INFORMATION ABOUT disABILITIES

disABILITY INFORMATION - BENEFITS, FACTS AND RESOURCES FOR "PERSONS WITH disABILITIES"

A Disability is a lack of ability relative to a personal or group standard or norm. In reality there is often simply a spectrum of ability.

Disability may involve physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive or intellectual impairment, mental disorder (also known as psychiatric or psychosocial disability), or various types of chronic disease. A disability may occur during a person's lifetime or may be present from birth.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are as many as one billion persons with disabilities worldwide.

The medical model of disability:

A model by which illness or disability is the result of a physical condition, is intrinsic to the individual (it is part of that individual’s own body), may reduce the individual's quality of life, and causes clear disadvantages to the individual. As a result, curing or managing illness or disability revolves around identifying the illness or disability, understanding it and learning to control and alter its course.

The disability rights movement aims to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities.

For people with physical disabilities accessibility and safety are primary issues that this movement works to reform. Access to public areas such as city streets and public buildings and restrooms are some of the more visible changes brought about in recent decades.

The social model of disability:

Proposes that barriers and prejudice and exclusion by society (purposely or inadvertently) are the ultimate factors defining who is disabled and who is not in a particular society. It recognizes that while some people have physical, intellectual, or psychological differences from a statistical mean, which may sometimes be impairments, these do not have to lead to disability unless society fails to accommodate and include them in the way it would those who are 'normal.'

Current issues and debates surrounding "disability" include social and political rights, social inclusion and citizenship.

In developed countries the debate has moved beyond a concern about the perceived cost of maintaining dependent people with a disability to an effort to find effective ways of ensuring people with a disability can participate in and contribute to society in all spheres of life.

DEFINITION ABOUT disABILITY-

What is a Disability?

A disability is a condition or function judged to be significantly impaired relative to the usual standard of an individual or group. The term is used to refer to individual functioning, including physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive impairment, intellectual impairment mental illness, and various types of chronic disease.

Disability is conceptualized as being a multidimensional experience for the person involved. There may be effects on organs or body parts and there may be effects on a person's participation in areas of life. Correspondingly, three dimensions of disability are recognized in ICF: body structure and function (and impairment thereof), activity (and activity restrictions) and participation (and participation restrictions). The classification also recognizes the role of physical and social environmental factors in affecting disability outcomes.

Types of Disabilities

Types of disabilities include various physical and mental impairments that can hamper or reduce a person's ability to carry out his day to day activities. These impairments can be termed as disability of the person to do his or her day to day activities.

These impairments can be termed as disability of the person to do his day to day activities as previously. "Disability" can be broken down into a number of broad sub-categories, which include the following:

a) Mobility and Physical Impairments

This category of disability includes people with varying types of physical disabilities including:

Upper limb(s) disability.
Lower limb(s) disability
Manual dexterity.
Disability in co-ordination with different organs of the body.

Disability in mobility can be either an in-born or acquired with age problem. It could also be the effect of a disease. People who have a broken bone also fall into this category of disability.

b) Spinal Cord Disability:

Spinal cord injury (SCI) can sometimes lead to lifelong disabilities. This kind of injury mostly occurs due to severe accidents. The injury can be either complete or incomplete. In an incomplete injury, the messages conveyed by the spinal cord is not completely lost. Whereas a complete injury results in a total dis-functioning of the sensory organs. In some cases spinal cord disability can be a birth defect.

c) Head Injuries - Brain Disability

A disability in the brain occurs due to a brain injury. The magnitude of the brain injury can range from mild, moderate and severe. There are two types of brain injuries:

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

ABI is not a hereditary type defect but is the degeneration that occurs after birth.

The causes of such cases of injury are many and are mainly because of external forces applied to the body parts. TBI results in emotional dysfunctioning and behavioral disturbance.

d) Vision Disibility

There are hundreds of thousands of people that suffer from minor to various serious vision disability or impairments. These injuries can also result into some serious problems or diseases like blindness and ocular trauma, to name a few. Some of the common vision impairment includes scratched cornea, scratches on the sclera, diabetes related eye conditions, dry eyes and corneal graft.

e) Hearing Disability

Hearing disabilities includes people that are completely or partially deaf, (Deaf is the politically correct term for a person with hearing impairment).

People who are partially deaf can often use hearing aids to assist their hearing. Deafness can be evident at birth or occur later in life from several biologic causes, for example Meningitis can damage the auditory nerve or the cochlea.

