Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'People with disabilities, juvenile literature'

A combined, multiple-methods action research strategy is constructed and used to assess teams of personnel working in and around group homes for mentally retarded adults and young offenders in the Canadian Province of Newfoundland and Labrador between August, 1983 and January, 1987. Grounded in the practise experiences and previous research of the author, the question "what works?" is developed both as a contextual framework for the examination of teamwork as a component of professional practise and as a contextual feature of group care. The question is used to guide categorization and organization of differences amongst 51 sample teams in order to isolate valid and reliable measures of team work functioning. Drawing from four distinct theoretical traditions comprising core knowledge of human behaviour in the social environment, multiple methodologies for differentiating within and amongst teams are combined to triangulate data around the central research question. A methodology for the collection and analysis of data which are thought to represent the "lived experiences" of sample subjects is developed and used to illuminate the phenomenological alignments of team members. Qualitative themes in the reports of on- and off-the-job satisfactions and frustrations for sample subjects are examined for teams and for occupational groupings. Separate measures of Level of Organizational Change and Prevalence of Stressful working Conditions are developed and used to examine the interplay between these variables and other preselected variables. The assessment procedures and the typology of team functioning developed by Fulcher (1983) are replicated. Specific flaws and limitations in Fulcher's methodology and design are overcome through the use of a different theoretical orientation, extensions and refinements of the methodology, changes in instrumentation and by replicating his findings with a more homogeneous sample. Four of the team styles of adaptation are empirically validated and their descriptions refined. Both linear and non-linear statistical analytic methods are used to test for correlation and association between and among preselected variables. The Heimler/Fulcher Work Orientation Schedule, which serves as the basis for Fulcher's interpretative categorization of teams, is subjected to tests of reliability and validity and found to meet predetermined expectations. Through the use of an international, comparative data base, norms for team satisfaction and ratio of frustration to satisfaction for this instrument are empirically validated. Further research using Fulcher's typology along with the Work Orientation Schedule is indicated. Field observation recordings, sample subjects' personal narratives, the social policy and corporate contexts in which the study takes place, and a mythical, yet ultimately necessary, experiment which takes place in the future are all used to illuminate and ground the findings in the action research process.

Thesis (M. S.)--City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009.
Committee Chair: Sawicki, David; Committee Co-Chair: Clark, Jennifer; Committee Member: Baker, Paul M.A.; Committee Member: Mitchell, Helena

