Resources search

Background: Persons with disabilities are generally at greater risk of experiencing violence than their peers without a disability. Within the sphere of disability, individuals with severe communication disabilities are particularly vulnerable and have an increased risk of being a victim of abuse or violence and typically turn to their country’s criminal justice system to seek justice. Unfortunately, victims with disabilities are often denied fair and equal treatment before the court. Transformative equality should be pursued when identifying accommodations in court for persons with communication disabilities, as the aim should be to enable such individuals to participate equally in court, without barriers and discrimination.

Objectives: This research aimed to identify court accommodations recommended by legal experts, which could assist individuals with severe communication disabilities in the South African court.

Method: A qualitative design was used to conduct a discussion with a panel of legal experts.

Results: Using Article 13 (Access to Justice) of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) as a human rights framework, four themes were identified: equality, accommodations, participation and training of professionals.

Conclusion: Foreign and national law clearly prohibits discrimination against persons with communication disabilities because of their disability and state that they should be given fair and equal access to the court system. For transformative equality to be achieved, certain rules and laws need to be changed to include specific accommodations for persons with communication disabilities so that they may be enabled to participate effectively in court in the criminal justice system.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020

Fostering equity by offering the best education possible to all students is one of the main goals of inclusive schooling. One instrument to implement individualised education is individualised education planning (IEP). IEP requires cooperation between special and regular teachers. From research on school leadership it is known that leadership styles are connected to the way, school leaders use their scope of action with respect to fostering collaboration. However, little is known about the relationship between the leadership of a school, the provision of structures for collaboration, and the implementation of IEP in an inclusive context. The article focuses on the question to what extent transformational (TL) and instructional leadership (IL) are connected to the provision of structures for collaboration and how TL and IL as well as structures for collaboration relate to the implementation of IEP directly and indirectly. Based on data of N = 135 German schools, a path model was calculated. It revealed medium relations between TL, IL, and structures for collaboration as well as a medium effect from structures to collaboration on implementation of IEP. The effect from TL towards implementation of IEP was fully mediated by structures for collaboration, while the effect from IL persisted.

Compulsory distance education has always sought to be inclusive, providing educational opportunities for K-12 students unable to attend mainstream, face-to-face schools for medical, geographical, or personal reasons. However, how to effectively engage these diverse learners has remained a perpetual challenge, with a need for further investigation into the nature of student engagement with compulsory school distance contexts and how teachers can best support it. This qualitative study used focus groups (n=2 groups, n=16 participants) to examine teacher definitions and student engagement strategies within eKindy-12 distance education in Queensland, Australia. Categorical analysis was conducted using a priori codes for definitions, focusing on four previously established engagement types (i.e. behavioural, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagement), and in vivo codes for strategies. Teacher definitions focused strongly on behavioural engagement, but most also contained elements of emotional and cognitive engagement; agentic engagement was only occasionally evidenced via practice descriptions. Teachers described engaging students by: building relationships, creating a safe classroom environment through differentiation, using inclusive technological tools to facilitate interaction and monitor progress, making learning fun and relevant, drawing on school-wide pedagogical frameworks and teaching strategies, and encourage self-regulation. Findings suggest distance education teachers face unique challenges around evidencing engagement and supporting student agency.

Purpose: To examine how mobility and mobility impairment affect quality of life; to develop a descriptive system (i.e., questions and answers) for a novel mobility-related quality of life outcome measure.

Materials and methods: Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Participants were recruited predominantly from NHS posture and mobility services. Qualitative framework analysis was used to analyse data. In the first stage of analysis the key dimensions of mobility-related quality of life were defined, and in the second stage a novel descriptive system was developed from the identified dimensions.

Results: Forty-six interviews were conducted with 37 participants (aged 20–94 years). Participants had a wide range of conditions and disabilities which impaired their mobility, including cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis. Eleven dimensions of mobility-related quality of life were identified: accessibility, safety, relationships, social inclusion, participation, personal care, pain and discomfort, independence, energy, self-esteem, and mental-wellbeing. A new outcome measure, known as MobQoL, was developed.

Conclusions: Mobility and mobility impairment can have significant impacts on quality of life. MobQoL is the first outcome measure designed specifically to measure the impact of mobility on quality of life, and therefore has utility in research and practice to measure patient outcomes related to rehabilitation.

