Resources search

The mobile disability gap report 2020

ARANDA-JAN, Clara
December 2020

Expand view

As we move towards a more digital society, it is critical that digital technologies are inclusive of everyone, including persons with disabilities. However, research conducted by the GSMA Assistive Tech programme suggests that a disability gap exists in mobile access and use.

Driving greater inclusion of persons with disabilities requires data and evidence to inform actions from multiple stakeholders. This report looks to understand the digital divide experienced by persons with disabilities, identify existing barriers to digital inclusion and define strategies and actions to close the mobile disability.

This report uses data from the GSMA Intelligence Consumer Survey 2019 to explore the digital inclusion of persons with disabilities in eight LMICs: Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Uganda. This report looks at key stages and milestones in the journey to mobile internet use that can pose barriers to regular and diverse mobile use

Crimes against humanity: Decades of violence and abuse in Mexican institutions for children and adults with disabilities

AHERN, Laurie
BRIZUELA, Lisbet
MILLAN, Ivonne
RODRIGUEZ, Priscila
ROSENTHAL, Eric
October 2020

Expand view

In this report, Disability Rights International (DRI) has thoroughly documented and detailed human rights violations against people with disabilities - a culmination of the 20 years of work that DRI has carried out in Mexico. DRI’s investigations cover a wide range of institutions including orphanages, psychiatric hospitals, institutions for people with disabilities and for homeless people, among others. The documentation of such a large number of institutions provides an overview of a scale of violations of the rights of persons with disabilities in Mexico  

“Better to Make Yourself Invisible” Family violence against people with disabilities in Mexico

RIOS-ESPINOSA, Carlos
June 2020

Expand view

People with disabilities in Mexico can face severe abuse and neglect by their families with little protection or support from the government. This report documents how the lack of policies to support independent living can increase the risk of family violence and abuse for people with disabilities. It also documents the barriers people with disabilities face in accessing protection from abuse and justice on an equal basis with others, and documents serious concerns regarding implementation of procedural accommodations to ensure that people with disabilities can participate fully and equally in the justice system.

 

Based on research in 2018 and 2019, this report documents violence committed by family members against people with disabilities in four Mexican states: Oaxaca, Jalisco, Nuevo León, and Mexico City.  Interviews were carried out with 24 women and 14 men with disabilities. 

 

Voices of people with disabilities during the COVID19 outbreak

INTERNATIONAL DISABILITY ALLIANCE (IDA)
May 2020

Expand view

A collection of stories from people with various disabilities across the globe sharing their experiences with the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic risk reduction strategies implemented by their governments. Some stories are written by IDA and some are external.

Examples are:

  • How absence of transport can be fatal: A Story from Uganda
  • In Uganda, a Deaf man loses his leg after being shot during curfew
  • Voices of Mexico: Disability and COVID-19 | Voces de Mexico: Discapacidad y COVID-19
  • COVID-19 in Mexico: the experience of deafblind children told by their mothers (Espanōl)
  • Reaching Persons with Deafblindness
  • COVID-19 and The Forgotten People (Indonesia)
  • When accessible information is far from a reality: Zimbabwe during COVID-19
  • The experience of a blind woman in Kenya under COVID-19 outbreak
  • Being a single mother of two persons with disabilities under COVID-19 (South Africa)
  • Autistic students in South Africa: how has their life changed?
  • The Story of Rose Rokiatou: COVID-19 Pandemic and Financial Vulnerability of Persons with Disability in Mali
  • COVID-19 in Romania: Life-threatening situations reported
  • COVID-19 in Nepal: What are the challenges for indigenous persons with disabilities?
  • COVID-19 in India : Technology can be your best friend or worst enemy

Development, reliability, and piloting of a wheelchair caster failure inspection tool (C-FIT)

MHATRE, Anand A
LACHELL, Stephanie
PEARLMAN, Jonathan L
2019

Expand view

Introduction: 

Wheelchair casters fail frequently in the field causing multiple user consequences and wheelchair breakdowns. To inform caster design improvement, there exists no validated tools that can collect caster failures. This need motivated the development of a user-reported, caster failure inspection tool (C-FIT).

 

Methods: 

To develop C-FIT, a multistep design and testing approach was used which included face validity testing, test-retest reliability testing and expert review. Reliability testing was conducted with two independent cohorts of wheelchair professionals who inspected caster failures physically and online through pictures. The tool was revised based on testing outcomes and expert feedback. For preliminary data collection and evaluating usability, C-FIT was piloted at wheelchair service centers in Scotland, Indonesia and Mexico.

