<< Objectives >>VI children lack access to a wide range of literature needed in order to be able to build awareness of the world around them and thus achieve emotional, linguistic and intellectual levels. Tacticos aims to provide high quality and well tested guidelines for designing and producing cost–effective tactile books and tactile illustrations and improve (inter)national cooperation in this field. By doing so we aim to foster the development of literacy and concept building skills of VI children.<< Implementation >>The 3 essential project activities are:1. Writing of guidelines for producing high quality, cost-effective tactile books and illustrations, preceded by preliminary research and setting up of methodology and terminology2. Testing the guidelines. A set of tactile books and illustrations will be produced according to the guidelines and will be tested with VI children. 3. Dissemination activities including training program for VI professionals and caretakers for ‘reading’ tactile materials<< Results >>The main results of this project are:-Desktop research -Glossary of terms -Guidelines for designing and producing tactile illustrations and books-Recommendation report for cooperation VI experts and printing houses-Testing plan and evaluation report-1-3 tactile book -20-30 tactile illustrations for concept development -Dissemination plan, project website-Training programme and tools for VI professionals and parents/caretakers of VI children-Network campaign-Promotion events

<< Objectives >>The FLEX PICTURE EBOOK project aims to disseminate the concept of an accessible illustrated digital book. Pupils with visual and/or mental disabilities, with the help of their teacher, will be able to adjust the readability of the illustrations and text of a book and thus follow the same learning process as other pupils. Publishers will receive a technical guide to help them design accessible illustrated children's books.<< Implementation >>With FLEX PICTURE EBOOK, while partner teachers will be supported in the co-construction of innovative educational scenarios aimed at increasing the skills of both pupils and teachers (accessible digital technology, disability), publishers will be supported step by step in the accessible digital adaptation of an illustrated book (from the graphic designer's specifications to the coding of the EPUB). These resources will be shared and disseminated widely, particularly during training sessions.<< Results >>FLEX PICTURE EBOOK is working in the medium term to create the following virtuous ecosystem: with the publication of an offer of illustrated digital books accessible to pupils with special needs from 3 to 16 years of age by school publishers and school transcribers-adaptors, an offer that will be readily adopted by teachers to develop numerous learning sequences, pupils with disabilities will be able to access a more egalitarian school environment.

Useful ICT innovations are continuously developed improving the quality of life for many people. However, such solutions do not typically included people with severe dual vision and hearing impairments, and at times also coupled with cognitive disability. Deafblindness is a grave condition. Though, rare at birth, it can be acquired due to different causes. There is an estimated 2.5 M deafblind persons in the EU. Limited communication is a major problem for this group; something that will be addressed by SUITCEYES in a novel way. Benefits are not limited to this group; rather the solution will scale to other areas. SUITCEYES proposes a new, intelligent, flexible and expandable mode of haptic communication via soft interfaces. Based on user needs and informed by disability studies, the project combines smart textiles, sensors, semantic technologies, image processing, face and object recognition, machine learning, and gamification. It will address three challenges: perception of the environment; communication and exchange of semantic content; learning and joyful life experiences. SUITCEYES will extract and map the inner structure of high-dimensional, environmental and linguistic clues to low-dimensional spaces, which then translate into haptic signals. It will also utilize image processing, mapping environmental data to be used for enriched semantic reasoning. SUITCEYES’ intelligent haptic interface will help the users to learn activation patterns by a new medium. With this interface, users will be able to take more active part in society, improving possibilities for inclusion in social life and employment. The solution will be developed in a user-centred iterative design process, with frequent evaluations and optimizations. The users’ learning experiences will be enriched through gamification and mediated social interactions. The proposed solution will take into account the potential differences in levels of impairments and user capabilities and adapt accordingly.