A Robust Intelligent Tutoring System for the Integration of People with Intellectual Disabilities into Social and Work Environments

Abstract

The integration of people with disabilities into work and social environments is one of the principle issues in the EU strategy lines, clearly focused into the Seventh Research Frame Program (FP7). Particularly, it is necessary to pay special attention to the integration problem of people with intellectual disabilities. In order to face the problems that people with disabilities find in their integration into work environments in actual competitive market, one of the key issues is the implementation of solutions offered by new technologies by using what experts call “Support Technologies”. The development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) based on mobile platforms offers new perspectives for better integration of people with disabilities. The integration into social and work environments of people with disabilities is a fact nowadays. Tutoring systems are intended for helping this community in their life (Gonzalez et al., 1991). These tools are very helpful; although at the moment do not completely meet their needs. This work presents a robust and intelligent tutoring system that will cover several new aspects, coping with more complex tasks, but doing it in a flexible and useful way. One of the main objectives of this work is incrementing the user autonomy, both in social and work environments. Due to the fact that it there exist many different cases among people with disabilities, we will incorporate an intelligent structure that may achieve an appropriate tutoring system configuration for each case. This implies a personal study and a related profile to each person, made by human tutors or relatives. All these items lead to design a system with a configuration profile easily accessible to the user. This work is included in a new research project focused on the study and control of human factors. Besides, a big effort is made in new research subjects for attending and tutoring people with disabilities. The design of devices for solving the daily problems of these persons is one of the first objectives of this work. Moreover, it is trying to invest in economical supports, grants and human efforts in order to increase their quality of life. Nowadays, it is necessary to solve in an appropriate way the current problems in the integration of people with disabilities into work and social environments that daily are 14