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Lord Rix plants a small tree… to launch The Big Tree!

Thursday 6 July 2006

On July 6th Lord Rix will be planting a small sapling at the University of East London (UEL) Docklands Campus to celebrate the launch of ‘The Big Tree’, a major new online service for the learning disability community.

The Big Tree portal aims to provide an online home for people with learning disabilities, their families, their friends and professionals who work with them. The site will help everyone to find useful information online, to make links and enjoy the worldwide web.

For many people with learning disabilities the Internet is a confusing place to visit and computers in general prove difficult to use.

The Big Tree uses multimedia to make web content that is easy for all to understand and provides advice and guidance to help everyone get the best from ICT and multimedia.

The Big Tree communicates with sound, pictures and video clips so that users do not have to be able to read to use it. They can make sense of The Big Trees’ articles, play its games or follow the links it provides to other sites that are informative, or simply fun to visit for people with learning disabilities.

By providing an online hub for the learning disability community The Big Tree aims to help individuals and families that are often isolated and excluded, to link-up, share information, get support and have more of a say on issues that affect their lives.

The Big Tree has been developed by the Rix Centre for Innovation and Learning Disability, a Research centre based at UEL that specialises in exploring and developing new ways in which the lives of people with learning disabilities can be improved with the use of multimedia technology and the Internet.

The Rix Centre designs and builds content and multimedia tools, conducts research, provides advice and runs courses in partnership with people with learning disabilities, their families and supporters.

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For details and pictures contact Patrick Wilson: 020 8223 2061 or 07951 797 975

Notes to Editors

The University of East London (UEL) is a global learning community with over 28,000 students from over 120 countries world-wide. Our vision is to achieve recognition, both nationally and internationally, as a successful and inclusive regional university proud of its diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focus on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, especially through our research and scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry.

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