Journal articles on the topic 'Educational Level Attitude Physically Challenged Disability'

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1

Esther, Ejeh, and Joseph Alila. "EFFECT OF EDUCATIONAL LEVEL ON ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED PERSONS IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA." International Journal of Advanced Research 9, no. 10 (2021): 952–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.21474/ijar01/13633.

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People living with physical challenges constitutes part of the larger society and should be given the inclusive opportunity to engage fully in societal activities. The plight of persons with disabilities in Kogi State, Nigeria, has attracted increasing concern over the years. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the variations in attitude towards the person with physical challenges in Kogi State based on educational level. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design. One hundred and seventeen (n=117) participants randomly pooled from different locations in the Kogi State, Nigeria, participated in the study. The participants completed a self-report measure of the modified version of the Attitudes towards Disabled Persons (SADP) Scale. The result revealed that the participants primarily showed positive attitudes towards persons with physical challenges despite their educational level. Also, the result of the simple linear regression conducted to test the hypothesis revealed that educational level does not predict attitude towards the physically challenged.
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Torres Paz, Luis Edwin, Juan Carlos Granados Barreto, Edgardo José Torres Lozada, David Bustamante Cerna, and Yurick Franz Arroyo Fernández. "Profesorado en Educación Física vinculado a la discapacidad e inclusión en Perú (Teachers in Physical Education linked to disability and inclusion in Peru)." Retos 49 (June 20, 2023): 905–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.47197/retos.v49.98676.

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Respecto a los futuros profesores de Educación Física (EF), como de todas las áreas de la currícula, habría que preguntarse cuáles son, cómo y las razones de sus actitudes ante la discapacidad e inclusión. Este trabajo buscó analizar las actitudes de universitarios peruanos de la carrera de Educación Física (EEF), así como los factores vinculados a la actitud de los futuros docentes de EF y desafíos que se les presentan. Participó un total de 160 universitarios (97 hombres y 63 mujeres) con una edad media de (DT=1.84), pertenecientes a la Universidad Nacional Pedro Ruiz Gallo, Universidad Particular de Chiclayo, Universidad Nacional José Faustino Sánchez Carrión y Universidad Nacional de Educación, a quienes se implementó el cuestionario Factores asociados a la actitud hacia la discapacidad en estudiantes de Educación Física (Palomino y Quispe, 2020) y la Escala de Actitudes hacia las Personas con Discapacidad (Palomino y Quispe, 2020). Se demostró que un número significativo de los estudiantes de la carrera de EF poseen una actitud positiva hacia la discapacidad e inclusión. Además, indicadores destacados para la actitud fueron el sexo, experiencia social y nivel educativo. Paralelamente, los factores que influye sobre la actitud son de tipo formativo, personal-experiencial y contextual, y algunos desafíos fueron la capacitación, sensibilización, terminología y falta de expertos. Palabras clave: educación física, inclusión, actitudes, profesorado, discapacidad Abstract. Regarding future Physical Education (PE) teachers, as with all areas of the curriculum, one should ask what, how and the reasons for their attitudes towards disability and inclusion. This work sought to analyze the attitudes of Peruvian university students in the Physical Education (EEF) major, as well as the factors linked to the attitude of future PE teachers and challenges that are presented to them. A total of 160 university students participated (97 men and 63 women) with an average age of (DT=1.84), belonging to the Pedro Ruiz Gallo National University, the Private University of Chiclayo, the José Faustino Sánchez Carrión National University and the National University of Education. to whom the questionnaire Factors associated with the attitude towards disability in Physical Education students (Palomino and Quispe, 2020) and the Scale of Attitudes towards People with Disabilities (Palomino and Quispe, 2020) were implemented. It was shown that a significant number of PE students have a positive attitude towards disability and inclusion. In addition, prominent indicators for attitude were gender, social experience, and educational level. At the same time, the factors that influence attitude are formative, personal-experiential, and contextual, and some challenges were training, awareness, terminology, and lack of experts. Keywords: physical education, inclusion, attitudes, teachers, disability
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C. Onah, Festus, and Kelechi T. Ugwu. "FACTORS INFLUENCING THE ATTITUDESOF NIGERIANS TOWARD PERSONS WITH PHYSICAL CHALLENGES." International Journal of Advanced Research 9, no. 5 (2021): 395–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.21474/ijar01/12851.

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The present study aimed to examine the factors influencing the attitudes of Nigerians toward people with a physical disability. The study hypothesized that education and exposure to the physical challenge would influence attitudes toward people with a physical disability. The design of the study was cross-sectional. The participants comprise one hundred (100) workers drawn from state and local government civil service in the Enugu State, Nigeria, using a random sampling technique. Data were collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire, using a modified version of the Scale of Attitudes towards Disabled Persons (SADP). The result revealed that the participants largely showed positive attitudes towards persons with physical challenges. Two hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis and the analysis revealed that educational leveldid not influence attitude towards the physically challenged. However, it was found that exposure to a person with physical challenges influenced the attitudes toward people with a physical disability.
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Dr., Sujoy Kanti Ghoshal. "Educational Development of Physically Challenged Persons in India - Policies and Challenges." International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development 2, no. 4 (2018): 1614–22. https://doi.org/10.31142/ijtsrd13038.

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Education is the most important vehicle for social, economic and political transformation. Unfortunately, globally numerous Physically Challenged Persons PCPs and particularly Children with Disabilities CWDs do not get adequate opportunity of education because of social neglect, and absence of support systems in the home and inadequacy of sufficient facilities particularly in schools. The situation is worst for low income countries compare to high income countries. In India, as for all children, education is vital for CWDs in itself but also instrumental for participating in employment and other areas of social activity. However, educational outcomes for children and adults with disabilities remain poor in both rural and urban India. The circumstance is more vulnerable for girl children with disability. The situation is started to change. The NSSO data shows some improvement in literacy level. The MHRD has introduced various programmes to provide educational opportunities to PCPs in an inclusive environment and emphasize on the requirement of appropriate vocational training skills to make them self reliant and productive members of the society. But, the coverage under the scheme has remained limited. Eventually, CWDs should have equal access to quality education, because this is key to human capital formation and their participation in social and economic life. Dr. Sujoy Kanti Ghoshal "Educational Development of Physically Challenged Persons in India - Policies and Challenges" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-2 | Issue-4 , June 2018, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd13038.pdf
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Karimov, Farid. "Formation Aspects of an Accessible Environment in Modern Landscape Architecture in Azerbijan." Problemy Ekorozwoju 16, no. 2 (2021): 226–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.35784/pe.2021.2.24.

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Despite the recent complex reconstruction in Azerbaijan, public spaces, parks and boulevards still do not fully respond to inclusivity. A long-term comprehensive action plan should be developed, and targeted actions should be undertaken to address these short comings. Thus, in order to achieve full accessibility, equipment and construction should be carried out not only in parks, but also in public spaces, taking into account the needs and interests of people with different categories of disability. It is also necessary to improve the regulatory framework, to promote public awareness, to develop a positive attitude towards physically challenged people, and to train new generations of professionals to take action to ensure a high level of working on this field in the future.
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Lakshman, I. M., and D. M. Y. Abeywardhana. "Facilitating Student-Centered Learning or Violation of Equality? Student Attitudes about Online Sociology Lessons at the University of Colombo During the Pandemic." Vidyodaya Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 08, no. 02 (2023): 143–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v08i02.11.

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This study explores student attitudes on online teaching that took place during 2020 in three sociology courses at the University of Colombo. A sample of 44 students who volunteered to write an essay about their online-learning experience was chosen for study from among the First, Third and Fourth/Final Year students. These essays were. analysed thematically to see the students’ level of engagement, enjoyment and challenges faced. In general, a positive attitude was identified among students regarding online learning. The positive attitude emerged mainly from a sense of enjoyment that has been lacking in the traditional classroom. The e-library containing materials in Sinhala and Tamil was appreciated as it helped students overcome the barrier of not having access to the physical library. Students also expressed some negative attitudes and they were mostly related to challenges encountered. These challenges which included lack of internet access, affordability and lack of IT knowledge clearly violated the equity principle rooted in the country’s free education policy. In the absence of these facilities, educational loss has been inevitable for some. The study proposes the need to improve infrastructure and students’ IT skills in order to secure maximum benefits of the online programme and to sustain equality among different socio-economic groups in society. The need for developing a unique style of online teaching that takes into account the medium of instruction, students’ IT knowledge and disability status while promoting asynchronous activities is noted. Financial assistance to students for overcoming affordability issues is also recommended.
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S, S. Janhavi. "Overview of International Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities." Innovation The Research Concept 9, no. 5 (2024): E10—E18. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12665813.

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This paper has been published in Peer-reviewed International Journal "Innovation The Research Concept"                URL : https://www.socialresearchfoundation.com/new/publish-journal.php?editID=8417 Publisher : Social Research Foundation, Kanpur (SRF International)  Abstract : The problems of the disabled are not only those caused by their disability but also those of adjustment in a world whose apathetic or holistic attitude towards them magnifies their troubles and threatens their very existence as human being. With the change of time, there has been paradigm shifting towards addressing the problem of disability. There is more focus on temperament and rehabilitation of physically and mentally challenged persons rather than welfare orientation. Physical handicap refers human Herman limitations irrespective of whether disability is attributable to disease, injury or inheritance. Physical disability will lead to a limitation of physical function whether locomotors, sensory or effective special organism medical definition of physical impairment is adopted and subsequently extended to include sensory, and cognitive forms, in contrast to a definition of disability in socio-political term, as the outcome of an oppressive relationship between people with impairments and the rest of society. [1] As many as possible 80 per cent of all disabled persons live in isolated rural areas in the developing countries. They often live-in areas where medical and other related services are scarce, or even totally absent, and where disabilities are not and cannot be detected in time. When they do receive medical attention, if they receive it at all, the impairment may have become irreversible. In many countries, resources are not sufficient to detect and prevent disability. In such countries, the disability problem is further compounded by the population explosion, which inexorably pushes up the number of disabled persons in both proportional and absolute terms. There is, thus, an urgent need, as the first priority, to help such countries to develop demographic policies to prevent an increase in the disabled population and to rehabilitate and provide services to the already disabled. Therefore, at international level many international conventions create obligations on the signatory states to take measures to make the differently challenged persons to enjoy their human rights. Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPISA) of Britain has defined the impairment and disability in the following terms.
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Neilson, Wendy, and Ashlie Brink. "The importance of educating student teachers in inclusive education. A disability perspective." Kairaranga 9, no. 2 (2008): 16–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.54322/kairaranga.v9i2.122.