 

Results: 

Caster failure items reported in the literature were screened to develop the initial list of C-FIT items. Face validity testing conducted through surveys with wheelchair experts (n = 6) provided 14 items for C-FIT inclusion. The test-retest reliability was found to be high for 10 items with physical failure inspections (n = 12). For each of these items, 75% or more participants had substantial to almost perfect agreement scores (κ = 0.6–1.0). Lower reliability scores were found with online failure inspections (n = 11). C-FIT received positive usability feedback from study participants and data collectors in the field. Pilot field data (n = 31) included comprehensive details about failures useful for manufacturers, designers and researchers to improve caster designs.

Conclusions: 

The C-FIT tool developed in this study has substantial reliability and can be used for documenting caster failures at wheelchair service centers.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1 - Special issue: Disability and the Decolonial Turn: Perspectives from the Americas

2019

Expand view

Articles included are:

  • Editorial: Disability and the Decolonial Turn: Perspectives from the Americas
  • Disability, Decoloniality, and Other-than-Humanist Ethics in Anzaldúan Thought
  • Decolonizing Schools: Women Organizing, Disability Advocacy, and Land in Sāmoa
  • Adapting an Education Program for Parents of Children with Autism from the United States to Colombia
  • Globalized Food and Pharma: The South Bites Back in Lina Meruane’s Fruta podrida
  • Decolonial Embodiment: Fanon, the Clinical Encounter, and the Colonial Wound
  • Precarious Bodies, Precarious Lives: Framing Disability in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Cinema
  • Literary Fiction Under Coloniality and the Relief of Meditation in Guadalupe Nettel’s Desupés del invierno, Carla Faesler’s Formol and Laía Jufresa’s ‘La pierna era nuestro altar’

 

Creating an inclusive school environment

DOUGLAS, Susan
Ed
2019

Expand view

This publication draws together research and learning from around the world, in papers which highlight the need for inclusive education and some of the steps being taken to implement it. 

The settings brought to life here reveal the work of teachers, leaders and policy makers in geographically and culturally diverse situations. In each of the chapters we see the challenges they face and the significant efforts they make to ensure access to, and engagement with, a quality education for all children. The collection includes 15 case studies:

 

Special educational needs and disability section:

  • Teaching for All: mainstreaming inclusive education in South Africa
  • Successful inclusive education starts with teachers: what have we learned? A multi-country case study
  • Teaching English as a second language to the visually impaired in disadvantaged contexts: a case study from Chiapas, Mexico
  • The Theatre of the Classroom

Displaced populations section

  • Teaching on the run: safe learning spaces for internally displaced persons
  • Developing resilience through English language teaching in youth centres across Iraq
  • Capacity building for inclusive classrooms: the Living Together training
  • Integrating Syrian refugee children and their parents into Lebanese early education systems

Gender and inclusion in the classroom section

  • A gender equality and social inclusion approach to teaching and learning: lessons from the Girls’ Education Challenge
  • Teacher development and gender equality in five Nigerian states
  • Creating gender-inclusive schools in Turkey: the ETCEP project in action
  • Education, English language, and girls’ development: exploring gender-responsive policies and practices in Nepal

Minority ethnic groups in the classroom

  • Social inclusion and the role of English language education: making a transition from school to higher education in India
  • Storytelling for diverse voices
  • Inclusive education in marginalised contexts: the San and Ovahimba learners in Namibia

 

Literary Fiction Under Coloniality and the Relief of Meditation in Guadalupe Nettel’s Desupés del invierno, Carla Faesler’s Formol and Laía Jufresa’s ‘La pierna era nuestro altar’

HIND, Emily
2019

Expand view

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

2030 Agenda for sustainable development: Selected SDG indicators disaggregated by disability status

WASHINGTON GROUP ON DISABILITY STATISTICS
October 2018

Expand view

In light of the importance of disability data collection and the disaggregation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) outcome indicators by disability status, the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) undertook an exercise to review, among WG member countries, the extent to which data on SDG indicators currently available can be disaggregated by disability status. Requests for disaggregated SDG data for 13 selected indicators were sent to 146 member countries. 48 countries responded and 39 provided data. Response data is tabulated and discussed.

Disability and vocational rehabilitation in rural settings

HARLEY, Debra
et al
2018

Expand view

A graduate student textbook offered in 39 chapters, each with different authors and subjects. Abstracts, test questions and citations are freely available on-line. Full text is charged for. The book surveys rehabilitation and vocational programs aiding persons with disabilities in remote and developing areas in the U.S. and abroad. Contributors discuss longstanding challenges to these communities, most notably economic and environmental obstacles and ongoing barriers to service delivery, as well as their resilience and strengths. Considerations are largely of the US but there is a chapter on each of Asia and Pacific region, Australasia, Canada, Mexico, India, Turkey, Colombia and the UK. 

