5.1 Further development and sustainability

Staff producing mathematical resources for disabled students will embed the use of these methods in their own practice and in their advice to teaching staff. We did not approach students to provide feedback on the documents. In most cases they would have needed to learn new facets of an assistive technology and would have derived no immediate benefit from this time-consuming experience. As ’live’ learning resources become available in multiple formats we will provide guidance for students and their support staff on how to read and use the formats effectively. Feedback from staff and students can then be used to develop the methods further. Dissemination of the methods may also result in further feedback and adjustments. As the methods are developed further or should new software functionality become available the online resources can be updated.

A second avenue for further development, which is required for sustainable use, is to work with the various software publishers and open source communities to patch bugs, improve functionality and ensure long term viability of the required software. Such work would eventually widen the viable user group of the proposed methods and improve the sustainability of them.