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In schools today inclusion involves a challenge to attitudes and expectations within educational communities. The New Zealand Disability Strategy (Minister for Disability Issues, 2001), is a guide for government action to promote a more inclusive society. Out of its 15 Objectives, Objective 1encourages and educates the community and society to understand, respect and support disabled people. Objective 3 looks at providing the best education for disabled people.Objective 5 fosters leadership by disabled people. The summary states that New Zealand will be fully inclusive when it's a society that highly values our lives and continually enhances our full panicipation. Educators must be committed to The New Zealand Disability Strategy because its main locus is about a fully inclusive community. Often, through role models, strong messages challenge negative assumptions and prove that there are alternative ways of looking at the world. Generally, those who are the most critical to implementing inclusion, such as teachers, are introduced to the notion by individuals for whom it is a theoretical, rather than a lived concept. This article involves a sharing of experiences of two women who are involved in teaching inclusion at tertiary level, who live with physical disabilities and who have proved this to be a powerful combination in changing attitudes.
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Ashiqur, Rahman, and Akther Farhana. "Condition of Inclusivity in Public University of Bangladesh Specifically for the Disabled Student: A Case Study on Jahangirnagar University." International Journal of Social Science and Human Research 04, no. 03 (2021): 313–25. https://doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v4-i3-12.

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Education is a challenge for Physically Challenged Students (PCS). Accessibility in the buildup environments of university campus for PCS is a worldwide concern. A country can’t uplift its socio-economic conditions unless and until people from all level ofthe society get the equal access in every facilities and services provided by government. Every student with disability has the right to equal enjoyment and access in a residential university. In Bangladesh, increased numbers of students with disabilities have been accessed to higher educational opportunities. However, also the government has imposed some legal legislation for the education and the inclusive design for the PCS. So, this study concerns about the accessibility in higher educational institutions for PCS. This research has highlighted the accessibility condition of the buildup areas of the Jahangirnagar University campus in Bangladesh and the problems faced by the PCS which created because of the existing structural design. It also explores the relation between types of barriers and different structures in university for the PCS’s. At the end this study tries to provide some guidelines forensuringbetteraccessibilityofthephysicallychallengedstudents.
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Abdulhameed, Hasan Talafha. "Factors Influencing Academic Performance and Achievement of Students with Disabilities." International Journal of Social Science and Human Research 05, no. 3 (2022): 911–26. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6361941.

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Students with disabilities face diverse challenges which greatly affect their access and full participation in academic programmes at academic institutions of all levels. Therefore, the aim of the current empirical study is to identify the factors influencing the academic performance and achievement of disabled students. The study was guided by the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Based on the review of the relevant literature, the study concluded that there are several factors that influence the academic performance and achievement of students with disabilities such as: emotional factors such as the disabled students’ fear, depression, low self-confidence, feelings of shame, withdrawal, low self-concept, and feelings of inferiority. Moreover, other factors include the disabled student’ family background along with their socio-economic status, the educational level of the parents, the lack of the parents’ encouragement and motivation, the authoritarian nature of some families of students with disabilities, the negative attitudes of some teachers towards the students with disabilities and the weakness of the instructional strategies implemented by the teachers, the societal attitudes towards disabled students and well as the students’ attitudes towards themselves, the physical barriers within the academic institutions’ environment, etc. finally, multiple detailed solutions and recommendations were suggested by the study.
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Chicholkar, Jitendra. "A study to assess the effectiveness of self-instructional module on knowledge regarding learning disabilities in children among primary school teachers." IP Journal of Paediatrics and Nursing Science 5, no. 2 (2022): 88–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.18231/j.ijpns.2022.015.

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Learning disability (SLD) comprises a heterogeneous group of disorders with the main impairment being cognitive processing manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of skills such as listening, speaking, reading, reasoning, writing or mathematical skill. This leads to challenges in academic performance and has psychosocial implications. Trained teachers who have positive attitude and practical knowledge concerning individual needs (physical, emotional and intellectual) and problems can prevent and manage emotional and psychosocial problems of young children. In India the prevalence of specific learning disability in India ranges from 5%–15% in various studies. Identification of disorder prior to school age is difficult due to the instability of results obtained from formal testing procedures. Teachers are the first person to notice that the child is not learning as expected. The research design adopted for this study was pre experimental one group pre testpost test research design and research approach adopted for this was to qualitative approach. The sample was 100 primary school teachers. Non probability purposive sampling technique was used. Data was collected by using structured knowledge questionnaire consisting of two sections, Section I – Socio-Demographic variables & Section II – Structured knowledge Questionnaire.The mean of post-test knowledge scores was 26.6 which is significantly higher than mean of pre-test knowledge scores of 12.4. Standard deviation of post-test score and pre-test score is 9.4 and 13.3 respectively. The computed paired “t” value (18.67, df=99 at the level of P= 0.05) is greater than table value (1.66) which represents significant gain in knowledge. Hence the hypothesis RH is accepted. It is evident from the results that RH: There will be significant association between the pretest knowledge score and selected demographic variables at the level of P≤ 0.05. is accepted as there is significant association between pretest knowledge score and selected demographic variables like educational qualification, years of experience, child psychology in syllabus and attended in-service education.The study revealed that the level of knowledge regarding learning disability was low among school teachers in pretest and there was significant gain in knowledge in post test. Thus the study results revealed that self-instructional module is an effective instructional method to improve the knowledge level of primary school teachers regarding learning disabilities.
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Furrer, Vitus. "Social participation in inclusive physical education: On the importance of class, teaching methods and teacher characteristics." Current Issues in Sport Science (CISS) 8, no. 2 (2023): 059. http://dx.doi.org/10.36950/2023.2ciss059.

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Inclusive education aims to give all children access to the general education system, regardless of their disposition, and thereby reduce social exclusion. The aim is to achieve equal participation in society called for in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In many countries, including Switzerland, this has led to the increased integration of children with special educational needs into mainstream schools in recent years. However, studies show that the social participation of children with special educational needs in inclusive classes is often accompanied by challenges. Compared to their peers, children with special educational needs have fewer interactions and friendships and are less accepted. In particular, children with intellectual disabilities are at risk of social exclusion.
 Regarding reduced social participation, inclusive physical education is seen as having a particular potential to promote this participation. However, joint teaching alone is no guarantee that children with and without special educational needs are equally involved in social processes in their class. In inclusive physical education, social exclusion can be particularly visible and tangible, as the learners' physicality is more in focus than in other subjects. In inclusion research, it is therefore of interest how social participation can be promoted. In the field of inclusive physical education with children with intellectual disabilities, however, there is hardly any empirical knowledge on this. This dissertation addresses this research gap and investigates how aspects of social participation of children with intellectual disabilities are shaped in inclusive physical education and which factors are related to them.
 The data for the three manuscripts submitted for the dissertation all come from the SoPariS research project, which focuses on inclusive physical education with children with intellectual disabilities. In 2019, a cross-sectional study with quantitative questionnaires was conducted for pupils and physical education teachers, surveying 109 primary school classes (3rd-6th grade). Multilevel regressions and social network analysis show that children with intellectual disabilities receive significantly less social interaction (Furrer et al., 2021, 2020) and are less accepted (Furrer et al., in press) than their peers without disability. At the same time, there are fewer social interactions in physical education than in classroom teaching (Furrer et al., in press). The individual reference norm orientation of the physical education teacher is positively related to social acceptance and social interactions, whereby these are particularly increased for children with intellectual disabilities. Furthermore, teaching cooperative norms is positively related to children's social acceptance (Furrer et al., 2020). However, social interactions are not related to the physical education teacher's attitude towards inclusive teaching (Furrer et al., 2021). Finally, social interactions in both physical education and classroom teaching are positively related to classroom climate (Furrer et al., in press).
 In summary, it can be stated that the investigated aspects of social participation of children with intellectual disabilities are significantly lower than those of children without intellectual disabilities, even in inclusive physical education at primary school level. Specifically, social interactions and acceptance are below average. However, factors could be identified that are positively related to social participation. The great challenge of integrating children with special educational needs is to make teachers aware of the importance of social processes in the classroom and to train and develop them in this area. While the manuscripts of this dissertation provide valuable insights into the promotion of social participation of children with special educational needs in inclusive classrooms, further longitudinal intervention studies are needed to investigate the direction of impact of these factors and to show change over time.
 References
 Furrer, V., Mumenthaler, F., Eckhart, M., Nagel, S., & Valkanover, S. (in press). Zum Zusammenhang von Klassenklima und sozialen Interaktionen. Ein Vergleich zwischen inklusivem Klassenzimmer- und Sportunterricht [On the relationship between classroom climate and social interactions. A comparison between inclusive classroom and physical education teaching]. Zeitschrift für sportpädagogische Forschung.
 Furrer, V., Mumenthaler, F., Valkanover, S., Eckhart, M., & Nagel, S. (2021). Zum Zusammenhang zwischen der Einstellung der Lehrkraft zu inklusivem Sportunterricht und sozialer Interaktionen von Kindern [On the relationship between teacher attitudes towards inclusive physical education and children's social interactions]. Zeitschrift für Grundschulforschung, 14, 237-256. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42278-021-00108-9
 Furrer V., Valkanover S., Eckhart M., & Nagel S. (2020). The role of teaching strategies in social acceptance and interactions; Considering students with intellectual disabilities in inclusive physical education. Frontiers in Education, 5, Article 586960. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.586960
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Prosper, Anthony Mensah, Gyamfi Abraham, and Agbezudor Theresa. "The Teacher's Knowledge about Special Needs Learners: A Fundamental Element for the Implementation of Inclusive Education." International Journal of Arts and Social Science 5, no. 6 (2023): 01–10. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7754721.

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Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong in Ghana, was one of the pilot institutions that has undertaken inclusive Education programme for students with special needs where students with disabilities (visual impairment, hearing impairment and the physically challenged) learn and share the same facilities with their non-disabled counterparts. Since the pilot project was started in 2003, no systematic study has been carried out to ascertain the extent to which the institution has been able to implement the concept of inclusive education. The aim of the study therefore was to assess Presbyterian College of Education as an inclusive educational institution. A case study design; in which tutors and students at Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong were interviewed, was adopted for the study. A convenience sampling and census techniques were used to recruit 35 students with disabilities and 15 tutors at Presbyterian college of education in the Eastern region of Ghana. In-depth interview and observational techniques were used to assess the views of the participants about inclusive education with regards to teachers’ knowledge about how to handle and teach students with special needs. The findings of the study revealed that currently, the teachers have very limited knowledge about how to handle and teach students with special needs. The findings further revealed that generally, the teachers had inadequate understanding of inclusive education before the programme was introduced. Also, lack of preparation on the part of teachers to teach students with special needs was revealed. This is because the teachers’ knowledge on the concept of inclusive education is very critical in educating persons with disability. Based on this finding, it is recommended that in-service training should be organised to educate teachers at the College of Education level to facilitate inclusion.
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Sucipto, Malakh Joy Barak, and Ahmad Sholikhin Ruslie. "TINJAUAN HAM TERHADAP ANAK BERKEBUTUHAN KHUSUS DALAM KESETARAAN PENDIDIKAN." Jurnal Res Justitia: Jurnal Ilmu Hukum 4, no. 1 (2024): 186–202. https://doi.org/10.46306/rj.v4i1.113.

