Developing and Creating Inclusive and Interactive Digital Reading Environments with and for Students with ADHD

Abstract

Digital solutions are often claimed to have the potential to meet individual needs and make learning more accessible, thereby allowing schools to achieve more sustainable and inclusive learning for a diverse range of learners. However, digital tools bring both affordances and hindrances, which are intertwined with the students’ prerequisites to learn and how the educational space and learning environment are set up. Following this, dilemmas occur as digital materials are assumed to level or reduce obstacles when they, in fact, also generate new obstacles and opportunities. To design and develop these tools with the potential of supporting qualitative learning opportunities for all students, knowledge of inclusivity and digital materials both need to be taken into
account, two research fields that are seldom put together. This article contributes by reviewing hindrances to and opportunities for accessible learning in reading through digital materials and through the case of students with ADHD. The article introduces earlier research on the intersection of learning to read, digital materials, and students with ADHD. We thereafter suggest innovative design principles to uphold sustainable use of and learning through digital materials and elaborate on how these principles fit with ideas of inclusion and sustainable education. Consequently, the paper provides different stakeholders with the possibility to identify commonalities in working processes and to reach a joint language to discuss how digital educational tools should be designed and developed.