Deaf people use sign language as a means of communication. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world. In linguistic terms, sign languages are as rich and complex as any oral language, despite the common misconception that they are not "real languages".

f) Cognitive or Learning Disabilites

Cognitive Disabilities are kind of impairment present in people who are suffering from dyslexia and various other learning difficulties and includes speech disorders.

f) Psychological Disorders

Affective Disorders: Disorders of mood or feeling states either short or long term. Mental Health Impairment is the term used to describe people who have experienced psychiatric problems or illness such as:

Personality Disorders - Defined as deeply inadequate patterns of behavior and thought of sufficient severity to cause significant impairment to day-to-day activities.

Schizophrenia: A mental disorder characterized by disturbances of thinking, mood, and behavior.

h) Invisible Disabilities

Invisible Disabilities are disabilities that are not immediately apparent to others. It is estimated that 10% of people in the U.S. have a medical condition considered a type of invisible disability.

The Evolution of a Movement

Historically, disabilities have often been cast in a negative light. An individual thus affected was seen as being a “patient” subject either to cure or to ongoing medical care. His condition is seen as disabling; the social reactions to it are justified, and the barriers unavoidable. This position is known as the medical model of disability. 

Over the past 20 years, a competing view known as the social model of disability has come to the fore. In this model, disability is seen more as a social construction than a medical reality. An individual may be impaired by a condition that requires daily living adaptations, but the bulk of his problem - his disability - can be found in the attitudinal and physical barriers erected by society.

Both the medical and social models agree, to a point, that facilities and opportunities should be made as accessible as possible to individuals who require adaptations. Dismantling physical barriers, or setting up adaptations such as wheelchair ramps, is known as "fostering accessibility".

The Language and Terminology of Disability

Within the disability sector generally language matters. For a group of people who have been so relentlessly described in disparaging, reductionist and exclusivist terms, language matters profoundly. This is not unique to people with a disability. In civil rights movements around race, gender, nationality and sexuality, language has been a cornerstone of achieving respect and inclusion.

The term disability has replaced the older designations spastic, handicapped, and crippled. While these two designations can be used interchangeably, proponents of the social model of disability have appropriated the latter term to describe those social and economic consequences of the former. An individual with a physical or intellectual disability, then, is said to be "handicapped" by the lowered expectations of society.

A person may also be "impaired" either by a correctable condition such as myopia, or by an uncorrectable one such as cerebral palsy. For those with mild conditions, related impairments disappear with the application of corrective devices. More serious impairments call for adaptive equipment.

In the United Kingdom, people within the disability rights movement commonly use the term "Disabled" to denote someone who is "disabled by society's inability to accommodate all of its inhabitants."

The Person First Movement has added another layer to this discourse by asking that people with disabilities be identified first as individuals. "Person First Language" -- referring, for example, to a “woman who is blind,” rather than to "a blind woman" - is a form of political correctness designed to further the aims of the social model by removing attitudinal barriers.

Some people with disabilities support the Person First Movement, while others do not. People who are Deaf in particular may see themselves as members of a specific community, properly called the Deaf culture, and so will reject efforts designed to distance them from the central fact of their identity.

A human rights based approach has been adopted by many organizations of and for disabled people. In 2000, for example, the United Nations Assembly decided to start working on a comprehensive convention for the rights of disabled people.

Panjab University radio station prepares audio books for blind students
CHANDIGARH, Sept 18: Panjab University's community radio station 91.2 Jyotirgamya has completed the recording of audio books for students, as part of their voluntary activity towards the community.

These are B A and M A course–oriented books, which were recorded in English and Hindi to facilitate visually impaired students for their exams. Audio cassettes and CDs were handed over to the students on Wednesday at the radio station, located inside the School of Communication Studies (SCS) campus.

"I needed audio books for compulsory and elective English subjects for my B A II course. At school, we were provided with books in Braille but it is difficult to get college books converted into Braille as one book is converted into several volumes, which is not user–friendly," said Rishi Kumar Sharma, one of blind students.

"I am very thankful to radio Jyotirgamya for providing me with audio books," said Sharma, who studies at Government College in Sector 11. Sakshi Dua of Economics department, one of the volunteers of book reading, said, "It gives me great sense of fulfillment to be capable of serving the community." "I am very happy that we have completed the first phase of preparing books for blind students and thankful to all the students who participated in book reading. I would want to inform the readers that we have a fresh set of books to be recorded and volunteers are welcome," said Archana R Singh, SCS chairperson.
Source: http://ping.fm/ddHYE
Posted by Aqeel Qureshi
Back to Top

HP high court summons Public Service Commission Chief
Shimla, Sept 15: The Himachal Pradesh High Court has summoned the chairman of the state public service commission to appear before it with particulars of the selection committee that did not choose a blind candidate for the post of a lecturer.