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Education has a central role in pursuing social welfare and fulfilling human rights. The right to education is considered an important right, and education is considered the main prerequisite for starting other basic rights. Participating in social and cultural life, pursuing knowledge, and accessing higher education depend on understanding and increasing the minimum level of education. However, when talking about children with special needs, such as children with physical disabilities, challenges arise due to the education system which tends to separate educational institutions based on the type of disability. Segregated education models such as SLB for the Blind, SLB for the Deaf, and SLB for the Intellectually Impaired create problems. This exclusivity in education hinders the opportunity for children with special needs to receive an education equal to other children. Therefore, the concept of inclusive education emerged as an alternative that is expected to be able to overcome this problem. Inclusive education emphasizes the acceptance of all children in a regular educational environment regardless of their abilities or shortcomings. However, the implementation of inclusive education is still faced with a number of obstacles. These obstacles include the limited number of inclusive schools, lack of resources and training for teachers who can deal with the diverse needs of students, as well as discriminatory attitudes and treatment that can occur in the educational environment. In a legal context, Law Number 35 of 2014 concerning child protection in Indonesia emphasizes the right of every child to live, grow, develop and be protected from violence and discrimination. In terms of inclusive education, this shows the need for a friendly educational environment for children with special needs. The importance of inclusive education and the need to understand the rights of every child in education is reflected in the basic normative descriptions that underline equality of rights. This description leads to further explanation of the inclusive education model which is non-discriminatory and accommodates the needs of all children regardless of their background or abilities
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Moleyar, Jayadeva Prasad. "Accident at Vidyalaya School – an ethical dilemma." Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies 9, no. 2 (2019): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/eemcs-05-2019-0103.

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Learning outcomes This paper aims to sensitize learners to some of the ethical and public relation issues involved in decision-making with specific reference to the educational field. Case overview/synopsis This case brings out a dilemma faced by the school management of Vidyalaya School, Karnataka, India in responding to a notice issued by the State Government to pay a huge compensation and to re-absorb a teacher who was rendered physically challenged owing to an accident within the school premises. The case is set in the milieu of a self-financed, private education industry during the period 2013-2018. This is a case in “Strategy formulation” and “Ethical dilemma” involved in the field of education in India. A teacher was permanently injured and confined to a wheelchair in an attempt to rescue a child attempting to jump off the school building and end her life for having obtained low marks in a test paper. While the school management was initially sympathetic and paid her medical bills and full salary purely on humanitarian grounds, they discontinued this support-line after about two years. The teacher filed a complaint with the Disability Commission, a grievance redressal body of the Government of Karnataka, India. She demanded re-absorption into the job, payment of salary arrears and reimbursement of all the subsequent medical bills incurred abroad totaling Rs 15.5 million, which is unaffordable for a school of that size. The management is faced with a situation where they cannot accept such a huge financial liability as well as accept a wheelchair-bound teacher who would not be able to discharge her duties. The school was briefed by legal experts that there exists no law that specifies either compensation or re-absorption into the job in a situation like this. At the same time, to fight the case purely on legal grounds and deny her a decent livelihood would impact the image of the school as being inhuman to a lady who had actually tried to help the school in the name of humanity. The management is caught in a dilemma on the course of action they must take – to fight the case legally or to accept the demand on humanitarian grounds. Complexity academic level This paper is suitable for Undergraduate or Graduate students of Business Management. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy
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Asiones, Noel. "Second Wind: Understanding How Academics from the Philippines Adjust to Retirement." Scientia - The International Journal on the Liberal Arts 12, no. 1 (2023): 44–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.57106/scientia.v12i1.146.

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This article aims to 1) explore how retired academics experienced work-to-retirement transition and 2) offer insights that can be applied in addressing its potential opportunities and challenges. Toward this end, we conducted face-to-face interviews with retirees (n=7) from a comprehensive private university in Manila, Philippines. The descriptive phenomenological method surfaced a general psychological meaning structure depicting the participants' collective work experiences to retirement transition. Moreover, it identified three distinct but interrelated elements of the retirement phenomenon: moving on, passing time, and coming on stage. This paper contributes and supports accumulated empirical knowledge on the work-to-retirement transition that can be helpful for individuals preparing for or transitioning into retirement.References
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Ejeh, Esther and Joseph Alila. "EFFECT OF EDUCATIONAL LEVEL ON ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED PERSONS IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA." October 19, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5760600.

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People living with physical challenges constitutes part of the larger society and should be given the inclusive opportunity to engage fully in societal activities. The plight of persons with disabilities in Kogi State, Nigeria, has attracted increasing concern over the years. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the variations in attitude towards the person with physical challenges in Kogi State based on educational level. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design. One hundred and seventeen (n=117) participants randomly pooled from different locations in the Kogi State, Nigeria, participated in the study. The participants completed a self-report measure of the modified version of the Attitudes towards Disabled Persons (SADP) Scale. The result revealed that the participants primarily showed positive attitudes towards persons with physical challenges despite their educational level. Also, the result of the simple linear regression conducted to test the hypothesis revealed that educational level does not predict attitude towards the physically challenged.   
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Rahman, Ashiqur. "Condition of Inclusivity in Public University of Bangladesh Specifically for the Disabled Student: A Case Study On Jahangirnagar University." International Journal of Social Science and Human Research 04, no. 03 (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v4-i3-12.

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Education is a challenge for Physically Challenged Students (PCS). Accessibility in the buildup environments of university campus for PCS is a worldwide concern. A country can’t uplift its socio-economic conditions unless and until people from all level of the society get the equal access in every facilities and services provided by government. Every student with disability has the right to equal enjoyment and access in a residential university. In Bangladesh, increased numbers of students with disabilities have been accessed to higher educational opportunities. However, also the government has imposed some legal legislation for the education and the inclusive design for the PCS. So, this study concerns about the accessibility in higher educational institutions for PCS. This research has highlighted the accessibility condition of the buildup areas of the Jahangirnagar University campus in Bangladesh and the problems faced by the PCS which created because of the existing structural design. It also explores the relation between types of barriers and different structures in university for the PCS’s. At the end this study tries to provide some guidelines for ensuring better accessibility of the physically challenged students.
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Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. "iTunes Is Pretty (Useless) When You’re Blind: Digital Design Is Triggering Disability When It Could Be a Solution." M/C Journal 11, no. 3 (2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.55.

