Abstract:

Many changes have taken place last two years due to the Covid restrictions. The recent switch to distance education applied to all undergraduate students. Especially for students with disabilities carrying out their duties required extra energy. The change came suddenly, teachers and students had to adapt and find alternative ways for lessons. Personal meetings were replaced by electronic communication, also exams were organized via the internet. The computer science study seems like not having problems during distance education via internet. But some unexpected situations occurred for students with special needs, and we had to find solutions.

In this article we deal our experience. Our goal was to find out what problems they encountered during distance learning. Naming these problems will help us facilitate their distance learning in the future. We first describe the way of working with ICT of people with individual types of disabilities and their requirements for accessibility of software and electronic documents.

As research participants, we chose students of computer science, math, and physics with different types of disabilities and specific needs: 3 students with autism spectrum disorder, 3 visually impaired students (1 blind and 2 partially sighted), 3 with physical disabilities and 2 students with hearing impairment. The students were in different grades. Three students were in their final year of study.

We have used case study research. Our cases were individual students. We analysed data received from interviews with students.

We found out that students with autism spectrum disorders had the most serious problems in the social communication. We have noticed these problems:
- with adapting to the new study regime,
- misunderstanding instructions from email and very weak response from the students,
- phobia of electronic communication,
- chatting with classmates had a very significant influence on the student's decision-making.

Students with visual impairments adapted to changes very quickly. The accessibility of the online platform was the most important for them. For students with hearing impairments, it was necessary to provide either an interpreter in sign language or to add subtitles to the recordings from the online lectures. Distance education was most suitable for students with physical disabilities.

Keywords:

Computer Science study, Students with special needs, Distance education.