Putting the selection process of the Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPPSC) under the scanner, a division bench of Chief Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Sanjay Karol Tuesday directed Maj. Gen. (retd) C.M. Sharma to furnish the qualification, experience and service particulars of the members and the head of the selection committee.

The court order on the appeal of blind person Shyam Lal was received Wednesday. The next date of hearing is Sep 19.

The HPPSC chairman was also asked to file an affidavit on whether the selection committee had fixed any guidelines/parameters to assess the merit of the candidates –– if so, what were the parameters.

It directed him to state how many vacancies needed to be filled in various categories from amongst physically challenged candidates and what steps had been taken in this regard.

Shyam Lal had applied for the post of a college lecturer advertised by the HPPSC in 2008.

Of the five posts advertised, three were reserved for blind people. Two candidates –– Shyam Lal and a physically disabled candidate –– applied for the posts under the reserved category.

The candidature of physically disabled people was considered and he was interviewed though no post was reserved for his category.

When the HPPSC realised its mistake, the entire selection process was cancelled, according to the petition.

Shyam Lal moved the high court against the decision. The court ordered the HPPSC to finalise the selection as per the process already commenced and interviews already held.

However, the HPPSC declared that Shyam Lal had got less marks than prescribed.

In its earlier orders, the high court had said it was shocking to judicial conscience how the petitioner, who is a teacher in the subject for over 15 years, has been awarded such poor marks despite his being a postgraduate as well as an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in chemistry.

It also observed that there was something wrong either with the assessment of the selection committee or with the selection process.

Last month, the Punjab and Haryana High Court struck down the appointment of Harish Rai Dhanda as the Punjab Public Service Commission chairman. The court observed that the decision–making process in Dhanda's appointment was shrouded in secrecy.

Mental health and disability stigmas thrive in India
Sept 25: Psychiatrist Fabian Almeida was stunned when the co–operative society next to his clinic outside Mumbai wrote to him complaining about his patients, with mental disabilities.

He was told that those receiving treatment for conditions ranging from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder to hyperactivity and dyslexia were a nuisance to other residents and should be kept inside.

"They were talking about them spreading germs," he told AFP by telephone from the commuter town of Kalyan, in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Almeida's experience is not an isolated case in India, with long–standing concern about attitudes towards the country's estimated 40–90 million people with mental and physical disabilities.

"The whole system is not ready to help people with disabilites," said Aqeel Qureshi, a disability rights activist who manages the Disability News India website and campaigns for better access for disabled people. Qureshi, a wheelchair user, said he was stranded at New Delhi's new $2.7–billion international airport terminal for two hours earlier this year after the lifts broke down.

On other occasions he said he missed flights because of a lack of lifts to the aircraft. Disabled people have been stopped from flying altogether by some airlines.

In Indian towns and cities, high kerbs, poorly maintained or non–existent pavements, stairs and a lack of wheelchair ramps are common hazards, making daily life difficult or impossible for people with disabilities.

Packed buses with high access steps, overcrowded suburban trains that halt only for 30 seconds in stations or a lack of public disabled toilets add to the problems.

In Mumbai, new pedestrian crossings have recently been installed at busy junctions but the audible signals –– designed to tell blind people when to cross – have been silenced.

Residents complained they were too noisy, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported last week.

Lack of awareness and not consulting people with disabilities or the groups representing them is often to blame, Qureshi said. "The problem with authorities is that they think they're very smart and very intelligent and that they know our needs. It's an attitude problem," he said from his base in Tokyo.

"The whole thing is not helping people with disabilities. That's why most people with disabilities are not empowered.

"The basic needs for people with disabilities is to provide better infrastructure so that you can go outside and live like any other citizen."

The World Bank has said that people with disabilities are among the most marginalised in Indian society and that some 50 percent of people it surveyed saw disability as a "curse of God".

"A lot more needs to be done in implementation and 'getting basics right'," the organisation said, calling for greater integration of disabled people into Indian society.

Researchers have found that disability in India is often seen as a punishment for a person's misdeeds in a past life, particularly in rural areas.

It has also been seen as lowering the status of a family in India, where social standing – particularly through marriage – remains important.