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Introduction This year, 2008, marks the tenth anniversary of the portable MP3 player. MPMan F10, the first such device to utilise the MP3-encoding format, was launched in March 1998 (Smith). However it was not until April 2003 when Apple Inc launched the iPod that the market began the massive growth that has made the devices almost ubiquitous in everyday life. In 2006 iPods were rated as more popular than beer amongst college students in the United States, according to Student Monitor. Beer had only previously surpassed in popularity once before, in 1997, by the Internet (Zeff). This year will also see the launch in Australia of the latest offering in this line of products – the iPhone – which incorporates the popular MP3 player in an advanced mobile phone. The iPhone features a touch-sensitive flat screen that serves as the interface for its operating system. While the design is striking, it also generates accessibility problems. There are obvious implications for those with vision impairments when there are no physical markers to point towards the phone’s functions (Crichton). This article critically examines the promise of Internet-based digital technology to open up the world to people with disabilities, and the parallel danger that the social construction of disability in the digital environment will simply come to mirror pre-existing analogue discrimination. This paper explores how technologies and innovations designed to improve access by the disabled actually enhance access for all users. The first part of the paper focuses on ‘Web 2.0’ and digital access for people with disability, particularly those with vision impairment. The online software that drives the iPod and iPhone and exclusively delivers content to these devices is iTunes. While iTunes seems on the surface to provide enormous opportunity for the vision impaired to access a broad selection of audio content, its design actually works to inhibit access to the platform for this group. Apple promotes the use of iTunes in educational settings through the iTunes U channel, and this potentially excludes those who have difficulty with access to the technology. Critically, it is these excluded people who, potentially, could benefit the most from the new technology. We consider the difficulty experienced by users of screen readers and braille tablets in relation to iTunes and highlight the potential problems for universities who seek to utilise iTunes U. In the second part of the paper we reframe disability accessibility as a principle of universal access and design and outline how changes made to assist users with disability can enhance the learning experience of all students using the Lectopia lecture recording and distribution system as an example. The third section of the paper situates these digital developments within the continuum of disability theory deploying Finkelstein’s three stages of disability development. The focus then shifts to the potential of online virtual worlds such as Second Life to act as a place where the promise of technology to mediate for disability might be realised. Goggin and Newell suggest that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. This article argues that accessibility must be addressed through the context of design and shared open standards for digital platforms. Web 2.0 and Accessibility The World Wide Web based its successful development on a set of common standards that worked across different software and operating systems. This interoperability held out great opportunity for the implementation of enabling software for those with disability, particularly sight and hearing impairments. The increasing sophistication and diversification of online content has confounded this initial promise. Websites have become more complex, particularly with the rise of ‘Web 2.0’ and the associated trends in coding and website design. This has aggravated attempts to mediate this content for a disabled audience through software (Zajicek). As Wood notes, ‘these days many computers are used principally to access the Internet – and there is no telling what a blind person will encounter there’. As the content requiring translation – either from text into audio or onto a braille tablet, or from audio into text captions – become less standardised and more complex, it becomes both harder for software to act as a translator, and harder to navigate this media once translated. This is particularly the case when links are generated ‘on the fly’ for each view of a website and where images replace words as hyperlinks. These problems can trace their origin to before the development of the World Wide Web. Reihing, addressing another Apple product in 1987 notes: The Apple Macintosh is particularly hard to use because it depends heavily on graphics. Some word processors ‘paint’ pictures of letters on the screen instead of using standard computer codes, and speech or braille devices can’t cope (in Goggin and Newell). Web 2.0 sites loaded with Ajax and other forms of Java scripting present a particular challenge for translation software (Zajicek). iTunes, an iconic Web 2.0 application, is a further step away from easily translated content as proprietary software that while operating though the Internet, does not conform to Web standards. Many translation software packages are unable to read the iTunes software at all or are limited and only able to read part of the page, but not enough of it to use the program (Furendal). As websites utilising ‘Web 2.0’ technology increase in popularity they become less attractive to users who are visually impaired, particularly because the dynamic elements can not be accessed using screen readers provided with the operating system (Bigham, Prince and Ladner). While at one level this presents an inability for a user with a disability to engage with the popular software, it also meant that universities seeking to use iTunes U to deliver content were excluding these students. To Apple’s credit they have taken some of these access concerns on board with the recent release of both the Apple operating system and iTunes, to better enable Apple’s own access software to translate the iTunes screen for blind users. However this also illustrates the problems with this type of software operating outside of nominated standards as there are still serious problems with access to iTunes on Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system (Furendal). While Widows provides its own integrated screen reading software, the company acknowledges that this is not sufficiently powerful for regular use by disabled users who will need to use more specialised programs (Wood). The recent upgrade of the standard Windows operating system from XP to Vista seems to have abandoned the previous stipulation that there was a keyboard shortcut for each operation the system performed – a key requirement for those unable to use a visual interface on the screen to ‘point and click’ with a mouse (Wood). Other factors, such as the push towards iTunes U, explored in the next section, explain the importance of digital accessibility for everyone, not just the disabled as this technology becomes ubiquitous. The use of Lectopia in higher education demonstrates the value of flexibility of delivery to the whole student population, inclusive of the disabled. iPods and Higher Education iTunes is the enabling software supporting the iPod and iPhone. As well as commercial content, iTunes also acts as a distribution medium for other content that is free to use. It allows individuals or organisations to record and publish audio and video files – podcasts and vodcasts – that can be automatically downloaded from the Internet and onto individual computers and iPods as they become available. Significantly this technology has provided opportunities for educational use. iTunes U has been developed by Apple to facilitate the delivery of content from universities through the service. While Apple has acknowledged that this is, in part, a deliberate effort to drive the uptake of iTunes (Udell), there are particular opportunities for the distribution of information through this channel afforded by the technology. Duke University in the United States was an early adopter, distributing iPods to each of its first-year students for educational use as early as 2004 (Dean). A recent study of students at The University of Western Australia (UWA) by Williams and Fardon found that students who listen to lectures through portable media players such as iPods (the ‘Pod’ in iPod stands for ‘portable on demand’) have a higher attendance rate at lectures than those who do not. In 1998, the same year that the first portable MP3 player was being launched, the Lectopia (or iLecture) lecture recording and distribution system was introduced in Australia at UWA to enable students with disabilities better access to lecture materials. While there have been significant criticisms of this platform (Brabazon), the broad uptake and popularity of this technology, both at UWA and at many universities across Australia, demonstrates how changes made to assist disability can potentially help the broader community. This underpins the concept of ‘universal design’ where consideration given to people with disability also improves the lives of people without disability. A report by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, examined the accessibility of digital technology. Disability issues, such as access to digital content, were reframed as universal design issues: Disability accessibility issues are more accurately perceived in many cases as universal access issues, such that appropriate design for access by people with disabilities will improve accessibility and usability for … the community more generally. The idea of universal access was integral to Tim Berners-Lee’s original conception of the Web – however the platform has developed into a more complex and less ordered environment that can stray from agreed standards (Edwards, "Stop"). iTunes comes with its own accessibility issues. Furendal demonstrated that its design has added utility for some impairments notably dyslexia and colour blindness. However, as noted above, iTunes is highly problematic for those with other vision impairment particularly the blind. It is an example of the condition noted by Regan: There exists a false perception among designers that accessibility represents a restriction on creativity. There are few examples that exist in the world that can dissuade designers of this notion. While there are no technical reasons for this division between accessibility and design, the notion exists just the same. The invisibility of this issue confirms that while an awareness of differing abilities can assist all users, this blinkered approach to diverse visual acuities is not only blocking social justice imperatives but future marketing opportunities. The iPhone is notable for problems associated with use by people with disabilities, particularly people with hearing (Keizer) and vision impairments (Crichton). In colder climates the fact that the screen would not be activated by a gloved hand has also been a problem, its design reflects bias against not just the physically impaired. Design decisions reflect the socially constructed nature of disability where disability is related to how humans have chosen to construct the world (Finkelstein ,"To Deny"). Disability Theory and Technology Nora Groce conducted an anthropological study of Martha’s Vineyard in the United States. During the nineteenth century the island had an unusually high incidence of deafness. In response to this everyone on the island was able to communicate in sign language, regardless of the hearing capability, as a standard mode of communication. As a result the impairment of deafness did not become a disability in relation to communication. Society on the island was constructed to be inclusive without regard to a person’s hearing ability. Finkelstein (Attitudes) identified three stages of disability ‘creation’ to suggest disability (as it is defined socially) can be eradicated through technology. He is confident that the third phase, which he argues has been occurring in conjunction with the information age, will offset many of the prejudicial attitudes established during the second