An Emancipatory Disability Research in Mongolia was carried out as part of a project aimed at promoting independent living among young adults with disabilities living in the national capital Ulaanbaatar (UB). It was focused on young adults with disabilities living in the 9 districts of UB and was seen as a part of the process which provides information and skills to persons for independent living. It was based on the social model of disability - it looked at the different ways in which the society creates disabling barriers which block or make difficult the participation of persons with disabilities in the different domains of life. The idea of conducting the emancipatory research came from an interaction between some Mongolian DPOs and Tegsh Niigem, a Mongolian NGO active in the areas of rehabilitation, who then asked AIFO-Italy for technical support to conduct it. EDR in Mongolia was implemented through a new approach called a “Community-Based Emancipatory Disability Research” (CB-EDR). A group of young persons with different disabilities were identified as volunteer-researchers by their DPOs, trained and then supported to carry out research in 12 broad areas which they had identified, over a period of 18 months. The researchers, individually or in small groups, carried out research on one theme at a time by collecting information about it from the field. They met periodically to share and discuss the findings of their research and to build a common understanding about the key issues related to the selected theme, and what could they do to overcome the barriers they had identified.

This report is a study into the intersection of gender, violence and disabilities, with a focus on the role of disabilities in increasing the risk of sexual and gender-based violence and domestic violence perpetrated against women with disabilities and women parenting children with disabilities in Dushanbe, Bokhtar and Khorog (Tajikistan). The study targeted women and men between the ages of 18-65 living with disabilities or parenting children with disabilities. Field data were collected through 12 focus group discussions (four in each location) divided by age and gender, with men and women living with disabilities or parenting children with disabilities. 30 repeat in-depth interviews were conducted with women and men with disabilities among different age groups, as well as women with children with disabilities.

Background: This research is part of a larger project on the exploration of inequalities in South African higher education. This current study focussed on the implementation of policies to eradicate inequalities in an inclusive education system.

Objectives: This article aimed to establish the implementation of policy by researching the lived experiences of students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) studying in the university.

Method: A qualitative, systematic review was employed as the research methodology. Original peer-reviewed qualitative studies published between 1994 and 2017 were systematically reviewed. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to ensure rigorous reviews. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) was used to guide the process of critical appraisal of the selected articles which resulted in a total of 10 articles being selected for reviewing. The target population of this research comprised undergraduate students diagnosed with SLD. Semi-structured interviews were the main data collection tools used in the studies that were reviewed. Data from the selected articles were extracted and synthesised.

Results: The dominant themes that emerged from the review were: (1) fear of stigmatisation; (2) gaps in policy implementation; (3) experiences vary across departments; and (4) self-determination and family support as success factors.

Conclusion: An important aspect in the transformation of higher education institution is to ensure the closing of the disjuncture between policy and implementation in support of students with SLD.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020 

Purpose:  The Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) is an ongoing screening and early intervention programme for children in India. Children with birth defects and developmental disabilities from rural and urban communities are referred for treatment and therapies to early intervention centres located in urban areas. This study primarily aimed at determining caregiver uptake and compliance to referral advice of the RBSK, with the larger goal of determining the utility of the community-based screening and district-based intervention service model for caregivers of children with disabilities.

Method: Three administrative blocks and one municipal corporation area of Pune district, in Maharashtra, were randomly selected. The sample consisted of 115 caregivers of children with disabilities. They were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire that investigated uptake of referral advice, treatment outcome, current health status of the child and reasons for noncompliance, three to nine months after the first referral by the RBSK team. 

Results: Sixty-four caregivers were aware of their child’s disability, but most children remained untreated. After screening and referral by the RBSK team, compliance was high for treatable conditions like congenital heart defects. Treatment was discontinued for 83% (24 out of 29) of children with developmental disabilities. Reasons for discontinuation included lengthy waiting time, distance to facility, difficulty in transporting the child, loss of wages, and denial of the child’s disability.

Conclusion and Implications: The results indicated that the RBSK programme provides treatment opportunities for children who are left undiagnosed and untreated in the community. Providing rehabilitation services at district centres is a barrier for service uptake. Alternative models such as early childhood development screening and integrating rehabilitation services at the primary healthcare level may be more feasible to provide services for children with disabilities in India.

There is growing awareness and international commitment to improving sexual and reproductive health for persons with intellectual disabilities. Despite this, people with intellectual disabilities continue to face stigma and have limited access to sexual health education and information. This qualitative phenomenological study uses data from 10 interviews to describe what it means to teach sexual and reproductive health and rights to students with intellectual disabilities at special-needs schools in southern Sweden. The meaning of teachers’ experience is described through their efforts to ‘accept the challenge to coach special-needs students into adulthood’. Findings show that sexual and reproductive health in special-needs schools covers a broad range of topics and that the teacher must adapt to students’ shifting needs. They also reveal that teachers are motivated and have access to the necessary resources to teach sexual and reproductive health but feel they lack the skills to address students’ particular sexual health issues, including questions of culture and religion. Schools are the main source of sexual health information in Sweden and therefore play a crucial role in providing equal education and promoting public health.