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines depictions of disability in selected African films, novels and memoirs. Central to the thesis is the concept of narrative enablement, which is discussed as a property that texts have for enabling the recognition of disability by the reader or viewer. In the thesis, I investigate the ways in which narrative enablement manifests in the texts. The motivation for the study comes from the recognition of several trends in current literary disability studies. Firstly, the study attempts to expand the theoretical base of current literary disability studies, which consists of ideas formed from a narrow epistemic archive. Similarly, the study also recognises that scholarship in the field mostly relies on a limited canon of texts, almost wholly drawn from the Western world. This study therefore allows a glimpse at an under-acknowledged archive of disability representation, which is then used to suggest the possibility of alternative ways of understanding disablement on the African continent and globally. The first chapter is meant as an entry point into some of the complex lives depicted in the thesis. In this chapter, I explore the intersection that the texts draw between disability and masculinity, illustrating the way this intersection evokes questions about how we understand the relationship between the two concepts. In the second chapter, I examine the way socio-political violence on the continent is represented as a cause of both disablement and disenablement. This chapter is an exploration of how disability is enmeshed with other social realities in people’s lives. The term disenablement is employed in order to capture the presentation of disablement amidst various forms of violent oppression. As it is portrayed in the majority of the texts studied in the thesis, disablement is a factor of social attitudes. My third chapter examines how these texts create dis/ability zones, areas where the reader/viewer witnesses the fluidity of socially constructed disablement in particular societies. As it is portrayed in the texts, and discussed in the thesis, this zone is a space where disabled characters encounter the ableist world. It is a space that allows the destabilization of entrenched notions about disability, and consequent recognition of disabled characters. The most explicit manifestation of narrative enablement occurs through creative intervention, which is the focus in the fourth chapter. In this chapter, I examine the role of various forms of creativity as they are enacted by the characters, arguing that they are manifestations of the characters making use of narrative enablement. In the texts, the disabled characters use unique modes of storytelling – not exclusively verbal – to narrate their story, but also to assert their belonging to particular familial, cultural, as well as national worlds.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek uitbeeldings van gestremdheid in geselekteerde films, romans en memoirs uit Afrika. Die konsep van narratiewe bemagtiging – ‘n konsep wat ondersoek word as ‘n kapasiteit van tekste wat die erkenning van gestremdheid bemoontlik vir die leser of kyker – staan sentraal in hierdie studie. In my tesis ondersoek ek die maniere waarop narratiewe bemagtiging in die tekste manifesteer. Die beweegrede vir hierdie studie kom uit die realisering van verskeie strominge in kontemporêre letterkundige gestremdheidstudies. In die eerste plek onderneem hierdie studie die taak om die teoretiese basis van huidige literêre gestremdheidstudies, wat bestaan uit idees wat op hul beurt uit ‘n enge epistemiese argief gevorm is, uit te brei. Op soortgelyke wyse erken die studie dat akademiese navorsing binne hierdie studieveld meestal berus op ‘n relatief klein kanon van tekste, feitlik geheel-en-al uit die Westerse wêreld. Hierdie studie bied dus ‘n kyk op ‘n onder-erkende argief van gestremdheidsvoorstellings, wat op sy beurt gebruik word om die moontlikheid van alternatiewe maniere waarop gestremdheid binne Afrika asook wêreldwyd begryp kan word, aan te toon. Die doel van die eerste hoofstuk is om ‘n intreepunt te skep waardeur sommige van die komplekse ervaringswêrelde wat in die tesis ondersoek word, betree kan word. In hierdie hoofstuk ondersoek ek die oorvleuelings tussen gestremdheid en manlikheid wat deur die tekste uitgebeeld word, om sodoende aan te toon dat hierdie oorvleueling vrae oproep in verband met hoe ons die verhouding tussen hierdie twee konsepte kan verstaan. In my tweede hoofstuk ondersoek ek die manier waarop sosio-politieke geweld op die kontinent uitgebeeld word as ‘n oorsaak van gestremdheid sowel as van ontmagtiging. Hierdie hoofstuk ondersoek die wyses waarop gestremdheid verwikkeld is met ander sosiale werklikhede in mense se lewens. Die term disenablement [hier: ‘ontmagtiging’] word gebruik om die uitbeelding van gestremdheid midde-in verskillende vorme van gewelddadige onderdrukking vas te vang. Soos uitgebeeld in die meeste van die tekste wat in die studie ondersoek word, is gestremdheid ‘n aspek van sosiale houdinge. My derde hoofstuk ondersoek hoe die gekose tekste areas van be/ontmagtiging skep; gebiede waar die leser/kyker die vloeibaarheid van sosiaal-gekonstrueerde ontmagtiging in spesifieke gemeenskappe waarneem. Soos uitgebeeld in die tekste en soos wat die studie die saak bespreek, is hierdie zone ‘n gebied waarbinne gestremde persone die bemagtigde wêreld ervaar. Dit is ‘n area waarbinne die versteuring van vasgelegde konsepte van gestremdheid, en gevolglike erkenning van gestremde persone, kan plaasvind. Die mees eksplisiete ontplooiïng van narratiewe bemagtiging gebeur deur middel van skeppende intervensies, wat die fokus vorm van my vierde hoofstuk. In hierdie hoostuk ondersoek ek die rol wat gespeel word deur verskillende vorme van kreatiwiteit soos beoefen deur die karakters, in die loop van my argument dat hiedie skeppingsvorme voorbeeelde is van hoe narratiewe bemagtiging plaasvind. In die tekste gebruik die gestremde karakters unieke metodes van vertelling – nie uitsluitlik verbaal nie – om hulle verhale te vertel, maar ook om aan te toon dat en hoe hulle aan partikuliere familiale, kulturele en nasionale wêrelde behoort.

Health information is often conveyed in printed or digital form. This can present challenges to people with intellectual disabilities, many of whom experience literacy difficulties and are therefore disadvantaged in reading and understanding such information. ‘Easy read’ versions of health-related documents purport to circumvent these difficulties, but there is little evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness in doing so. The aim of the current research was to address how effective adapted health-based ‘easy read’ literature was in contributing to the construction of meaning for people with intellectual disabilities. Four studies investigated different areas of ‘easy read’ information and its use. 1. A survey compared presentational features found in ‘easy read’ and ‘non-easy read’ literature published by the UK Department of Health and aligned these with advice given in published guidelines for ‘easy read’ material. 2. Critical differences between the linguistic features in these two groups of documents were analysed using specialised software. 3. A systematic qualitative linguistic analysis was undertaken to investigate the subtleties conveyed through the discourse of ‘non-easy read’ compared to ‘easy read’ texts. 4. Finally, a randomised experiment tested the effects of linguistic simplification and literacy mediation on the understanding of ‘easy read’ information with sixty participants with intellectual disabilities. When material was compared to its ‘non-easy read’ counterparts it showed that clear differences had been rendered by authors of the ‘easy read’ documentation. These differences were indicative of presentational changes and reduced linguistic complexity. They did not appear to translate into more effective understanding of content by people with intellectual disabilities, whether human mediation was present or not. Individual capacity for language, however, was shown to be integral to the construction of meaning from ‘easy read material’. This has implications for both the production and the use of ‘easy read’ material in practice.