phase that he characterised as the industrial era. Digital technologies are often presented as a way to eradicate disability as it is socially constructed. Discussions around the Web and the benefits for people with disability usually centre on accessibility and social interaction. Digital documents on the Internet enable people with disability greater access than physical spaces, such as libraries, especially for the visually impaired who are able to make use of screen readers. There are more than 38 million blind people who utilise screen reading technology to access the Web (Bigham, Prince and Ladner). A visually impaired person is able to access digital texts whereas traditional, analogue, books remain inaccessible. The Web also allows people with disability to interact with others in a way that is not usually possible in general society. In a similar fashion to arguments that the Web is both gender and race neutral, people with disability need not identify as disabled in online spaces and can instead be judged on their personality first. In this way disability is not always a factor in the social encounter. These arguments however fail to address several factors integral to the social construction of disability. While the idea that a visually impaired person can access books electronically, in conjunction with a screen reader, sounds like a disability-free utopia, this is not always the case as ‘digital’ does not always mean ‘accessible’. Often digital documents will be in an image format that cannot be read by the user’s screen reader and will need to be converted and corrected by a sighted person. Sapey found that people with disabilities are excluded from informational occupations. Computer programming positions were fourth least likely of the 58 occupations examined to employ disabled people. As Rehing observed in 1987, it is a fantasy to think that accessibility for blind people simply means turning on a computer (Rehing in Goggin and Newell). Although it may sound empowering for people with disability to interact in an environment where they can live out an identity different from the rhythm of their daily patterns, the reality serves to decrease the visibility of disability in society. Further, the Internet may not be accessible for people with disability as a social environment in the first place. AbilityNet’s State of the eNation Web Accessibility Report: Social Networking Sites found a number of social networking sites including the popular MySpace and Facebook are inaccessible to users with a number of different disabilities, particularly those with a visual impairment such as blindness or a cognitive disability like dyslexia. This study noted the use of ‘Captcha’ – ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’ – technology designed to differentiate between a person signing up for an account and an automated computer process. This system presents an image of a word deliberately blurred and disfigured so that it cannot be readily identified by a computer, which can only be translated by a human user. This presents an obstacle to people with a visual impairment, particularly those relying on transcription software that will, by design, not be able to read the image, as well as those with dyslexia who may also have trouble translating the image on the screen. Virtual Worlds and New Possibilities The development of complex online virtual worlds such as Second Life presents their own set of challenges for access, for example, the use of Captcha. However they also afford opportunity. With over a million residents, there is a diversity of creativity. People are using Second Life to try on different identities or campaign for causes relevant in the real world. For example, Simon Stevens (Simon Walsh in SL), runs the nightclub Wheelies in the virtual world and continues to use a wheelchair and helmet in SL – similar to his real-life self: I personally changed Second Life’s attitude toward disability when I set up ‘Wheelies’, its first disability nightclub. This was one of those daft ideas which grew and grew and… has remained a central point for disability issues within Second Life. Many new Disabled users make contact with me for advice and wheelies has helped some of them ‘come out’ and use a wheelchair (Carter). Able-bodied people are also becoming involved in raising disability awareness through Second Life, for example Fez Richardson is developing applications for use in Second Life so that the non-disabled can experience the effects of impairment in this virtual realm (Cassidy) Tertiary Institutions are embracing the potential of Second Life, utilising the world as a virtual classroom. Bates argues that Second Life provides a learning environment free of physical barriers that has the potential to provide an enriched learning experience for all students regardless of whether they have a disability. While Second Life might be a good environment for those with mobility impairment there are still potential access problems for the vision and hearing impaired. However, Second Life has recently become open source and is actively making changes to aid accessibility for the visually impaired including an audible system where leaves rustle to denote a tree is nearby, and text to speech software (Sierra). Conclusion Goggin and Newell observe that new technology is a prominent component of social, cultural and political changes with the potential to mitigate for disability. The uneven interface of the virtual and the analogue, as demonstrated by the implementation and operation of iTunes, indicates that this mitigation is far from an inevitable consequence of this development. However James Edwards, author of the Brothercake blog, is optimistic that technology does have an important role in decreasing disability in wider society, in line with Finkelstein’s third phase: Technology is the last, best hope for accessibility. It's not like the physical world, where there are good, tangible reasons why some things can never be accessible. A person who's blind will never be able to drive a car manually; someone in a wheelchair will never be able to climb the steps of an ancient stone cathedral. Technology is not like the physical world – technology can take any shape. Technology is our slave, and we can make it do what we want. With technology there are no good reasons, only excuses (Edwards, "Technology"). Internet-based technologies have the potential to open up the world to people with disabilities, and are often presented as a way to eradicate disability as it is socially constructed. While Finkelstein believes new technologies characteristic of the information age will offset many of the prejudicial attitudes established during the industrial revolution, where technology was established around able-bodied norms, the examples of the iPhone and Captcha illustrate that digital technology is often constructed in the same social world that people with disability are routinely disabled by. The Lectopia system on the other hand enables students with disabilities to access lecture materials and highlights the concept of universal access, the original ideology underpinning design of the Web. Lectopia has been widely utilised by many different types of students, not just the disabled, who are seeking flexibility. While we should be optimistic, we must also be aware as noted by Goggin and Newell the Internet cannot be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Accessibility is a universal design issue that potentially benefits both those with a disability and the wider community. References AbilityNet Web Accessibility Team. State of the eNation Web Accessibility Reports: Social Networking Sites. AbilityNet. January 2008. 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/docs/enation/2008SocialNetworkingSites.pdf›. Bates, Jacqueline. "Disability and Access in Virtual Worlds." Paper presented at Alternative Format Conference, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, 21–23 Jan. 2008. Bigham, Jeffrey P., Craig M. Prince, and Richard E. Ladner . "WebAnywhere: A Screen Reader On-the-Go." Paper presented at 17th International World Wide Web Conference, Beijing, 21–22 April 2008. 29 Apr. 2008 ‹http://webinsight.cs.washington.edu/papers/webanywhere-html/›. Brabazon, Tara. "Socrates in Earpods: The iPodification of Education." Fast Capitalism 2.1, (July 2006). 8 June 2008 ‹http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_1/brabazon.htm›. Carter, Paul. "Virtually the Same." Disability Now (May 2007). Cassidy, Margaret. "Flying with Disability in Second Life." Eureka Street 18.1 (10 Jan. 2008): 22-24. 15 June 2007 ‹http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=4849›. Crichton, Paul. "More on the iPhone…" Access 2.0. BBC.co.uk 22 Jan. 2007. 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/access20/2007/01/more_on_the_iphone.shtml›. Dean, Katie. "Duke Gives iPods to Freshmen." Wired Magazine (20 July 2004). 29 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2004/07/64282›. Edwards, James. "Stop Using Ajax!" Brothercake (24 April 2008). 1 May 2008 ‹http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/stop-using-ajax›. –––. "Technology Is the Last, Best Hope for Accessibility." Brothercake 13 Mar. 2007. 1 May 2008 ‹http://www.brothercake.com/site/resources/reference/hope›. Finkelstein, Victor. "To Deny or Not to Deny Disability." Magic Carpet 27.1 (1975): 31-38. 1 May 2008 ‹http://www.independentliving.org/docs1/finkelstein.html›. –––. Attitudes and Disabled People: Issues for Discussion. Geneva: World Rehabilitation Fund, 1980. 1 May 2008 ‹http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/finkelstein/attitudes.pdf›. Furendal, David. "Downloading Music and Videos from the Internet: A Study of the Accessibility of The Pirate Bay and iTunes store." Presentation at Uneå University, 24 Jan. 2007. 13 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.david.furendal.com/Accessibility.aspx›. Groce, Nora E. Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1985. Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. Accessibility of Electronic Commerce and New Service and Information Technologies for Older Australians and People with a Disability. 31 March 2000. 30 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/inquiries/ecom/ecomrep.htm#BM2_1›. Keizer, Gregg. "Hearing Loss Group Complains to FCC about iPhone." Computerworld (20 Sep. 2007). 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9037999›. Regan, Bob. "Accessibility and Design: A Failure of the Imagination." ACM International Conference Proceedings Series 63: Proceedings of The 2004 International Cross-disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A). 29–37. Sapey, Bob. "Disablement in the Information Age." Disability and Society 15.4 (June 2000): 619–637. Sierra. "IBM Project: Second Life Accessible for Blind People." Techpin (24 Sep. 2007). 3 May 2008 ‹http://www.techpin.com/ibm-project-second-life-accessible-for-blind-people/›. Smith, Tony. "Ten Years Old: The World’s First MP3 Player." Register Hardware (10 Mar. 2008). 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/10/ft_first_mp3_player/›. Udell, Jon. "The iTunes U Agenda." InfoWorld (22 Feb. 2006). 13 Apr. 2008 ‹http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/02/22.html›. Williams, Jocasta, and Michael Fardon. "Perpetual Connectivity: Lecture Recordings and Portable Media Players." Proceedings from Ascilite, Singapore, 2–5 Dec. 2007. 1084–1092. Wood, Lamont. "Blind Users Still Struggle with 'Maddening' Computing Obstacles." Computerworld (16 Apr. 2008). 27 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9077118&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1›. Zajicek, Mary. "Web 2.0: Hype or Happiness?" Paper presented at International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility, Banff, Canada, 2–9 May 2007. 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.w4a.info/2007/prog/k2-zajicek.pdf›. Zeff, Robbin. "Universal Design across the Curriculum." New Directions for Higher Education 137 (Spring 2007): 27–44.
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Krishna Mohan P and Dr. M. Ravi Babu. "Promulgation of RTE-Act among Disabled Children." International Journal of Indian Psychology 3, no. 2 (2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.25215/0302.101.