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2018, Vol. 5 No. 2 - Special issue: Intersecting Indigeneity, Colonisation and Disability

2018

Expand view

Articles include:

  • Editorial: Intersecting Indigeneity, colonialisation and disability
  • Yuin, Kamilaroi, Sámi, and Maori people’s reflections on experiences as ‘Indigenous scholars’ in ‘Disability Studies’ and ‘Decolonisation’
  • Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology: Practitioners’ Reflections on Indigeneity, Disability and Neo-Colonial Marketing
  • ‘My granddaughter doesn’t know she has disabilities and we are not going to tell her’: Navigating Intersections of Indigenousness, Disability and Gender in Labrador
  • Disabling Bodies of/and Land: Reframing Disability Justice in Conversation with Indigenous Theory and Activism
  • The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its implications for the health and wellbeing of indigenous peoples with disabilities: A comparison across Australia, Mexico and New Zealand
  • Challenges in global Indigenous–Disability comparative research, or, why nation-state political histories matter
  • ‘Black on the inside’: albino subjectivity in the African novel
  • The role of indigenous and external knowledge in development interventions with disabled people in Burkina Faso: the implications of engaging with lived experiences
  • An intersection in population control: welfare reform and indigenous people with a partial capacity to work in the Australian northern territory
  • Inclusion of marginalised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with neurocognitive disability in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

 

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its implications for the health and wellbeing of indigenous peoples with disabilities: A comparison across Australia, Mexico and New Zealand

RIVAS VELARDE, Minerva C
O'BRIEN, Patricia
PARMENTER, Trevor R
2018

Expand view

This paper explores how the expressed health needs of Indigenous peoples with disabilities resonate with the mandate of Article 25 ‘Health’ of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The perceptions of indigenous peoples with disabilities are investigated, regarding their access to, and expectations of, health care. Their views are compared to those of health workers, senior bureaucrats and United Nations delegates. An exploratory case study approach was taken to compare three jurisdictions: Australia, Mexico and New Zealand. The data collection techniques used involved semi-structured interviews, focus groups and field notes. The findings suggest that the health needs of indigenous peoples with disabilities are largely underserved and misunderstood by health departments. Specialised and preventive health care for those with disabilities was found to be particularly problematic. Poverty, discrimination and disenfranchisement emerged as being the possible major determinants of the ill health experienced by indigenous peoples with disabilities. The findings and conclusions outlined in this paper advocate the need to build capacity and rights literacy for indigenous peoples with disabilities, particularly with respect to the CRPD, in order to enhance its impact on the health of indigenous people. A legitimate redistribution of resources and decision-making in response to the expressed health needs of indigenous peoples with disabilities is needed if the vision of the CPRD is to be realised in relation to Article 25. 

 

Disability and the Global South, 2018, Vol.5, No. 2

Frida Kahlo and pendular disability identity: A textual examination of El Diario de Frida Kahlo

JONES, Elizabeth
2018

Expand view

Frida Kahlo is undoubtedly one of Mexico’s most famous female artists, and her rising popularity led to the 1995 publication of the diary she kept the last ten years of her life. Nonetheless, while the diary has received some critical scrutiny, the text has not been analyzed as an independent unit from the book’s visual components. As a result, Kahlo’s disability identity has also not been explored, but rather was assumed due to the extensive injuries Kahlo suffered as a young woman. These examinations have also tended to view Kahlo as having a fragmented sense of self and have allowed the diary’s artwork to guide this assumption. In dialogue with prior studies of Kahlo’s diary, this analysis will view the diary as an independent text and apply Karen K. Yoshida’s model of pendular reconstruction of self and identity to demonstrate how Kahlo describes her disability identity and better understand what others have called her ‘fragmentation.’ 

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2018, Vol. 5 No. 1

Bridging the gap – your role in transporting children with disabilities to school in developing countries

ACCESS EXCHANGE INTERNATIONAL
AJUWON, Paul
January 2017

Expand view

This guide provides practical information for people who want to improve transportation for children with disabilities in developing countries. The guide will help parents and their children, teachers, heads of schools, and education officials to improve transport to and from school for children with disabilities. It will help transportation officials and transport providers, as well as agencies promoting sustainable development in developing countries. The guide addresses a variety of circumstances found in it's case studies, ranging from children with disabilities riding on school buses in large cities to children walking to school in some rural areas where roads do not even exist. Key findings and recommendations are presented from research carried out, case studies and interviews with school heads 

