Resources search

India Inclusion Summit is a community driven initiative that aspires to build an Inclusive India by 2030. It is an annual event that began in 2012 to create awareness about disabilities and the need for Inclusion. The event brings together thought leaders and unsung heroes from the field of disability and inclusion to deliberate, discuss and drive change in our society.

Videos of some of the presentations are available including:

My Journey and ‘Deaf gain’ing an accessible India:  Vaibhav Kothari (18 mins), signed

You’re not just special. You’re Special Edition:  SwarnaLatha (11 mins)

Don’t let disability come in the way of things you love: Zoyeb Zia (10 mins), signed

The Adventure of Autism and quest to serve each other: Rupert Isaacson (20 mins), signed

Making a billion people read despite their disabilities: Brij Kothari (21 mins), signed

The ability needed to be whoever you want to be: Devika Malik (13 mins), signed

Everyone has something to give: Suchitra Shenoy (11 mins), signed

From being inclusive to doing acts of inclusion: Yetnebersh Niguissie (12 mins), signed

Finding your missing piece: Jerry White (18 mins), signed

Listening to the voice within that opens infinite possibilities: Rajni Bakshi (15 mins), signed

Being a mother is the most satisfying role: Suhasini Maniratnam (21 mins) signed

Knowledge is scarce on parental satisfaction with the inclusion of children with disabilities in physical education (PE). This study explored how parents’ satisfaction with inclusion in PE was associated with parental and child interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics. Seventy-two parents of children with disabilities participated in the survey-based study. The results of the ordinary least square regression (OLS) and quantile regression (QR) indicated that the parents’ satisfaction with social inclusion in PE was associated with their attitudes towards inclusion in PE, perceived PE-related information sharing, and the type of disability and degree of physical inclusion. Parents’ satisfaction with pedagogical inclusion of children in PE was associated with their attitudes towards inclusion in PE, PE-related information sharing, and the children’s degrees of disability and physical inclusion. Furthermore, the QR estimates indicated that the explanatory strength of parental attitudes towards inclusion in PE varied with the degree of parental satisfaction with social and pedagogical inclusion of their children in PE. Practical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed.

Papers included in this special issue are:

• The UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module—Accuracy, Inter-Rater Reliability and Cut-Off Level for Disability Disaggregation of Fiji’s Education Management Information System
• Disability and Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Cameroon: A Mediation Analysis of the Role of Socioeconomic Factors
• Assessing the Impact of the Twin Track Socio-Economic Intervention on Reducing Leprosy-Related Stigma in Cirebon District, Indonesia
• Factors Influencing Disability Inclusion in General Eye Health Services in Bandung, Indonesia: A Qualitative Study
• Unmet Needs and Use of Assistive Products in Two Districts of Bangladesh: Findings from a Household Survey
• Analysis of Social Determinants of Health and Disability Scores in Leprosy-Affected Persons in Salem, Tamil Nadu, India
• Developing Behaviour Change Interventions for Improving Access to Health and Hygiene for People with Disabilities: Two Case Studies from Nepal and Malawi
• Intersections Between Systems Thinking and Market Shaping for Assistive Technology: The SMART (Systems-Market for Assistive and Related Technologies) Thinking Matrix
• Adverse Childhood Experiences in Children with Intellectual Disabilities: An Exploratory Case-File Study in Dutch Residential Care
• Risk of Exclusion in People with Disabilities in Spain: Determinants of Health and Poverty
• Implementation of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) Core Sets for Children and Youth with Cerebral Palsy: Global Initiatives Promoting Optimal Functioning
• Challenges in Accessing Health Care for People with Disability in the South Asian Context: A Review
• A Systematic Review of Access to Rehabilitation for People with Disabilities in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
• A Systematic Review of Access to General Healthcare Services for People with Disabilities in Low and Middle Income Countries

This report was prepared by a team composed of disabilities experts, academics, representatives of disabilities organizations and other concerned organizations, and volunteers with disabilities. A common methodology was developed with friendly organizations and associations operating in the Kurdistan Region, in accordance with the UN Convention and sustainable development goals, as follows

1- Forming a steering committee consist of the Iraqi gathering of Iraqi Disabled Organizations (IGDO) and other relevant organizations

2- Reviewing national legislations, laws, regulations and strategies related directly and indirectly to the rights of persons with disabilities and their compatibility with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

3- Making sure that the report addresses all types of disabilities and covers all services, activities and areas without exception.

4- Making all the required efforts to insure that monitoring process includes positive and negative records concerning rights realization and sustainability.

5- Conducting a field survey of all activities of organizations of persons with disabilities.

6- Identifying gaps related to the rights of persons with disabilities.

7- Organizing a number of focus groups for different types of disabilities.

8- Providing the database of (IGDO) with data and information on persons with disabilities.

9- Conducting field visits to institutions and centers working in the area of disabilities.

10 - Making Interviews with experts, activists, representatives of governmental and international institutions and civil society organizations working in the field of disabilities in Iraq.