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Disability is not merely a physical fact, but also involves a normative, cultural, and legal concept. The society’s perception of a disabled person also reflects its idea of a normally functional human being and the definition as considered by the society gives us an insight into the society’s self image. The recognition by the society of the terms mentally and physically disabled also implies a responsibility of the society towards the people who fit that description. A society with deep ethos of social responsibility is likely to be more open in its definition of disability. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 is landmark legislation in the history of the Nation that makes elementary education a fundamental right for children between the ages of 6-14. But millions of children with disabilities got left out in the Act. Being a Challenged Person i would like to extent to knowledge about educational and psychological well being of disabled children’s. In my point of view there are many challenges and issues are not implementing properly the challenges like lack of awareness, not involving the teachers directly, there is no implementation in lower level educational systems, there is any reviews of the act at least yearly once. Etc. This paper highlights some of the challenges that are faced by children with disabilities in achieving their right to education. If we can implement all above issues related challenges all most maximum numbers of disabled children are benefit in future. This paper also disseminates knowledge by giving suggestions for effective implementation of RTE for the children with disabilities.
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Uddin, Taslim, Tahmeed Kamal, AK Azad, Md Jahidul Islam, Mohammad Yousuf, and Md Moyeenuzzaman. "Fellowship Trainee Research Activities of a Faculty of Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons: Analysis of 30 years Dissertation Work and Recommendation for Further Improvements." Journal of Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, June 9, 2022, 51–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbcps.v40i40.59908.

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Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) is a diverse specialty with principal focus on disability evaluation and functional restoration of an individual. The PMR Faculty at Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS) was established about 30 years ago. As a medical specialist of 21st century, at this point of time, it is important to know and evaluate the spectrum of research activities performed by the trainees of the faculty. Objectives of the study was to make an in-depth analysis of the dissertations completed by the PMR fellow trainees of BCPS since the inception of the Faculty. It was also aimed to discuss the strengths and insights of shortcoming of the research areas and topics with directives for further improvement of the future trainees and faculties ultimately to initiate a dialogue among the stake holders and other specialties. This was an observational mixed method study. Information was gathered from the BCPS webpage, Faculty office and published materials, which was further strengthened with a small group discussion, online literature search and a telephone interview of the PMR fellows to learn their experience that they gained during the dissertation works. A total of 167 (n=167) dissertation topics were available for statistical analysis submitted by the trainee fellows from 1992 to 2021, a period of 30yrs. More than half (50.9%) of the submitted titles were on effectiveness or comparative study of rehabilitation therapy modalities which include therapeutic -electrophysical -agents(TEA), exercises, occupational therapy or orthotics. Musculoskeletal (MSK) and rheumatological disorders constituted (17.4%), neurological disorder 7.1%), risk factor assessment or etiological pattern of MSK conditions (7.2%), disability and functional outcome assessment (5.4%), interventions for regional pain management (4.8%) and other category (7.2%). The initial decade trend was on MSK, which later shifted to TEA and on interventions respectively. Overall, TEA modalities were the predominating titles in all 3 decades. Considering the other category of titles, there were interesting topics which include COVID-19, variation in body mass composition, assessment of drug effects, diagnostics and effectiveness of educational booklet. Of the 09 dissertations approved during the most recent year (2021), 34% were with interventional pain management. In the process of doing a dissertation, a number of opportunities and challenges were identified by the fellows for fellow trainee researchers. There was a clear trend of dissertation titles on MSK pain management and interventions with less attention to rehabilitation procedure and appliances. Identified opportunities include cooperative attitude of the trainers and mentors in the department and there were wide research areas with vast sample population. Time allocation and funding were the biggest barriers for research works during training period. BCPS to support on research methodology, fund placements and to catalyze with other institutes to ensure a reasonable level comfort for research works. J Bangladesh Coll Phys Surg 2022; 40: 51-56
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Hollier, Scott, Katie M. Ellis, and Mike Kent. "User-Generated Captions: From Hackers, to the Disability Digerati, to Fansubbers." M/C Journal 20, no. 3 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1259.

