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1 / Dans quelle mesure le handicap — en interrelation avec le genre — influence-t-il les parcours de scolarisation des filles handicapées?

2 / Quelles spécificités liées aux types et au degré de handicap (physique, visuel, auditif, intellectuel) peuvent être observées?

3 / Quelles sont les spécificités liées à l’âge des filles handicapées?

4 / A quels enjeux, notamment en matière de protection de l’enfance, les jeunes filles handicapées sont-elle exposées ?

5 / Quelles spécificités contextuelles émergent dans les trois pays, objet de l’étude et dans les différents terrains d’étude?

6 / Quel rôle joue la religion et les croyances populaires dans l’accentuation des discriminations à l’égard des filles handicapées?

7 / Quels éléments facilitateurs (familiaux/communautaires/institutionnels/politiques/etc.) pour l’éducation des filles handicapées pourraient être identifiés dans les différentes zones d’étude?

This Disability, Gender and Age Resource aims to support staff to better understand intersectionality. An intersectional approach reminds us of the need to look deeper at the way multiple individual characteristics and societal factors intersect to compound discrimination in any given context. This resouce is split into w main sections:

In Section A, we introduce the concept of intersectionality, its use as a lens to understand vulnerability and the relevance of ‘context’. Section A also introduces a few critical concepts: the fact that disability, gender and age are all social constructs, the centrality of power and the need to transform unequal power relations.

In Section B, we provide some guidance on inclusion and bias; the need to consider the wider environment; how to work with social norms; how to understand power differently; and empowerment and participation processes.

Background: South African scholarship on intellectual disability has produced a sizeable body of research, yet there are numerous areas where there is a paucity of research. One area in which there is a conspicuous paucity of research is historical studies of people with intellectual disability (PWID). The existing works devoted to the history of PWID in South Africa are primarily focused on the legal provisions and institutions for the protection and care of PWID. Missing from these works are the life stories and experiences of PWID.

Objectives: The article offers a study devoted to the life stories and experiences of the children with intellectual disability (CWID) who were admitted to the Institute for Imbecile Children from 1895 to 1913. The institute opened in April 1895 in Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown), South Africa. The institute was the first of its kind in the Cape Colony for CWID.

Method: The study presents a qualitative investigation of the life stories and experiences of the children that were recorded in the institute’s casebook. The entire set of 101 cases contained in the casebook was analysed by adopting a Gadamerian approach to hermeneutics.

Results: The examination of the institute’s casebook identified several broad themes relating to the children’s admittance, daily life at the institute and their routes out of the institute. The study also extols the individuality of each child’s life story to provide an awareness and richer appreciation of the humanness and personhood of the children.

Conclusion: The article contributes a positive narrative to the identity and the history of South African children with intellectual disability living in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020 

Background: Despite its acceptability, the term disability has not been able to shirk the sense of incompleteness, lack, deprivation and incapacitation embodied in the prefix ‘dis-’. The current wave of anti-discrimination on disability issues, calls for constant re-examination of the language and the appellations we use in respect of people with disabilities.

Objectives: The aim of this study is to subject the term disability to some relevancy litmus test with a view to prevent it from acquiring Lyotard’s ‘grand narrative’ and to propose and argue for the term ‘differently abled’ because of its transformative and anti-discriminatory slant.

Method: The study took the form of a literature review using the optic of Derrida’s hierarchy of binaries and the Sesotho proverb, ‘Bitso-lebe-ke seromo’, (A bad name is ominous) to explore the connotations of the term disability as a disenfranchising social construct.

Results: Read through the lens of Derrida’s idea of difference, disability as a concept has no inherent meaning and its meaning derives from its being differentiated from other concepts. Viewed through the lens of Bitso-lebe-ke seromo and read in the context of its deep symbolical significance, the term disability holds immense spiritual power.

