Media Literacy and Forms of Communication of Pupils with Disabilities

Abstract

Our objective was to study the level of media literacy in children of early school age, i. e. pupils in the first grade of primary school. We focused on the pupils with disabilities, namely learning disabilities (LD) who are either integrated in a general classroom with other pupils (school integration), or are part of a special class for pupils with LD within the primary school. Another subgroup consisted of pupils with communication impairment (CI) either attending primary school for children with CI, or integrated in a general classroom with other pupils. The results confirmed without any doubts that our respondents have expanded their communication options and use the modern forms, such as the internet calls, chats, e-mails, etc. We can state that the pupils with disabilities did not have any significant problems with becoming familiar with the modern information-communication technologies and actively using them. Certain deviations can be noted for the following forms of communication: 41% of the pupils with CI favoured personal communication, compared to 31.4% of the pupils with learning disabilities. The opposite tendency applied to the use of mobile phones: while only 22.7% of the pupils with CI preferred this communication tool, it was 31.4% in the group of LD respondents. We can come to the conclusion that the pupils with communication impairment can have certain problems with virtual communication without personal contact, when they cannot see the gestures and other forms of non-verbal communication that are an important source of information for them.