This thesis considers how religious literature represented sickness and disability in Anglo- Saxon and post-Conquest England. Based on Gospel accounts of Jesus's healings, narratives of miracle-cures were highly valued within medieval Christian culture. By analysing a selection of miracle-cure narratives from the main period of miracle writing in England, from the age of Bede to the late twelfth century, this project considers the social significance of such stories. All miracle-cures followed the pattern of a spiritual triumph over the material world, but this thesis focuses on how hagiographers represented human experiences of sickness and disabilities. The first two chapters of this thesis address the conceptual structure of the project. The first explains the two areas of scholarly theory that underpin this thesis. These are the use of narrative sources for historical study; and sociological conceptualisations of bodily difference. The second chapter orientates the case-studies selected for this project in their context. Miracle-cures were recounted in relation to other aspects of the culture of medieval England, most importantly the theology of sainthood and of sin. The remaining three chapters of the thesis provide detailed thematic analysis of selected miracle-cure narratives. The third chapter asks how the spiritual experience of bodily difference was understood. The next chapter considers the physical understandings of a body that was affected by either sickness or disability, and the links between miracle-cure narratives and contemporary medical theory. The fifth and final chapter addresses the representation of social aspects of sickness and disability in these texts, in particular the moralising rhetoric of such texts in favour of community support. This thesis concludes with a discussion of how modern Disability Studies and scholarship on medieval culture benefit from interaction with one another.

This thesis investigates the problem of how to provide accessible images in academic articles in the research fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and in particular in biomedicine. Currently, graphics in scientific articles are a critical information source and often provide essential information for a thorough understanding of scientific articles. People with visual and other impairments experience specific barriers that prevent them from accessing the information conveyed by figures. Therefore, when academic articles do not include universally accessible images, the ability to perceive and comprehend scientific information is dramatically reduced in blind readers, readers with visual impairments and other impairments (such as cognitive impairments) or readers accessing digital content under specific context and conditions (e.g., using a small and monochrome display). The thesis reviews the current publishers’ policies and practices and the authors’ practices and attitudes in the process of image authoring and submission in STEM articles, in order to optimize the integration of accessibility requirements in the image creation and submission process. In particular, the proposal includes recommendations on how to make accessible images based on current practices in image editing and suggests the use of suitable, effective and meaningful captions and mentions as texts that can replace and describe the visual information, in order to spare authors (and publishers) the task of creating alternative texts. The study can be divided into the following steps: • Firstly, an initial multidisciplinary literature review from the research fields of accessibility, library and information science, information visualization and semantic web is performed to assess the current proposals on the image access and description. The different disciplines contribute to define a model for the analysis and description of images and to provide technical solutions for improving their accessibility. • Secondly, an audit of the current publishing practices, policies and submission guidelines related to the accessibility of images in academic journals in the fields of biomedicine, computer science and mathematics is performed. This review assesses the current accessibility level of images and the characteristics and functions of the visual information commonly used in academic publications. • Thirdly, a survey and interviews with academic researchers in medicine and biology are performed for assessing practices and attitudes in the process of image authoring, submission and publishing. • Finally, a set of recommendations for improving the accessibility of images is proposed. It is based on the current practices of authors and publishers. This research demonstrates a deficient accessibility of images, a lack of inclusion of accessibility issues into the current authoring workflow and proposes recommendations and guidelines on how to improve these conditions. The results of the thesis also emphasize that the adoption of a general model of textual descriptions covering all types of images has limited results for the creation of effective text alternatives, due to the high heterogeneity of the characteristics, functions and context of the images. Hence, the thesis proposes the adoption of a model for the textual description of images based on the analysis of each type of image and adapted to each of them. The main contribution of the proposal is that it is tailored to the specific context of STEM academic publishing and is linked to the current practices in image submission and publishing. This is the main difference of the proposal compared to the current accessibility guidelines, which are seldom general and disconnected from the policies and practices of the specific context where they should be applied. Therefore, it aims at limiting the changes demanded for the implementation of accessibility requirements in the current image publishing workflow, increasing the opportunities of an actual application of accessibility principles.
Esta tesis estudia la cuestión de cómo proporcionar imágenes accesibles en los artículos académicos de Ciencia, Tecnología, Ingeniería y Matemáticas (disciplinas “STEM” en inglés) y en particular en biomedicina. A menudo las figuras son una fuente de información esencial para la comprensión de un artículo científico. Las personas con discapacidades visuales u otras discapacidades se enfrentan a barreras que les impiden acceder a la información proporcionada por las figuras. La tesis analiza las políticas y las prácticas actuales de los editores y las prácticas y las opiniones de los autores en el proceso de autoría y envío de imágenes científicas, con el objetivo de optimizar la integración de requerimientos de accesibilidad en el proceso de creación y sumisión de figuras en artículos científicos. La investigación evidencia una falta de accesibilidad de las imágenes y de inclusión de pautas de accesibilidad en el actual flujo de trabajo de autoría de imágenes y propone recomendaciones y directrices para mejorar la situación. Los resultados de la tesis además evidencian que la adopción de un modelo general de descripción textual para todos los tipos de imágenes científicas presenta limitaciones para la de creación de alternativas textuales eficaces, debido a la variedad de características, funciones y contextos de las imágenes mismas. Por ese motivo, la tesis propone la adopción de un modelo de descripción de imágenes basado en el análisis de cada tipología de imagen y adaptado a cada una de ella, de forma más específica posible. La contribución principal de la propuesta es la de ser adaptada al contexto específico de la publicación de artículos académicos STEM y de ser conectada a las prácticas corrientes de autoría, sumisión y publicación de imágenes. La propuesta apunta a limitar los cambios en el actual flujo de trabajo editorial para la implementación de directrices de accesibilidad, aumentando las oportunidades de una verdadera aceptación de principios de accesibilidad.