Conclusion: The study concludes that the term disability or disabled is exclusionary, stigmatizing, and anti-transformational. As such it embodies imperfection, incapacitation and inferiority. Not only is it ominous, it places upon people with disability the perpetual mark of unattractiveness. Against this background the term differently abled seems to convey more empowering overtones than the term disability.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020 

Combining a comparative analysis of equal rights in the constitutions of all 193 countries with inspiring stories of activism and powerful court cases from around the globe, the book traces the trends in constitution drafting over the past half century, and examines how stronger protections against discrimination have transformed lives. Looking at equal rights across gender, race and ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, social class, and migration status, the authors uncover which groups are increasingly guaranteed equal rights in constitutions, whether these rights on paper have been translated into practice, and which nations and protections from discrimination lag behind

In this paper, we present a collection of decolonizing inclusive practices for elementary education that we have found effective when implementing them in postcolonial countries. The choice and implementation of such practices was informed by the intersectional and interdisciplinary theoretical framework of Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Disability Critical Race Theory in Education (DisCrit), and guided by decolonizing methodologies and community-based participatory research (CBPR). The main purpose of this paper is to show how critical theoretical frameworks can be made accessible to practitioners through strategies that can foster a critical perspective of inclusive education in postcolonial countries. By doing so, we attempt to push back against the uncritical transfer of inclusion models into Southern countries, which further puts pressure on practitioners to imitate the Northern values of access, acceptance, participation, and academic achievement (Werning et al., 2016). Finally, we hope to start an international dialogue with practitioners, families, researchers, and communities committed to inclusive education in postcolonial countries to critically analyze the application of the strategies illustrated here, and to continue decolonizing contemporary notions of inclusive education.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2020, Vol. 7 No. 1

Background: Over 90% of Deaf parents have hearing children, but there are very few, if any, studies that have explored the life worlds of hearing children of Deaf adults (CODAs) in South Africa. This article is an account of part of the life experiences of a female hearing child who was born and raised by her Deaf parents in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.

Objectives: This study used auto-ethnography to explore the socialisation of a female coloured CODA during the height of South Africa’s apartheid era, in order to shed light on intersectional influences on identity and selfhood. The study was intended to contribute to the limited knowledge available on the life circumstances of CODAs in Global South contexts.

Methods: Evocative auto-ethnography under a qualitative research paradigm was used to explore the life world of a now adult female hearing child of Deaf parents. Her thoughts, observations, reflections and involvements are articulated in a first person written narrative that is presented in this article. A thematic analysis approach was used to analyse data, and the themes that emerged are: (1) CODAs as language brokers, (2) being bilingual and trilingual, (3) being bicultural, (4) role reversal and parentification and (5) issues of identity. A discussion of these themes is interwoven with the literature, in an effort to provide a rich and robust analysis that contributes to the body of knowledge.

Results: Multiple identity markers that include disability, gender, race, age, nationality, culture and language intersect to frame the life world of a hearing child of Deaf parents who grew up in the apartheid era in South Africa. The result is both positive and negative life experiences, arising from being located simultaneously in both a hearing and Deaf world.

Conclusion: This study suggests that, in part, the life world of a hearing child of Deaf parents is multi-layered, multidimensional and complex; hence, it cannot be presented with a single description. Recommendations that inform policy and practice are outlined in the concluding section of the article.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 8, 2019

New accessibility-themed emojis including characters with hearing aids, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, white "probing" canes and guide dogs are to be introduced.

Their inclusion in 2019's official list means many smartphones should gain them in the second half of the year

Young people with disabilities have the same right to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) as their peers without disabilities, but their needs and rights are often overlooked. This study examines the SRH status of young people with disabilities in China. In particular, the study explored the sexuality-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of young people with disabilities as well as their access to sexuality-related information, education and services. The findings of the study are intended to provide evidence to support decision-making by government agencies, educators, development workers and other relevant stakeholders regarding developing and implementing disability-inclusive SRH and sexuality education policies and programmes for young people in China.

The study, using quantitative and qualitative methods, was conducted in 2015 among unmarried young persons aged 12 to 24 living with visual, hearing, physical and intellectual disabilities, in both urban and rural areas. The analysis was based on data collected through 707 completed valid questionnaires, 20 group interviews and 35 individual interviews with young people with disabilities, and individual interviews with 60 parents and teachers, along with one case study.