Easy to Read Version
Welcome to the blog of the ALL Institute – in Maynooth University, Ireland.
We are researchers and we work at a university in Ireland.
We have created this blog.
A blog is a website that is updated often with ‘posts’.
Posts are articles or videos on a website.
Each part of the blog is written by a different researcher.
The name of our blog is “Ideas in ALL”.
We want to use the blog to:
- tell you what we do
- tell you about new ideas, and
- comment on what is happening in the world now.
We are interested in people of all ages.
We want to see how ideas and technology can help people.
We believe in ‘social inclusion’. Social inclusion means everyone, all over the world is part of the society (school, work, arts, fun).
We think that social inclusion is a human right – that everyone should be able to take part in society.
The people for this blog include writers interested in different subjects.
Some people writing for the blog are members of the ‘ALL Institute’ but there will also be posts from other people.
We are happy and proud to start the blog today because it is exactly 3 years since the ALL Institute started.
Now, we are living with the Covid 19 virus.
Many people who are older or who are ill, have to stay at home.
This means they can’t take part in society.
So, now it is especially important to talk about how we can help people to use technology and services.
The Covid 19 virus is a problem for our health.
The virus has shown us that the way our society is run makes it easier for some people to take part, and harder for others.
This is not fair.
Some people are afraid of the virus as well as some other problems happening in the world.
People are worried about the environment and say that we need to look after our planet better.
People are also worried about some of the world leaders.
There is a lot of change happening in the world now.
The European Union is a group of 27 countries.
They agreed to make Europe better.
There are several problems.
Britain is about to leave the European Union (Brexit).
Because of the virus, the governments made new rules telling people they are not allowed to do some things– like travelling.
This is a threat to how laws are made and how they work.
The leaders of different countries are finding it hard to agree on how to deal with the virus.
Because countries have different rules about what you can and can’t do, the crisis is lasting longer.
In this blog we want to write about what is important to people right now.
The writers from the ALL Institute and their friends around the world will tell us about what they are interested in.
We will not post academic articles with a lot of details and difficult language.
We want to come together to create a group that share the same values (what we think is important).
We want to talk about the ways in which the following things can be helpful or unhelpful:
- Personal experience
- Communities (groups of people who have something in common)
- Technologies
- Practitioners (e.g. doctors, lawyers)
- Laws
- The way we have set up our world.
We want to share our work with you
- Work that is going well
- Work that is challenging (difficult).
- Work issues that we are not sure about
- Work that we think is important and that we think you mind find interesting.
The blog posts will be organised into 3 groups (streams) like this:
- a social structures (policy and law) stream;
- a social lives (human behaviour) stream; and
- a social technologies stream.
Some of the posts may:
- give you more questions than answers,
- be about old challenges (difficulties).
- be about new challenges
- be about possible future challenges.
- give ideas that you will not like the sound of.
We will not aim to write posts that make people feel uncomfortable because they disagree so strongly, but we will not avoid them either.
We will have writers interested in many different topics.
Each writer has their own ideas which may not be the same as others in the ALL Institute.
We do not aim for all the writers to agree but look forward to seeing different ideas.
You are welcome to comment and write to us about the posts.
This blog is another way in which the ALL Institute is trying to create a world that is fairer and includes everyone.
The ALL Institute Directors
Deirdre Desmond, Delia Ferri and Mac MacLachlan
EtR translation by Hilary Hooks with the support of Helen Portal and Soufiane el Amrani from Inclusion Europe to whom we give grateful thanks’