Towards a More Inclusive Learning Environment: The Importance of Providing Captions That Are Suited to Learners' Language Proficiency in the UDL Classroom.

Captions have been found to benefit diverse learners, supporting comprehension, memory for content, vocabulary acquisition, and literacy. Captions may, thus, be one feature of universally designed learning (UDL) environments [1, 4]. The primary aim of this study was to examine whether captions are always useful, or whether their utility depends on individual differences, specifically proficiency in the language of the audio. To study this, we presented non-native speakers of English with an audio-visual recording of an unscripted seminar-style lesson in English retrieved from a University website. We assessed English language proficiency with an objective test. To test comprehension, we administered a ten-item comprehension test on the content of the lecture. Our secondary aim was to compare the effects of different types of captions on viewer comprehension. We, therefore, created three viewing conditions: video with no captions (NC), video with premade captions (downloaded from the university website) (UC) and video with automatically generated captions (AC). Our results showed an overall strong effect of proficiency on lecture comprehension, as expected. Interestingly, we also found that whether captions helped or not depended on proficiency and caption type. The captions provided by the University website benefited our learners only if their English language proficiency was high enough. When their proficiency was lower, however, the captions provided by the university were detrimental and performance was worse than having no captions. For the lower proficiency levels, automatic captions (AC) provided the best advantage. We attribute this finding to pre-existing characteristics of the captions provided by the university website. Taken together, these findings caution institutions with a commitment to UDL against thinking that one type of caption suits all. The study highlights the need for testing captioning systems with diverse learners, under different conditions, to better understand what factors are beneficial for whom and when.

Implementing Universal Design and the ICF in Higher Education: Towards a Model That Achieves Quality Higher Education for All.

The landmark UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the first time explicitly makes reference to the inclusion of the needs and capacities of all persons, on equal grounds, in the planning of our built environment and services (Goal 11) and in our quality educational systems (Goal 4). Accessibility and inclusion of all people in vulnerable situations, including people with disabilities, provides a strong benchmark for sustainability. Accessibility and Inclusion in higher education are the topic of an increasing number of studies, however, there is no existing common set of multidomain indicators for Inclusion available to the multiple stakeholders involved in higher education. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. With a Universal Design approach and the common language of the ICF we aim to provide a multi-dimensional assessment and planning tool to quantitatively and qualitatively measure Inclusion of environments and services in Higher Education.

When two and too don't go together: a selective phonological deficit sparing number words.

We report the case of an Italian speaker (GBC) with classical Wernicke's aphasia syndrome following a vascular lesion in the left posterior middle temporal region. GBC exhibited a selective phonological deficit in spoken language production (repetition and reading) which affected all word classes irrespective of grammatical class, frequency, and length. GBC's production of number words, in contrast, was error free. The specific pattern of phonological errors on non-number words allows us to attribute the locus of impairment at the level of phonological form retrieval of a correctly selected lexical entry. These data support the claim that number words are represented and processed differently from other word categories in language production.

A dedicated neural mechanism for vowel selection: a case of relative vowel deficit sparing the number lexicon.

We report the case of an Italian speaker (GBC), with classical Wernicke's aphasia following a vascular lesion in the posterior middle temporal region. GBC exhibited a selective deficit in spoken language production affecting vowels more than consonants. In reading from a newspaper, GBC substituted vowels for other vowels from the Italian inventory at a rate of 7/1 compared to consonants. No effects of frequency or grammatical class were found. Vowel errors could also not be accounted for by morphological or known phonological processes. Production of number words, in contrast, was free from phonological errors. While GBC has intact representations of Italian vowels and consonants, his data argue for a separate selection mechanism for vowels that is dissociable from that used for consonants. This case provides neuropsychological evidence for models of word production that distinguish between the abstract phonological properties of a word (e.g., sequencing of phonemic slots, or "CV skeleton") and a separate representation for the specific sounds (melody).