WHERE ARE WE AS A COMMUNITY TOWARDS PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES?

This pertinent question refers to our community's attitude towards, acceptance of, and accommodation for persons with disabilities (acronym is PWDs). 

Disabilities refer to any disorder that affect either a person's intellectual functioning, and adaptive behaviour in social and life skills, or physical, emotional, speech development, and also includes those with visual impairment, hearing impairment and mobility difficulties.

The image below has 4 simple drawings that can help us to understand the above question. 



The dots inside the circles represent people belonging inside a community


Drawing 1 : Exclusion

PWDs are outside of the community circle, as individuals

He/she is excluded from the mainstream of community life and are kept inside his/her family home; essentially out of sight and out of mind of the public. Ignorance, fear, and prejudice are the main underlying reasons.


Drawing 2 : Segregation

PWDs are grouped together and remain outside of the community circle

They are also excluded from mainstream community life, segregated for examples, in institutionalized care living or in a special education school setting.


Drawing 3 - Integration

The PWDs group is within the community circle

This is an effort to pave the way for PWDs to enter mainstream community life. An example of an integrated setting is where special classes for PWDs are set up within mainstream schools. A handful of classes for PWDs with a majority of classes for non-disabled students exist alongside each other but without much interaction or shared activities and lessons.   


Drawing 4 - Inclusion

Every individual PWDs is fully in the community circle

In this scenario, groupings of PWDs cease to exist. Like everyone else, each PWDs has access to participate in mainstream community life, including schooling, employment, housing, public facilities, and so on. And accommodations are made to enable different disabilities to do so. For examples, braille is on the push buttons of elevators for the visually impaired, ramps are found in public buildings for wheelchair users, PWDs are included in mainstream classes with provisions of the right support, and there are opportunities for employment in open work settings; and so on.       


So what do you, as the reader, think? 

Are the explanations helpful for you to evaluate where are we as a community towards PWDs? Exclusion or segregation or integration or inclusion, or somewhere in between one and the other?

Perhaps at the same time, you may also want to gauge what you personally wish to see happening in our community regarding PWDs. 

Please feel free to leave your comments below. 

It would be great to hear your thoughts and to engage in a conversation about this important matter 😃 Thanks!



 

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