Young people who have received special education services in the United States are vastly overrepresented in juvenile and adult criminal justice systems relative to their numbers in the general population. Although much existing research frequently assumes that deficits within young people are the cause of this problem, research also suggests that educational experiences can increase the likelihood that young people will get arrested. However, the exact mechanisms by which time at school seems to lead to prison for so many young people who have received special educational services is unclear. This study uses a Disability Studies (DS) framework to understand this problem. Disability Studies scholars view disability as a social construction; students do not have a disability that justifies differential treatment, they become disabled through school practices that privilege particular norms for doing and being at school. In addition, DS scholars and activists have taken up the mantra, “Nothing about us without us,” insisting that the perspectives of individuals with disabilities be included in any research about disability. This mixed methods study sought to understand both which school-level factors predict arrest for young people receiving special education services and how young people present and explain those and other school-level factors. I conducted regression analysis using administrative data from the New York City Department of Education and New York State Education Department to determine which school-level factors predict arrest, on average, for young people receiving special educational services in New York City’s public secondary schools for one school year. Then, I conducted semi-structured interviews with six young people who have received special education services and been arrested in NYC. This study suggests that school-level factors do significantly increase the likelihood that a school will have students receiving special education services who have been arrested. These school-level factors are alterable by policy and practice. This study further suggests that young people receiving special education services describe and evaluate their educations in relation to imagined “regular” schools rather than according to how their schools actually help or hinder them.

This thesis argues for the recognition of disability as a critical category in Australian literature, in the same way that indigenous and women' s' literature are. It demonstrates that writers with disability bring a perspective to writing that is invaluable, especially on, but by no means limited to, the topic of disability. It takes as its starting point the foundational disability studies concept that disability is a sociocultural construction. This perspective labels medical conditions as impairments, and believes that people with impairments are disabled by the barriers resulting in exclusion that society constructs. It also believes that both impairment and disability are cultural constructions, and that it benefits both people with and without disability when ideas around normalcy and embodiment are critically examined. This thesis asks: Who are Australia 's published writers with disability? What were and are they writing? And, How has impairment and disability influenced their writing? It answers these questions through close analysis of two of Australian disability literature's most well-known fiction writers - Henry Lawson (who was deaf), and Gillian Mears (who had multiple sclerosis), and explores how impairment and disability have influenced both the style and the content of their writing.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2010.
Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on April 28, 2010). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Elementary Education, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Recent technological applications have made the life of people too much dependent on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and its applications. Understanding basic level science is a must in order to use and contribute to this technological revolution. Science education in middle and high school levels however depends heavily on visual representations such as models, diagrams, figures, animations and presentations etc. This leaves visually impaired students with very few options to learn science and secure a career in STEM related areas. Recent experiments have shown that small aural clues called Audemes are helpful in understanding and memorization of science concepts among visually impaired students. Audemes are non-verbal sound translations of a science concept. In order to facilitate science concepts as Audemes, for visually impaired students, this thesis presents an automatic system for audeme generation from STEM textbooks. This thesis describes the systematic application of multiple Natural Language Processing tools and techniques, such as dependency parser, POS tagger, Information Retrieval algorithm, Semantic mapping of aural words, machine learning etc., to transform the science concept into a combination of atomic-sounds, thus forming an audeme. We present a rule based classification method for all STEM related concepts. This work also presents a novel way of mapping and extracting most related sounds for the words being used in textbook. Additionally, machine learning methods are used in the system to guarantee the customization of output according to a user's perception. The system being presented is robust, scalable, fully automatic and dynamically adaptable for audeme generation.