The main target of this project was to integrate and support disabled with special needs students of the TEI of Athens in the academic field. Through this project TEI of Athens pursued the following: development of its technological inventory, equipped with modern software of and supporting technology, the development and enhancement of appropriate educational and helpful content that enhances student’s education who are coping with sensory or learning constraints and, finally, the supply of an advanced technology platform which will be an active repository of learning resources with advanced capabilities to adapt to the particular needs and preferences of students and to provide a collaborative environment to support teaching, learning and fuller integration into academic events. The integration of such an Information System in TEI of Athens educational activity will be a substantial upgrade of services and digital educational material for disabled students, students with learning difficulties but also the other students of the institution with significant benefits concerning the diffusion of educational material for people with disabilities, both inside and outside the institution. Services upgrade will have an impact in the public perception and outwards looking ambition of the Foundation. The solution which implemented by ILSP / RC. “Athena” regarding the Information System combines know-how and mature voice and sign language technologies with the benefits of adopting a widespread open source platform which is already in operation in many academic institutions. It’s about the Open eClass platform which was proposed by Academic Internet GUnet concerning an open platform for the management and presentation of educational content for higher education, which has been further extended within the project with new subsystems and ergonomics, in order to satisfy additional requirements for enhanced accessibility of both the content and the environment itself.
Concerning content generation/digitization issues, the long experience of ILSP / RC. “Athena” in the study and promotion of the Greek Sign Language in linguistic and technological level led to a result with particular qualitative features.
Finally, the project provided a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies, in the form of successful specialized language technology software which the spin-offs of ILSP / RC. “Athena” have brought in operational and commercial maturity and which have been tested for long in both specialist markets and the general public.