No justice : torture, trafficking and segregation in Mexico

RODRIGUEZ, Priscila
ROSENTHAL, Eric
GUERRERO, Humberto
July 2015

Expand view

This report presents the findings of Disability Rights International (DRI)'s two-year investigation into the treatment of children and adults with mental disabilities in Mexico City which found a pattern of egregious and widespread human rights violations. The investigation found that in Mexico City having a disability can mean a life of detention and uncovered the existence of a “blacklist” of particularly abusive institutions that the Mexico City authorities are aware of – yet they permit these facilities to operate. DRI visited five of 25 facilities on the blacklist and specifically highlight the findings from Mama Rosa and Casa Esperanza, which was so abusive that DRI filed a formal complaint to DIF and sought immediate action by DIF to protect detainees. The report outlines the overall findings and how Mexico can take steps toward reform and justice calling for immediate steps to enforce the basic human rights of people with disabilities and outlines

Note: the report is available in pdf and word versions in both English and Spanish

Abuse and denial of sexual and reproductive rights of women with psychosocial disabilities in Mexico

RODRIGUEZ, Priscila
et al
February 2015

Expand view

This report presents the situation faced by women with psycho-social conditions in Mexico based on the results of a year-long study. This research included the application of a questionnaire to fifty-one women with psychosocial disabilities who were either members of the Colectivo Chuhcan or received outpatient services at four different health clinics and psychiatric institutions in Mexico City. The main finding of this report is that the Mexican government has failed to implement policies that ensure that women with psychosocial disabilities have safe access to sexual and reproductive health services, on an equal basis with others. It is recommended this research be extended to the rest of the country to gain a clearer picture on the situation of the sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities at a national level

Quantitative Exploratory Evaluation of the Frequency, Causes and Consequences of Rehabilitation Wheelchair Breakdowns delivered at a Paediatric Clinic in Mexico

TORO, M L
GARCIA, Y
OJEDA, A M
DAUSEY, D J
PEARLMAN, J
2012

Expand view

Purpose: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises assistive technology such as wheelchairs (WCs) as a tool for social inclusion for this population. In less resourced settings, organisations lack information about effective models of WC service provision. The goal of this study was to investigate the lifespan of WCs and whether they provided reliable mobility, at one clinic in Mexico.

 

Methods: Caregivers of children, who had requested replacements for their WCs from a clinic in Mexico, were interviewed in Spanish. Among others, the questions pertained to repairs/modifications, adverse events and WC usage characteristics. The owners exchanged their WCs for new ones at the clinic, and the maintenance status of each returned WC was evaluated using the WC Assessment Checklist (WAC).

 

Results: Twenty-three donated WCs, used by children aged 3 to 14 years for an average of 19 months, were evaluated. Brakes (n=18), seat and back-sling upholstery (n=11 and 7 respectively), and armrests (n=14) were the components that failed most frequently. A total of 26 adverse events due to WC failure were reported. Adverse events were significantly associated with poor WAC scores (rs=-0.544, p=0.007).

 

Conclusions: Poor WC reliability, associated with adverse events which could undermine social engagement, indicates the need for a stronger WC and for regular maintenance. For instance, brake failures which were most often associated with adjustment issues, could have been resolved with maintenance, while seat and back-sling upholstery and armrest failures suggest that the WC may not be appropriate for the environment. Future work should investigate the robustness of these WCs using standardised methods (ISO 7176), as well as the impact of maintenance interventions on WC reliability.

Disability and poverty in developing countries : a snapshot from the World Health Survey

MITRA, Sophie
POSARAC, Aleksandra
VICK, Brandon
April 2011

Expand view

This paper outlines the economic and poverty situation of working-age persons with disabilities and their households in 15 developing countries. Using data from the World Health Survey, the study presents estimates of disability prevalence, individual-level economic well-being, household-level economic well-being, and multidimensional poverty measure. Detailed appendices are provided to support the results of the study. This paper is useful for people interested in the social and economic conditions of people with disabilities in developing countries
Social Protection Discussion Paper No 1109

Bridging the gaps between research, policy and practice in low- and middle-income countries : a survey of health care providers

GUINDON, G Emmanuel
et al
May 2010

Expand view

This article discusses the results of a survey to examine the gaps that continue to exist between research based evidence and clinical practice. Health care providers in 10 low- and middle-income countries were surveyed about their use of research-based evidence and examined factors that may facilitate or impede such use. The conclusion is that locally conducted or published research plays an important role in changing the professional practice of health care providers surveyed in low- and middle-income countries and increased investments in local research, or at least in locally adapted publications of research-based evidence from other settings, are therefore needed. Although access to the Internet was viewed as a significant factor in whether research-based evidence led to concrete changes in practice, few respondents reported having easy access to the Internet. Therefore, efforts to improve Internet access in clinical settings need to be accelerate

Pages

E-bulletin