Research was carried out into progress in relation to eight of the SDGs (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 16 and 17)

This report is the first global report on epilepsy summarising the available evidence on the burden of epilepsy and the public health response required at global, regional and national levels.

This report is a call for sustained and coordinated action to ensure that every person with epilepsy has access to the care and treatment they need, and the opportunity to live free from stigma and discrimination in all parts of the world. It is time to highlight epilepsy as a public health imperative, to strongly encourage investment in reducing its burden, and to advocate for actions to address gaps in epilepsy knowledge, care and research.

Participation is a little discussed or researched concept in the social sciences, despite its importance in understanding activism. This article presents some theoretical and methodological considerations for promoting social participation and agency for disabled people through the work of psychologists associated with Brazilian public policies. This article takes the form of a discursive study, based on the dialogue between: a) Brazilian legislation on disability; b) Bader Sawaia’s Ethical-Political Psychology; and c) Disability Studies. Based on the assumption that psychological practices should promote participation and agency for disabled people, we present the elements that hinder or control participation. We then present theoretical methodological contributions to build practices that promote participation and agency, highlighting: a) critiques of moral and biomedical models of disability; b) understandings of disability from intersectional perspectives that incorporate it as a category of analysis; c) including disabled people in the construction of research and professional practices disabled people and d) the rupture with ableism, which blocks the participation of disabled people. Participation has shown to be a multidimensional concept that covers a spectrum of aspects – from the practice of activism to the constitution of subjectivity in disabled people.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 2

One common denominator of the novels and short stories by Lina Meruane (Chile, b. 1970) is the unconventional representation of illness and disability, and a critique of the connections between illness or disability, medicine and globalization. In this paper, I examine her novel Fruta podrida (2007) (rotten fruit) and the challenge it poses to the globalization of food production and pharmacological research as they affect people living in the Global South. This critique is realized obliquely and disturbingly from three distinct subject positions: a Chilean chemist who works for a fruit company in Chile; her half-sister who has diabetes; and a nurse in a New York City hospital. The linguistic and structural complexity of the narrative discourse demands an engagement with the text that places a further demand on its readers to engage with the inequalities and abuses created under globalization.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

The present article fosters a dialogue among multiple currents of literary research. Disability scholars such as Garland-Thomson, Davis, and Mitchell and Snyder, have famously explored the literary conventions of normativity. Their queries on normates and statistical averages, form a parallel line of thought with Moretti’s (2007) ‘distant reading’ of the novel. These two distinct pathways- distant reading and disability- lead to the same questioning of the accepted aesthetics of rationality, which of course interests scholars of Anthropocene. An environmental thinker of the stature of Ghosh (2016) has already taken up Moretti’s observations, and the present article places that engagement into a still richer context, with decolonial thinkers such as Grech, Maldonado-Torres, and Mignolo. This broad juxtaposition of thinkers, indicates that disability thought already prepares the environmentally conscious imagination to reach for alternatives to ableist and colonial readings. The principles of this wideranging theoretical dialogue are then put to the test with examples drawn from three Mexican writers’ fiction. The novels Formol (2014) by Carla Faesler (b. 1967) and Despúes del invierno (2014) by Guadalupe Nettel (b. 1973), along with the short story ‘La pierna era nuestro altar’ from El esquinista (2014) by Laia Jufresa (1983), review colonial habits using the aesthetic of realism and end up in familiar disenchantment that forestalls the possibility of an alternative. Nevertheless, these texts manage to interrupt their conventional fictions in the realist mode for moments of mindfulness. These pauses from accepted reasoning suggest an alternative style of cogitation, against the assumptions of the ‘normate,’ that may support Felski’s and Latour’s calls for a turn away from disenchantment. The article concludes that literary fiction might begin to listen to its own science and contemplate environmental disaster through a more mindful mode of poetic thought, a perceptive thinking that does not automatically accept the conventions established for the rational as the only ‘realistic’ aesthetic. The breaks or ‘breathers’ from the conventions of rationality included in these three contemporary fictions point the way toward a permissible mode of wellbeing in accordance with decolonial goals. Even if such mindful writing does not ultimately take hold in literary fiction, it may still aid critics in reassessing the tendency of the normate to cast itself as a superior kind of victim.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

This report represents the first UN systemwide effort to examine disability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the global level. The report reviews data, policies and programmes and identifies good practices; and uses the evidence it reviewed to outline recommended actions to promote the realization of the SDGs for persons with disabilities. Over 200 experts from UN agencies and International Financial Institutions, Member States and civil society, including research institutions and organizations of persons with disabilities, contributed to this report. The report covers new areas for which no global research was previously available, for example, the role of access to energy to enable persons with disabilities to use assistive technology. It also contains the first global compilation and analysis of internationally comparable data using the Washington Group on Disability Statistics short set of questions. Reviews of legislation from 193 UN Member States were conducted and analysed for this report to highlight good practices and to assess the current status of discriminatory laws on voting, election for office, right to marry and others