For some, India's rapid economic growth, which has fuelled a construction boom in big cities, is a perfect opportunity to make new buildings and infrastructure more disabled–friendly.

A landmark disabilities act introduced in 1995 was praised as one of the most progressive among developing countries, even if its implementation is patchy.

The country's popular Hindi–language film industry, Bollywood, has also helped raise awareness of conditions from dyslexia to Asperger's Syndrome in recent years.

Psychiatrist Almeida says progress has been made, highlighting the messages of support he has received for his clinic after he received the letter from next door.

"Incidents like this become speed breakers in our path to progress. Some people have chosen to remain ignorant," said Almeida, whose clinic uses yoga, art therapy and sport to help patients.

But India needs to do more as it develops and so–called Western lifestyle diseases such as depression become more prevalent and physical infirmity increases as the population ages, he added.

"I think we need to be providing mental health services more and tackling the stigma and taboo associated with it... There's so much more to do," he said.

Be more disabled–friendly in education: HC tells state
Mumbai,Sept 22: Blind and Deaf candidates are ineligible for admission to the Bachelor of Occupational Therapy (BOTh) and Bachelor of Physiotherapy (BPTh) courses.

The draft guidelines submitted by the Maharashtra Council for Occupational and Physiotherapy shocked the Bombay high court on Tuesday. The draft guidelines will be placed before the state government for approval.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Khar resident Kritika Purohit, whohad moved court last year after the Directorate of Technical Education turned down her application to appear for the CET for professional medical courses as she is visually blind person.

Additional government pleader GW Mattos said the the guidelines were prepared based on the report of a three–member expert committee."

The committee held that these candidates are ineligible because students learn keen senses of observational skills in these two courses, and it is necessary to identify and grade impairment qualitatively to chalk out effective treatment programme.

Mattos said: "If they clear the courses and are recruited, during an emergency they will have to attend to patients."

The division bench of chief justice Mohit Shah and justice Roshan Dalvi said: "If they are employed by a hospital then they will be accommodated accordingly and all hospitals have physiotherapists."

The court directed the state to take into consideration the directives of the chief commissioner for the persons with disability to treat all disability and the willingness of the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) to support visually impaired candidates.

MUHS, which conducts exams for the two courses, has expressed willingness to provide support to blind candidates

NGOs for disabled people meet Railway Minister
CHENNAI, Sept 30: Representatives of 17 organisations working among the disabled in the country, on Wednesday met the Union Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi to draw attention to the problems faced by people with reduced mobility and disability, while travelling in the Indian Railways.

The delegation also demanded extension of e–booking facility for disabled people and extension of concessions on tickets to all those categorised as disabled people in the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995. They also demanded that concessions be provided in local and passenger trains as well in long distance trains.

The members of the delegation pointed out that railway stations are not accessible. Ramps are rare and that too limited for entry into the foot over–bridges. Platforms are inaccessible. The gap (height) between the platform and the coach varies from station to station. They demanded that the Railways set up a task force on access and go in for universal design. They also demanded that battery operated cars now provided at some stations be made available at all major stations and platforms.

For the past many years the railways have not made recruitment to fill the three per cent quota for disabled persons mandated by the PwD Act. In the matter of promotions also, despite court orders, reservation in promotions is not being implemented.The Minister gave a patient hearing and assured the delegation to consider their demands.

Quota for Disabled People in Lok Sabha Jobs Approved
New Delhi, Sept 14: Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar Tuesday approved a quota for people with physical disabilities in the Lok Sabha Secretariat jobs.

According to a statement from Meira Kumar's office, three percent of vacancies in case of direct recruitment in the Lok Sabha Secretariat shall be reserved for "people with disabilities".

The quota has been set aside for across the job categories.

Of the three percent, one percent each will be reserved for persons suffering from low vision, hearing impairment and physical disability in the posts identified for each disability.

"Similarly, three percent of vacancies in case of promotion to Group C posts in which the element of direct recruitment, if any, does not exceed 75 percent, shall be reserved for persons with disabilities," the statement said.

The order also relaxes the upper age limit for such candidates by 10 years.

It also "provides for theÊ relaxation of standard of suitability and stipulates that if sufficient number of persons with disabilities are not available on the basis of the general standard to fill all the vacancies reserved for them, candidates belonging to this category may be selected on relaxed standard to fill up the remaining vacancies reserved for them provided they are not found unfit for such post or posts".

Expecting your support................

Expecting your support................, a photo by samvedna2010 on Flickr.

HOPES, FEELINGS AND ASPRIATIONS