Virtual Reality in Special Needs Early Education

During recent decades there has been an observable development in the social state of so-termed disabled people. With the WHO's definition on the concepts of handicap, impairment and disability and the light cast on society's responsibility towards their impaired members a radical change started. The overwhelming technological development of the late 20 th century has inserted a new dimension into the debate (1). In the 21st century when almost everybody uses computers it would be better to refer to disabled people as special needs users, since they have the same rights as healthy people to learn, work, and have fun using computer generated virtual environments. The question arises: is the development process of software for special needs users any different? In modern educational technology the unity of form and content and their relationship is one of the most prominent issues. This special unity is seen in the promising features of the present day virtual environments. In this chapter we review the relevant literature and describe some new examples that were developed in the University of Pannonia.

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