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Writing in the American Annals of the Deaf in 1931, Emil S. Ladner Jr, a Deaf high school student, predicted the invention of words on screen to facilitate access to “talkies”. He anticipated:Perhaps, in time, an invention will be perfected that will enable the deaf to hear the “talkies”, or an invention which will throw the words spoken directly under the screen as well as being spoken at the same time. (Ladner, cited in Downey Closed Captioning)This invention would eventually come to pass and be known as captions. Captions as we know them today have become widely available because of a complex interaction between technological change, volunteer effort, legislative activism, as well as increasing consumer demand. This began in the late 1950s when the technology to develop captions began to emerge. Almost immediately, volunteers began captioning and distributing both film and television in the US via schools for the deaf (Downey, Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest). Then, between the 1970s and 1990s Deaf activists and their allies began to campaign aggressively for the mandated provision of captions on television, leading eventually to the passing of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act in the US in 1990 (Ellis). This act decreed that any television with a screen greater than 13 inches must be designed/manufactured to be capable of displaying captions. The Act was replicated internationally, with countries such as Australia adopting the same requirements with their Australian standards regarding television sets imported into the country. As other papers in this issue demonstrate, this market ultimately led to the introduction of broadcasting requirements.Captions are also vital to the accessibility of videos in today’s online and streaming environment—captioning is listed as the highest priority in the definitive World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guideline’s (WCAG) 2.0 standard (W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0”). This recognition of the requirement for captions online is further reflected in legislation, from both the US 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) (2010) and from the Australian Human Rights Commission (2014).Television today is therefore much more freely available to a range of different groups. In addition to broadcast channels, captions are also increasingly available through streaming platforms such as Netflix and other subscription video on demand providers, as well as through user-generated video sites like YouTube. However, a clear discrepancy exists between guidelines, legislation and the industry’s approach. Guidelines such as the W3C are often resisted by industry until compliance is legislated.Historically, captions have been both unavailable (Ellcessor; Ellis) and inadequate (Ellis and Kent), and in many instances, they still are. For example, while the provision of captions in online video is viewed as a priority across international and domestic policies and frameworks, there is a stark contrast between the policy requirements and the practical implementation of these captions. This has led to the active development of a solution as part of an ongoing tradition of user-led development; user-generated captions. However, within disability studies, research around the agency of this activity—and the media savvy users facilitating it—has gone significantly underexplored.Agency of ActivityInformation sharing has featured heavily throughout visions of the Web—from Vannevar Bush’s 1945 notion of the memex (Bush), to the hacker ethic, to Zuckerberg’s motivations for creating Facebook in his dorm room in 2004 (Vogelstein)—resulting in a wide agency of activity on the Web. Running through this development of first the Internet and then the Web as a place for a variety of agents to share information has been the hackers’ ethic that sharing information is a powerful, positive good (Raymond 234), that information should be free (Levey), and that to achieve these goals will often involve working around intended information access protocols, sometimes illegally and normally anonymously. From the hacker culture comes the digerati, the elite of the digital world, web users who stand out by their contributions, success, or status in the development of digital technology. In the context of access to information for people with disabilities, we describe those who find these workarounds—providing access to information through mainstream online platforms that are not immediately apparent—as the disability digerati.An acknowledged mainstream member of the digerati, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, articulated a vision for the Web and its role in information sharing as inclusive of everyone:Worldwide, there are more than 750 million people with disabilities. As we move towards a highly connected world, it is critical that the Web be useable by anyone, regardless of individual capabilities and disabilities … The W3C [World Wide Web Consortium] is committed to removing accessibility barriers for all people with disabilities—including the deaf, blind, physically challenged, and cognitively or visually impaired. We plan to work aggressively with government, industry, and community leaders to establish and attain Web accessibility goals. (Berners-Lee)Berners-Lee’s utopian vision of a connected world where people freely shared information online has subsequently been embraced by many key individuals and groups. His emphasis on people with disabilities, however, is somewhat unique. While maintaining a focus on accessibility, in 2006 he shifted focus to who could actually contribute to this idea of accessibility when he suggested the idea of “community captioning” to video bloggers struggling with the notion of including captions on their videos:The video blogger posts his blog—and the web community provides the captions that help others. (Berners-Lee, cited in Outlaw)Here, Berners-Lee was addressing community captioning in the context of video blogging and user-generated content. However, the concept is equally significant for professionally created videos, and media savvy users can now also offer instructions to audiences about how to access captions and subtitles. This shift—from user-generated to user access—must be situated historically in the context of an evolving Web 2.0 and changing accessibility legislation and policy.In the initial accessibility requirements of the Web, there was little mention of captioning at all, primarily due to video being difficult to stream over a dial-up connection. This was reflected in the initial WCAG 1.0 standard (W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0”) in which there was no requirement for videos to be captioned. WCAG 2.0 went some way in addressing this, making captioning online video an essential Level A priority (W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0”). However, there were few tools that could actually be used to create captions, and little interest from emerging online video providers in making this a priority.As a result, the possibility of user-generated captions for video content began to be explored by both developers and users. One initial captioning tool that gained popularity was MAGpie, produced by the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) (WGBH). While cumbersome by today’s standards, the arrival of MAGpie 2.0 in 2002 provided an affordable and professional captioning tool that allowed people to create captions for their own videos. However, at that point there was little opportunity to caption videos online, so the focus was more on captioning personal video collections offline. This changed with the launch of YouTube in 2005 and its later purchase by Google (CNET), leading to an explosion of user-generated video content online. However, while the introduction of YouTube closed captioned video support in 2006 ensured that captioned video content could be created (YouTube), the ability for users to create captions, save the output into one of the appropriate captioning file formats, upload the captions, and synchronise the captions to the video remained a difficult task.Improvements to the production and availability of user-generated captions arrived firstly through the launch of YouTube’s automated captions feature in 2009 (Google). This service meant that videos could be uploaded to YouTube and, if the user requested it, Google would caption the video within approximately 24 hours using its speech recognition software. While the introduction of this service was highly beneficial in terms of making captioning videos easier and ensuring that the timing of captions was accurate, the quality of captions ranged significantly. In essence, if the captions were not reviewed and errors not addressed, the automated captions were sometimes inaccurate to the point of hilarity (New Media Rock Stars). These inaccurate YouTube captions are colloquially described as craptions. A #nomorecraptions campaign was launched to address inaccurate YouTube captioning and call on YouTube to make improvements.The ability to create professional user-generated captions across a variety of platforms, including YouTube, arrived in 2010 with the launch of Amara Universal Subtitles (Amara). The Amara subtitle portal provides users with the opportunity to caption online videos, even if they are hosted by another service such as YouTube. The captioned file can be saved after its creation and then uploaded to the relevant video source if the user has access to the location of the video content. The arrival of Amara continues to provide ongoing benefits—it contains a professional captioning editing suite specifically catering for online video, the tool is free, and it can caption videos located on other websites. Furthermore, Amara offers the additional benefit of being able to address the issues of YouTube automated captions—users can benefit from the machine-generated captions of YouTube in relation to its timing, then download the captions for editing in Amara to fix the issues, then return the captions to the original video, saving a significant amount of time when captioning large amounts of video content. In recent years Google have also endeavoured to simplify the captioning process for YouTube users by including its own captioning editors, but these tools are generally considered inferior to Amara (Media Access Australia).Similarly, several crowdsourced caption services such as Viki (https://www.viki.com/community) have emerged to facilitate the provision of captions. However, most of these crowdsourcing captioning services can’t tap into commercial products instead offering a service for people that have a video they’ve created, or one that already exists on YouTube. While Viki was highlighted as a useful platform in protests regarding Netflix’s lack of captions in 2009, commercial entertainment providers still have a responsibility to make improvements to their captioning. As we discuss in the next section, people have resorted extreme measures to hack Netflix to access the captions they need. While the ability for people to publish captions on user-generated content has improved significantly, there is still a notable lack of captions for professionally developed videos, movies, and television shows available online.User-Generated Netflix CaptionsIn recent years there has been a worldwide explosion of subscription video on demand service providers. Netflix epitomises the trend. As such, for people with disabilities, there has been significant focus on the availability of captions on these services (see Ellcessor, Ellis and Kent). Netflix, as the current leading provider of subscription video entertainment in both the US and with a large market shares in other countries, has been at the centre of these discussions. While Netflix offers a comprehensive range of captioned video on its service today, there are still videos that do not have captions, particularly in non-English regions. As a result, users have endeavoured to produce user-generated captions for personal use and to find workarounds to access these through the Netflix system. This has been achieved with some success.There are a number of ways in which captions or subtitles can be added to Netflix video content to improve its accessibility for individual users. An early guide in a 2011 blog post (Emil’s Celebrations) identified that when using the Netflix player using the Silverlight plug-in, it is possible to access a hidden menu which allows a subtitle file in the DFXP format to be uploaded to Netflix for playback. However, this does not appear to provide this file to all Netflix users, and is generally referred to as a “soft upload” just for the individual user. Another method to do this, generally credited as the “easiest” way, is to find a SRT file that already exists for the video title, edit the timing to line up with Netflix, use a third-party tool to convert it to the DFXP format, and then upload it using the hidden menu that requires a specific keyboard command to access. While this may be considered uncomplicated for some, there is still a certain amount of technical knowledge required to complete this action, and it is likely to be too complex for many users.However, constant developments in technology are assisting with making access to captions an easier process. Recently, Cosmin Vasile highlighted that the ability to add captions and subtitle tracks can still be uploaded providing that the older Silverlight plug-in is used for playback instead of the new HTML5 player. Others add that it is technically possible to access the hidden feature in an HTML5 player, but an additional Super Netflix browser plug-in is required (Sommergirl). Further, while the procedure for uploading the file remains similar to the approach discussed earlier, there are some additional tools available online such as Subflicks which can provide a simple online conversion of the more common SRT file format to the DFXP format (Subflicks). However, while the ability to use a personal caption or subtitle file remains, the most common way to watch Netflix videos with alternative caption or subtitle files is through the use of the Smartflix service (Smartflix). Unlike other ad-hoc solutions, this service provides a simplified mechanism to bring alternative caption files to Netflix. The Smartflix website states that the service “automatically downloads and displays subtitles in your language for all titles using the largest online subtitles database.”This automatic download and sharing of captions online—known as fansubbing—facilitates easy access for all. For example, blog posts suggest that technology such as this creates important access opportunities for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Nevertheless, they can be met with suspicion by copyright holders. For example, a recent case in the Netherlands ruled fansubbers were engaging in illegal activities and were encouraging people to download pirated videos. While the fansubbers, like the hackers discussed earlier, argued they were acting in the greater good, the Dutch antipiracy association (BREIN) maintained that subtitles are mainly used by people downloading pirated media and sought to outlaw the manufacture and distribution of third party captions (Anthony). The fansubbers took the issue to court in order to seek clarity about whether copyright holders can reserve exclusive rights to create and distribute subtitles. However, in a ruling against the fansubbers, the court agreed with BREIN that fansubbing violated copyright and incited piracy. What impact this ruling will have on the practice of user-generated captioning online, particularly around popular sites such as Netflix, is hard to predict; however, for people with disabilities who were relying on fansubbing to access content, it is of significant concern that the contention that the main users of user-generated subtitles (or captions) are engaging in illegal activities was so readily accepted.ConclusionThis article has focused on user-generated captions and the types of platforms available to create these. It has shown that this desire to provide access, to set the information free, has resulted in the disability digerati finding workarounds to allow users to upload their own captions and make content accessible. Indeed, the Internet and then the Web as a place for information sharing is evident throughout this history of user-generated captioning online, from Berner-Lee’s conception of community captioning, to Emil and Vasile’s instructions to a Netflix community of captioners, to finally a group of fansubbers who took BRIEN to court and lost. Therefore, while we have conceived of the disability digerati as a conflation of the hacker and the acknowledged digital influencer, these two positions may again part ways, and the disability digerati may—like the hackers before them—be driven underground.Captioned entertainment content offers a powerful, even vital, mode of inclusion for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Yet, despite Berners-Lee’s urging that everything online be made accessible to people with all sorts of disabilities, captions were not addressed in the first iteration of the WCAG, perhaps reflecting the limitations of the speed of the medium itself. This continues to be the case today—although it is no longer difficult to stream video online, and Netflix have reached global dominance, audiences who require captions still find themselves fighting for access. Thus, in this sense, user-generated captions remain an important—yet seemingly technologically and legislatively complicated—avenue for inclusion.ReferencesAnthony, Sebastian. “Fan-Made Subtitles for TV Shows and Movies Are Illegal, Court Rules.” Arstechnica UK (2017). 21 May 2017 <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/fan-made-subtitles-for-tv-shows-and-movies-are-illegal/>.Amara. “Amara Makes Video Globally Accessible.” Amara (2010). 25 Apr. 2017. <https://amara.org/en/ 2010>.Berners-Lee, Tim. “World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Launches International Web Accessibility Initiative.” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (1997). 19 June 2010. <http://www.w3.org/Press/WAI-Launch.html>.Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic (1945). 26 June 2010 <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1969/12/as-we-may-think/3881/>.CNET. “YouTube Turns 10: The Video Site That Went Viral.” CNET (2015). 24 Apr. 2017 <https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-turns-10-the-video-site-that-went-viral/>.Downey, Greg. Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2008.———. “Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest: From Minority Media Accessibility to Mainstream Educational Technology.” Info: The Journal of Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunications, Information and Media 9.2/3 (2007): 69–82.Ellcessor, Elizabeth. “Captions On, Off on TV, Online: Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization in Online Closed Captioning.” Television & New Media 13.4 (2012): 329-352. <http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/10/24/1527476411425251.abstract?patientinform-links=yes&legid=sptvns;51v1>.Ellis, Katie. “Television’s Transition to the Internet: Disability Accessibility and Broadband-Based TV in Australia.” Media International Australia 153 (2014): 53–63.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. “Accessible Television: The New Frontier in Disability Media Studies Brings Together Industry Innovation, Government Legislation and Online Activism.” First Monday 20 (2015). <http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6170>.Emil’s Celebrations. “How to Add Subtitles to Movies Streamed in Netflix.” 16 Oct. 2011. 9 Apr. 2017 <https://emladenov.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/how-to-add-subtitles-to-movies-streamed-in-netflix/>.Google. “Automatic Captions in Youtube.” 2009. 24 Apr. 2017 <https://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html>.Jaeger, Paul. “Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide.” Disability in Society. Ed. Ronald Berger. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012.Levey, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. North Sebastopol: O’Teilly Media, 1984.Media Access Australia. “How to Caption a Youtube Video.” 2017. 25 Apr. 2017 <https://mediaaccess.org.au/web/how-to-caption-a-youtube-video>.New Media Rock Stars. “Youtube’s 5 Worst Hilariously Catastrophic Auto Caption Fails.” 2013. 25 Apr. 2017 <http://newmediarockstars.com/2013/05/youtubes-5-worst-hilariously-catastrophic-auto-caption-fails/>.Outlaw. “Berners-Lee Applies Web 2.0 to Improve Accessibility.” Outlaw News (2006). 25 June 2010 <http://www.out-law.com/page-6946>.Raymond, Eric S. The New Hacker’s Dictionary. 3rd ed. Cambridge: MIT P, 1996.Smartflix. “Smartflix: Supercharge Your Netflix.” 2017. 9 Apr. 2017 <https://www.smartflix.io/>.Sommergirl. “[All] Adding Subtitles in a Different Language?” 2016. 9 Apr. 2017 <https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/32l8ob/all_adding_subtitles_in_a_different_language/>.Subflicks. “Subflicks V2.0.0.” 2017. 9 Apr. 2017 <http://subflicks.com/>.Vasile, Cosmin. “Netflix Has Just Informed Us That Its Movie Streaming Service Is Now Available in Just About Every Country That Matters Financially, Aside from China, of Course.” 2016. 9 Apr. 2017 <http://news.softpedia.com/news/how-to-add-custom-subtitles-to-netflix-498579.shtml>.Vogelstein, Fred. “The Wired Interview: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.” Wired Magazine (2009). 20 Jun. 2010 <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/mark-zuckerberg-speaks/>.W3C. “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.” W3C Recommendation (1999). 25 Jun. 2010 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/>.———. “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.” 11 Dec. 2008. 21 Aug. 2013 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/>.WGBH. “Magpie 2.0—Free, Do-It-Yourself Access Authoring Tool for Digital Multimedia Released by WGBH.” 2002. 25 Apr. 2017 <http://ncam.wgbh.org/about/news/pr_05072002>.YouTube. “Finally, Caption Video Playback.” 2006. 24 Apr. 2017 <http://googlevideo.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/finally-caption-playback.html>.
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Roney, Lisa. "The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses." M/C Journal 10, no. 4 (2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2684.

