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Owing to increased inclusion of young people with disabilities into the private sector in Bangladesh and Kenya, there is an urgent need to find alternative ways to support young graduates with a disability in the workplace with assistive technology solutions. The aim of the paper is to identify barriers for private workplace sectors to use assistive technology to support young graduates seeking, maintaining and retaining employment. This qualitative study adopted the research onion design of Saunders et al. Data were collected usinginterviews and focus group discussions and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings reveal that barriers are linked to seven key person-centred capability themes: the dream, external factors, internal factors, assistive technology vision,strategic design priorities and gaps and assistive actions.

Journal of International Development, Volume 34, No. 5

Globally, there is limited research on how deaf and hard of hearing adults experience higher education and work. The purpose of the present study is to examine hard of hearing (HH) adults’ experiences of social interactions and social relationships in higher education, the workplace and leisure time. Data were obtained from semistructured interviews with 16 individuals (aged 24–31 years) from diverse cultural backgrounds (10 males and 6 females) with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Participants were selected based on previous expressed interest in participating in further studies after having been involved in an earlier study. The interviews were subjected to a qualitative thematic data analysis. According to the results, people with a hearing loss experience communication barrier in higher education, at work and in leisure time. These communication barriers lead to difficulties achieving social inclusion, and in some circumstances to social exclusion. Assistive technology (AT) and information and communication technologies (ICT) were important facilitators of moving from social exclusion towards social inclusion.

In this new report, ATscale describes the enormous gains that access to assistive technology (AT) can have in health, for the community and the economy. The figures are dramatic: investment in the provision of four assistive products - hearing aids, prostheses, eyeglasses, and wheelchairs - will result in a return on investment of 9:1.

Having access to AT can make the difference between failure or success in school, between a job or unemployment, between a life of opportunity or a life of dependency. An example: for a child in a low- or middle-income country, access to AT can make a difference of $100,000 in lifetime income.

Altogether, providing AT to all who need it would yield more than USD 10 trillion in economic benefits over the next 55 years.

Investing in AT both has a transformative impact on people’s wellbeing and makes sound economic sense for funders and governments. 

This situational analysis (SITAN) addresses the question: “what is the current situation for persons with disabilities in Kenya?”. It has been prepared for the Disability Inclusive Development programme (which works on access to education, jobs, healthcare, and reduced stigma and discrimination for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, and Tanzania), to better understand the current context, including COVID-19, and available evidence in Kenya. It will be helpful for anyone interested in disability inclusion in Kenya, especially in relation to stigma, employment, education, health, and humanitarian issues. This SITAN has been briefly updated from the April 2019 SITAN.

Purpose: To investigate access to basic human rights such as health, a standard of living adequate for health, education, work, marrying and establishing a family, and voting for prosthetic and orthotic users with lower limb disabilities in Malawi.

Materials and methods: A cross-sectional design and a questionnaire were used to collect data from 83 participants.

Results: Most participants reported their overall physical and mental health as good (60 [72%] and 50 [60%], respectively) and said they could access medical care (69 [83%]). Fifty (60%) participants had access to food, 72 (87%) had access to basic water, and 55 (66%) lived in housing adequate for their health. Most participants had studied in school (74 [89%]) but only 27 (33%) of the participants were working. Forty-three (52%) were married and 53 (64%) had children. Seventy-six (92%) participants could vote if they wished.

Conclusions: Rurality and high costs of transport and medication increase the barriers to accessing several basic human rights for people with lower limb physical disabilities. Interventions to target these barriers and increase access to secondary school, employment, and income could improve health equity for people with physical disabilities in Malawi and similar contexts.

This is a first exercise to connect different areas of debate, looking at the key trends of the future of work from a disability perspective and seeking to identify specific action needed in order to shape the future of work in a more disability-inclusive way.

Chapters include: Work and disability - overview of current situation; megatrends of future work and persons with disability (technological revolution, skills revolution, cultutral change, demographic change and climate change); and Roadmap for an inclusive future of work.

The following five key objectives for the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the future of work have been identified:

1. New forms of employment and employment relations integrate disability inclusion

2. Skills development and life-long learning made inclusive of persons with disabilities

3. Universal Design embedded in development of all new infrastructure, products and services

4. Assistive technologies, existing and newly developed, to be made affordable and available

5. Measures to include persons with disabilities in growing and developing areas of the economy

Governments, companies, disability NGOs, trade unions and academia must be encouraged to commit and contribute towards achieving these objectives through different actions. An inclusive future of work can be reached through coordination and alliances among the different stakeholders

Access to human rights of persons with disabilities who use prosthetic and orthotic assistive devices was assessed, and groups of participants were compared in terms of gender, residential area, income, and type and level of assistive device. The addressed areas were rights to: health, a standard of living adequate for health, education, marry and establish a family, vote, and work.

Questionnaires were used to collect self-reported data from 139 lower-limb prosthetic and orthotic users in Sierra Leone

Journal of Disability and Rehabilitation, Volume 42, 2020 - Issue 8

https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2018.1515267

The UK Department for International Development (DFID)'s vision is a world where all people with disabilities, women, men, girls and boys, in all stages of their lives, are engaged, empowered and able to exercise and enjoy their rights on an equal basis with others, contributing to poverty reduction, peace and stability. A world where no-one is left behind.

Over the next five years DFID will prioritise four strategic pillars for action: (i) inclusive education, (ii) social protection, (iii) economic empowerment, and (iv) humanitarian action. To complement this focus DFID are adopting three cross-cutting areas, vital to disability inclusion, which will be consistently and systematically addressed in all of their work: (v) tackling stigma and discrimination; (vi) empowering girls and women with disabilities; and (vii) access to appropriate assistive technology.

DFID have introduced a new set of standards for all DFID business units to meet. The standards require all country offices and departments to; review their leadership and culture, engage with people with disabilities, influence others, adapt programming and improve data and evidence.

Humanity & Inclusion (HI) and iMMAP conducted a study concerned with the lack of disability data in the Syria crisis context,  which aimed to:

• Provide statistically reliable prevalence of disability as well as disability disaggregated data indicators on access to services.
• Increase understanding of the situation of Syrian refugees with disabilities and their households, compared to their peers without disabilities, in relation to the access to services including education, and key barriers experienced in accessing these services.
• Recommend inclusive actions to be prioritized by humanitarian actors.

The study conducted a literature review, quantitative data collection as well as qualitative data collection. Quantitative data was collected from 2,495 persons of randomly sampled 506 households in the urban setting in Bar Elias as well as Informal Tented Settlements (ITS) in Bar Elias and Arsal in December 2017. Fourteen Key Informant Interviews (KII) were also conducted in December 2017 to elicit deeper insights on the educational situation of children with and without disabilities.