Smartphones, YouTube can help people with intellectual disability

Toronto

Byusing these tools to create videos that explain their life experiences andsuccesses, such people can become more self-empowered while demonstrating andteaching their skills to peers.

“Thecollective message we see in these videos is clearly one of people with IDbeing able to lead satisfying lives and feel good about living, working andplaying on a daily basis. And when people with ID see their peers succeed, itinspires them,” said Ann-Louise Davidson, associate professor in Concordia'sdepartment of education.

He workedwith eight individuals with ID to co-create moving personal video testimonials.

UsingiPads, participants wrote and directed short videos that highlight important aspectsof their lives.

They thenshared rough cuts of the videos with a focus group, receiving feedback as wellas praise, prior to uploading the videos to a shared YouTube channel,accessible to the public.

Davidsonsays video production can be extremely empowering but videos for people with IDare almost never made by them or with them in collaboration.

“Peoplewith ID have very few positive models of people with ID who are successful insociety, and most of these models can be criticised as tokenizations – peoplewith ID who are misleadingly high functioning,” she explained in a paperpublished in the journal Social Inclusion.

Davidsonused what's called the capability approach to help participants make decisionsabout what aspects to highlight in their videos.

Resultswere encouraging as all participants provided enough information about theircapabilities and no one was intimidated by the technology.

“Withpowerful mobile technologies so readily available and accessible, people withID can and should produce their own educational resources," Davidson noted.