second way is to simulate impairments. For example, if you want to identify architectural barriers for people with motor disabilities, stroll in a wheelchair. The problem with intellectual disabilities is that they are difficult to simulate and that people who have such disabilities have difficulties to analyze their environment when making an actitvity. Regardless of the model chosen (Fougeyrollas, 1991, or WHO, 2001) the result is the same: environmental obstacles specific to intellectual disabilities have not yet been identifed. We believe that this gap could explain why the universal design has a considerable delay for the cognitive dimension.

Results

The data indicate that the complexity of the prescribed task is the most important environment obstacle in the realization of cognitive activities. To date, we have identified five sources of complexity:

1) a high level of thought structure required to understand the prescribed task;

2) the difference between explicit and implicit information;

3) the procedural complexity (number of steps);

4) specific cognitive demands (vocabulary, technical expertise, bilingualism, etc..);

5) instability, which seems to be the most frequent and the most important source of complexity (Langevin et al., 2012).

We will present those environmental obstacles for persons with intellectual disabilities, 44 different types of facets of instability and we will discuss them.

A systematic reduction of avoidable complexity would be beneficial not only for people who have intellectual disabilities, but also to all persons likely to experience cognitive limitations, especially in sectors that seem to "grow" the complexity (ex. entire numeric universe).