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 Perhaps nothing in media culture today makes clearer the connection between people’s bodies and their homes than the Emmy-winning reality TV program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Home Edition is a spin-off from the original Extreme Makeover, and that fact provides in fundamental form the strong connection that the show demonstrates between bodies and houses. The first EM, initially popular for its focus on cosmetic surgery, laser skin and hair treatments, dental work, cosmetics and wardrobe for mainly middle-aged and self-described unattractive participants, lagged after two full seasons and was finally cancelled entirely, whereas EMHE has continued to accrue viewers and sponsors, as well as accolades (Paulsen, Poniewozik, EMHE Website, Wilhelm). That viewers and the ABC network shifted their attention to the reconstruction of houses over the original version’s direct intervention in problematic bodies indicates that sites of personal transformation are not necessarily within our own physical or emotional beings, but in the larger surround of our environments and in our cultural ideals of home and body. One effect of this shift in the Extreme Makeover format is that a seemingly wider range of narrative problems can be solved relating to houses than to the particular bodies featured on the original show. Although Extreme Makeover featured a few people who’d had previously botched cleft palate surgeries or mastectomies, as Cressida Heyes points out, “the only kind of disability that interests the show is one that can be corrected to conform to able-bodied norms” (22). Most of the recipients were simply middle-aged folks who were ordinary or aged in appearance; many of them seemed self-obsessed and vain, and their children often seemed disturbed by the transformation (Heyes 24). However, children are happy to have a brand new TV and a toy-filled room decorated like their latest fantasy, and they thereby can be drawn into the process of identity transformation in the Home Edition version; in fact, children are required of virtually all recipients of the show’s largess. Because EMHE can do “major surgery” or simply bulldoze an old structure and start with a new building, it is also able to incorporate more variety in its stories—floods, fires, hurricanes, propane explosions, war, crime, immigration, car accidents, unscrupulous contractors, insurance problems, terrorist attacks—the list of traumas is seemingly endless. Home Edition can solve any problem, small or large. Houses are much easier things to repair or reconstruct than bodies. Perhaps partly for this reason, EMHE uses disability as one of its major tropes. Until Season 4, Episode 22, 46.9 percent of the episodes have had some content related to disability or illness of a disabling sort, and this number rises to 76.4 percent if the count includes families that have been traumatised by the (usually recent) death of a family member in childhood or the prime of life by illness, accident or violence. Considering that the percentage of people living with disabilities in the U.S. is defined at 18.1 percent (Steinmetz), EMHE obviously favours them considerably in the selection process. Even the disproportionate numbers of people with disabilities living in poverty and who therefore might be more likely to need help—20.9 percent as opposed to 7.7 percent of the able-bodied population (Steinmetz)—does not fully explain their dominance on the program. In fact, the program seeks out people with new and different physical disabilities and illnesses, sending out emails to local news stations looking for “Extraordinary Mom / Dad recently diagnosed with ALS,” “Family who has a child with PROGERIA (aka ‘little old man’s disease’)” and other particular situations (Simonian). A total of sixty-five ill or disabled people have been featured on the show over the past four years, and, even if one considers its methods maudlin or exploitive, the presence of that much disability and illness is very unusual for reality TV and for TV in general. What the show purports to do is to radically transform multiple aspects of individuals’ lives—and especially lives marred by what are perceived as physical setbacks—via the provision of a luxurious new house, albeit sometimes with the addition of automobiles, mortgage payments or college scholarships. In some ways the assumptions underpinning EMHE fit with a social constructionist body theory that posits an almost infinitely flexible physical matter, of which the definitions and capabilities are largely determined by social concepts and institutions. The social model within the disability studies field has used this theoretical perspective to emphasise the distinction between an impairment, “the physical fact of lacking an arm or a leg,” and disability, “the social process that turns an impairment into a negative by creating barriers to access” (Davis, Bending 12). Accessible housing has certainly been one emphasis of disability rights activists, and many of them have focused on how “design conceptions, in relation to floor plans and allocation of functions to specific spaces, do not conceive of impairment, disease and illness as part of domestic habitation or being” (Imrie 91). In this regard, EMHE appears as a paragon. In one of its most challenging and dramatic Season 1 episodes, the “Design Team” worked on the home of the Ziteks, whose twenty-two-year-old son had been restricted to a sub-floor of the three-level structure since a car accident had paralyzed him. The show refitted the house with an elevator, roll-in bathroom and shower, and wheelchair-accessible doors. Robert Zitek was also provided with sophisticated computer equipment that would help him produce music, a life-long interest that had been halted by his upper-vertebra paralysis. Such examples abound in the new EMHE houses, which have been constructed for families featuring situations such as both blind and deaf members, a child prone to bone breaks due to osteogenesis imperfecta, legs lost in Iraq warfare, allergies that make mold life-threatening, sun sensitivity due to melanoma or polymorphic light eruption or migraines, fragile immune systems (often due to organ transplants or chemotherapy), cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Krabbe disease and autism. EMHE tries to set these lives right via the latest in technology and treatment—computer communication software and hardware, lock systems, wheelchair-friendly design, ventilation and air purification set-ups, the latest in care and mental health approaches for various disabilities and occasional consultations with disabled celebrities like Marlee Matlin. Even when individuals or familes are “[d]iscriminated against on a daily basis by ignorance and physical challenges,” as the program website notes, they “deserve to have a home that doesn’t discriminate against them” (EMHE website, Season 3, Episode 4). The relief that they will be able to inhabit accessible and pleasant environments is evident on the faces of many of these recipients. That physical ease, that ability to move and perform the intimate acts of domestic life, seems according to the show’s narrative to be the most basic element of home. Nonetheless, as Robert Imrie has pointed out, superficial accessibility may still veil “a static, singular conception of the body” (201) that prevents broader change in attitudes about people with disabilities, their activities and their spaces. Starting with the story of the child singing in an attempt at self-comforting from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, J. MacGregor Wise defines home as a process of territorialisation through specific behaviours. “The markers of home … are not simply inanimate objects (a place with stuff),” he notes, “but the presence, habits, and effects of spouses, children, parents, and companions” (299). While Ty Pennington, EMHE’s boisterous host, implies changes for these families along the lines of access to higher education, creative possibilities provided by musical instruments and disability-appropriate art materials, help with home businesses in the way of equipment and licenses and so on, the families’ identity-producing habits are just as likely to be significantly changed by the structural and decorative arrangements made for them by the Design Team. The homes that are created for these families are highly conventional in their structure, layout, decoration, and expectations of use. More specifically, certain behavioural patterns are encouraged and others discouraged by the Design Team’s assumptions. Several themes run through the show’s episodes: Large dining rooms provide for the most common of Pennington’s comments: “You can finally sit down and eat meals together as a family.” A nostalgic value in an era where most families have schedules full of conflicts that prevent such Ozzie-and-Harriet scenarios, it nonetheless predominates. Large kitchens allow for cooking and eating at home, though featured food is usually frozen and instant. In addition, kitchens are not designed for the families’ disabled members; for wheelchair users, for instance, counters need to be lower than usual with open space underneath, so that a wheelchair can roll underneath the counter. Thus, all the wheelchair inhabitants depicted will still be dependent on family members, primarily mothers, to prepare food and clean up after them. (See Imrie, 95-96, for examples of adapted kitchens.) Pets, perhaps because they are inherently “dirty,” are downplayed or absent, even when the family has them when EMHE arrives (except one family that is featured for their animal rescue efforts); interestingly, there are no service dogs, which might obviate the need for some of the high-tech solutions for the disabled offered by the show. The previous example is one element of an emphasis on clutter-free cleanliness and tastefulness combined with a rampant consumerism. While “cultural” elements may be salvaged from exotic immigrant families, most of the houses are very similar and assume a certain kind of commodified style based on new furniture (not humble family hand-me-downs), appliances, toys and expensive, prefab yard gear. Sears is a sponsor of the program, and shopping trips for furniture and appliances form a regular part of the program. Most or all of the houses have large garages, and the families are often given large vehicles by Ford, maintaining a positive take on a reliance on private transportation and gas-guzzling vehicles, but rarely handicap-adapted vans. Living spaces are open, with high ceilings and arches rather than doorways, so that family members will have visual and aural contact. Bedrooms are by contrast presented as private domains of retreat, especially for parents who have demanding (often ill or disabled) children, from which they are considered to need an occasional break. All living and bedrooms are dominated by TVs and other electronica, sometimes presented as an aid to the disabled, but also dominating to the point of excluding other ways of being and interacting. As already mentioned, childless couples and elderly people without children are completely absent. Friends buying houses together and gay couples are also not represented. The ideal of the heterosexual nuclear family is thus perpetuated, even though some of the show’s craftspeople are gay. Likewise, even though “independence” is mentioned frequently in the context of families with disabled members, there are no recipients who are disabled adults living on their own without family caretakers. “Independence” is spoken of mostly in terms of bathing, dressing, using the bathroom and other bodily aspects of life, not in terms of work, friendship, community or self-concept. Perhaps most salient, the EMHE houses are usually created as though nothing about the family will ever again change. While a few of the projects have featured terminally ill parents seeking to leave their children secure after their death, for the most part the families are considered oddly in stasis. Single mothers will stay single mothers, even children with conditions with severe prognoses will continue to live, the five-year-old will sleep forever in a fire-truck bed or dollhouse room, the occasional grandparent installed in his or her own suite will never pass away, and teenagers and young adults (especially the disabled) will never grow up, marry, discover their homosexuality, have a falling out with their parents or leave home. A kind of timeless nostalgia, hearkening back to Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, pervades the show. Like the body-modifying Extreme Makeover, the Home Edition version is haunted by the issue of normalisation. The word ‘normal’, in fact, floats through the program’s dialogue frequently, and it is made clear that the goal of the show is to restore, as much as possible, a somewhat glamourised, but status quo existence. The website, in describing the work of one deserving couple notes that “Camp Barnabas is a non-profit organisation that caters to the needs of critically and chronically ill children and gives them the opportunity to be ‘normal’ for one week” (EMHE website, Season 3, Episode 7). Someone at the network is sophisticated enough to put ‘normal’ in quotation marks, and the show demonstrates a relatively inclusive concept of ‘normal’, but the word dominates the show itself, and the concept remains largely unquestioned (See Canguilhem; Davis, Enforcing Normalcy; and Snyder and Mitchell, Narrative, for critiques of the process of normalization in regard to disability). In EMHE there is no sense that disability or illness ever produces anything positive, even though the show also notes repeatedly the inspirational attitudes that people have developed through their disability and illness experiences. Similarly, there is no sense that a little messiness can be creatively productive or even necessary. Wise makes a distinction between “home and the home, home and house, home and domus,” the latter of each pair being normative concepts, whereas the former “is a space of comfort (a never-ending process)” antithetical to oppressive norms, such as the association of the home with the enforced domesticity of women. In cases where the house or domus becomes a place of violence and discomfort, home becomes the process of coping with or resisting the negative aspects of the place (300). Certainly the disabled have experienced this in inaccessible homes, but they may also come to experience a different version in a new EMHE house. For, as Wise puts it, “home can also mean a process of rationalization or submission, a break with the reality of the situation, self-delusion, or falling under the delusion of others” (300). The show’s assumption that the construction of these new houses will to a great extent solve these families’ problems (and that disability itself is the problem, not the failure of our culture to accommodate its many forms) may in fact be a delusional spell under which the recipient families fall. In fact, the show demonstrates a triumphalist narrative prevalent today, in which individual happenstance and extreme circumstances are given responsibility for social ills. In this regard, EMHE acts out an ancient morality play, where the recipients of the show’s largesse are assessed and judged based on what they “deserve,” and the opening of each show, when the Design Team reviews the application video tape of the family, strongly emphasises what good people these are (they work with charities, they love each other, they help out their neighbours) and how their situation is caused by natural disaster, act of God or undeserved tragedy, not their own bad behaviour. Disabilities are viewed as terrible tragedies that befall the young and innocent—there is no lung cancer or emphysema from a former smoking habit, and the recipients paralyzed by gunshots have received them in drive-by shootings or in the line of duty as police officers and soldiers. In addition, one of the functions of large families is that the children veil any selfish motivation the adults may have—they are always seeking the show’s assistance on behalf of the children, not themselves. While the Design Team always notes that there are “so many other deserving people out there,” the implication is that some people’s poverty and need may be their own fault. (See Snyder and Mitchell, Locations 41-67; Blunt and Dowling 116-25; and Holliday.) In addition, the structure of the show—with the opening view of the family’s undeserved problems, their joyous greeting at the arrival of the Team, their departure for the first vacation they may ever have had and then the final exuberance when they return to the new house—creates a sense of complete, almost religious salvation. Such narratives fail to point out social support systems that fail large numbers of people who live in poverty and who struggle with issues of accessibility in terms of not only domestic spaces, but public buildings, educational opportunities and social acceptance. In this way, it echoes elements of the medical model, long criticised in disability studies, where each and every disabled body is conceptualised as a site of individual aberration in need of correction, not as something disabled by an ableist society. In fact, “the house does not shelter us from cosmic forces; at most it filters and selects them” (Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, qtd. in Frichot 61), and those outside forces will still apply to all these families. The normative assumptions inherent in the houses may also become oppressive in spite of their being accessible in a technical sense (a thing necessary but perhaps not sufficient for a sense of home). As Tobin Siebers points out, “[t]he debate in architecture has so far focused more on the fundamental problem of whether buildings and landscapes should be universally accessible than on the aesthetic symbolism by which the built environment mirrors its potential inhabitants” (“Culture” 183). Siebers argues that the Jamesonian “political unconscious” is a “social imaginary” based on a concept of perfection (186) that “enforces a mutual identification between forms of appearance, whether organic, aesthetic, or architectural, and ideal images of the body politic” (185). Able-bodied people are fearful of the disabled’s incurability and refusal of normalisation, and do not accept the statistical fact that, at least through the process of aging, most people will end up dependent, ill and/or disabled at some point in life. Mainstream society “prefers to think of people with disabilities as a small population, a stable population, that nevertheless makes enormous claims on the resources of everyone else” (“Theory” 742). Siebers notes that the use of euphemism and strategies of covering eventually harm efforts to create a society that is home to able-bodied and disabled alike (“Theory” 747) and calls for an exploration of “new modes of beauty that attack aesthetic and political standards that insist on uniformity, balance, hygiene, and formal integrity” (Culture 210). What such an architecture, particularly of an actually livable domestic nature, might look like is an open question, though there are already some examples of people trying to reframe many of the assumptions about housing design. For instance, cohousing, where families and individuals share communal space, yet have private accommodations, too, makes available a larger social group than the nuclear family for social and caretaking activities (Blunt and Dowling, 262-65). But how does one define a beauty-less aesthetic or a pleasant home that is not hygienic? Post-structuralist architects, working on different grounds and usually in a highly theoretical, imaginary framework, however, may offer another clue, as they have also tried to ‘liberate’ architecture from the nostalgic dictates of the aesthetic. Ironically, one of the most famous of these, Peter Eisenman, is well known for producing, in a strange reversal, buildings that render the able-bodied uncomfortable and even sometimes ill (see, in particular, Frank and Eisenman). Of several house designs he produced over the years, Eisenman notes that his intention was to dislocate the house from that comforting metaphysic and symbolism of shelter in order to initiate a search for those possibilities of dwelling that may have been repressed by that metaphysic. The house may once have been a true locus and symbol of nurturing shelter, but in a world of irresolvable anxiety, the meaning and form of shelter must be different. (Eisenman 172) Although Eisenman’s starting point is very different from that of Siebers, it nonetheless resonates with the latter’s desire for an aesthetic that incorporates the “ragged edge” of disabled bodies. Yet few would want to live in a home made less attractive or less comfortable, and the “illusion” of permanence is one of the things that provide rest within our homes. Could there be an architecture, or an aesthetic, of home that could create a new and different kind of comfort and beauty, one that is neither based on a denial of the importance of bodily comfort and pleasure nor based on an oppressively narrow and commercialised set of aesthetic values that implicitly value some people over others? For one thing, instead of viewing home as a place of (false) stasis and permanence, we might see it as a place of continual change and renewal, which any home always becomes in practice anyway. As architect Hélène Frichot suggests, “we must look toward the immanent conditions of architecture, the processes it employs, the serial deformations of its built forms, together with our quotidian spatio-temporal practices” (63) instead of settling into a deadening nostalgia like that seen on EMHE. If we define home as a process of continual territorialisation, if we understand that “[t]here is no fixed self, only the process of looking for one,” and likewise that “there is no home, only the process of forming one” (Wise 303), perhaps we can begin to imagine a different, yet lovely conception of “house” and its relation to the experience of “home.” Extreme Makeover: Home Edition should be lauded for its attempts to include families of a wide variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, various religions, from different regions around the U.S., both rural and suburban, even occasionally urban, and especially for its bringing to the fore how, indeed, structures can be as disabling as any individual impairment. That it shows designers and builders working with the families of the disabled to create accessible homes may help to change wider attitudes and break down resistance to the building of inclusive housing. 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