Ethiopian Center for Disability and Development
Disability Information Service Center (DISC)

Main contents: 

This base line assessment assists The World Bank and its staff to include people with disabilities in efforts to fight poverty. People with disabilities in the developing world are economically the poorest of the poor (living below the poverty line) and due to conflict, malnutrition, natural disaster and HIV/AIDS the number of people with disabilities living in these harsh conditions is increasing. People with disabilities are invisible in development initiatives, hundreds of thousands of people who see themselves as potential and willing contributors to family and national economic activity are instead relegated to the margins of society where they are a perceived as a burden. The result can be devastating, both to the individual and to the economy.  
 
This report provides the World Bank with an assessment of its current efforts to integrate people with disabilities. At the same time, it offers information and recommendations for World Bank headquarters and other related institutions on how best to move forward to improve the quality of the assistance provided for customers including those with disabilities. 

This research is not alone in its aim, but one that complements the recent creation of the position of Disability Advisor at the World Bank and contributes to the enhancement and effectiveness of poverty alleviation initiatives. Many, in the field and from national aid agencies around the world hope that the leadership of the Bank in the sector of disability and development will be similar to that shown by the Bank in women/gender and development in previous decades. 

Purpose:  

This research focuses on investigating attitudinal reactions of sighted communities towards the education, employment and marriage of people with vision impairment. 

Methodology:

In the study, 400 (200 male and 200 female) sighted persons, 20 (8 male and 12 female) sighted people gender specific focus group, 24 (12 men and 12 women) people with vision impairment gender specific focus group living in woreda 11 kebele 23 and 27(19 male and 8 female) people with vision impairment gender specific focus group discussion participants from ENAB and 8 key informants participated.

Both close and open ended questions, focus group discussion outlines and a three-point attitude scale questionnaire on the topics of education, employment and marriage were employed. The data collected through questionnaire were analyzed using percentages. 

Main findings:

The findings revealed that the unwelcoming social environment significantly hampers access to various opportunities. These findings of the prevalence of unwelcoming social reactions toward people with vision impairment have inhibited their efforts to benefit from the fruits of education, in their desire to employed get married and lead an independent life.

Access to education is very limited due to a number of reasons i.e. poverty, absence of schools, lack of appropriate support from regular schools, the preference of families to send their non-disabled children to school over their disabled child and the value families attach to the education of their disabled female child differs from that of their son with a similar problem. 

The study also revealed that families and society tend to consider the education of female children with vision impairment less important to their male siblings. Girls with vision impairment who manage to join schools fail to pursue largely because of teenage pregnancy, as they are vulnerable to sexual abuse. For fear of abuse and endangering themselves, the socialization process is restrictive and does not encourage their participation in matters concerning their current and future lives. 

The study also revealed employment opportunities for people with vision impairment for various reasons are very low in the labour market. In regard to marriage, it was identified that women with vision impairment are considered as asexual, unable to take on the home management and motherhood responsibilities and unable to equally participate in providing the household income. Finding a marriage partner for women with vision impairment is very difficult because of such perceived notions.

Conclusions:

It can be concluded that there are prevailing negative and positive attitudes towards people with vision impairment. This being the case, practical evidence indicates that negative attitudes significantly outweigh the positive ones. The findings clearly reflect that there are vivid indications of poor interpersonal relationships between the sighted and the visually impaired despite the close geographic proximity between the two groups. This signifies that the social integration aspect demands long-term interventions to bring about changes in attitudes.

Conversely, the respondents generally perceived visual impairment as a problem caused by accidents and disease unlike the age-old belief where victims are considered to be possessed by demons. This is one strong ground for directing future interventions and bringing about more positive attitudes and outlook.

Although quite a significant proportion of the sighted sample respondents perceive the visually impaired as useful members of society, when it comes to specific relations and opportunities like education, employment and marriage, the integration process and the observance or protection of the rights of the visually impaired is curtailed as the result of negative attitudes. This is clearly reflected especially in marriage relations and employment opportunities. Comparatively speaking, the findings indicate that the visually impaired girls and women are most affected in having access to these opportunities.

Recommendations:

A visually impaired person must face the challenges of negative attitudes instead of letting it flourish. They should boldly demonstrate their talents/skills to the public by releasing their potentials instead of shying away; otherwise it will result in negative attitudes within the community towards those disabled.

There is a need for tolerance and preparedness for stereotyped negative attitudes or comments for people with visual impairment.

People with visual impairment should accept their physical being and overcome the psychological inferiority complex in order to achieve their integration.

Demonstrate to the public that a visually impaired person can learn and be trained in any skill and perform any task that a non-disabled person can do provided a conducive environment is available to them.

Be ready to teach and learn from the public, raise the awareness of the community by demonstrating special personality attributes and courage to break the barriers.

The visually impaired have to actively participate in empowering ENAB in order to have strong voice.

In order to create an accessible educational and work environment and ensure equal opportunities for the people with vision impairment the enactment of laws and practical measures are essential in areas that hinder their integration and access to education, employment and marriage. 

Purpose: 

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitude of society towards female with disabilities in a wolayitta ethnic group. 

Methodology: 

A structured questionnaire focusing on attitude measuring was administered to a purposefully selected 216 male and 184 female from randomly selected six Kebles in two woredas of the wolayitta zone. Key informant interviews, focus group discussions and case studies were implemented. Tables, percentage, mean scores and chi-square were employed on the analysis of the data. 

Main findings: 

The finding indicated that the community in wolayta ethnic group has enough information and knowledge about disability and are aware of types and causes of a disability. Even if the community has information and knowledge about disability, they have misconceptions about and have negative attitudes towards female with disabilities. 

The results indicated stastically significant agreement differences of 0.0000 level between urban and rural dwellers in regard to their views of females with disabilities as useless and unproductive. Urban dwellers have access to mass-media. Other technological influences and interventions projects by organizations in urban areas are also aimed at presenting information that female with disabilities are productive and valuable to their community. 

But there were no significant differences between male and female respondents regarding the issue of female with disabilities place in society. The result also indicates that there were statistically significant disagreement differences among religion subgroups (at 0.0000 level) in favour of protestants regarding females with disabilities are productive and useful and it could be that religion has brought attitudinal changes towards humanity. 

In most cases, females with disabilities are isolated, neglected and segregated within the Wolayta ethnic group. It was concluded that the attitudes towards females with disabilities were negative. 

Conclusions: 

Generally, regarding the information, knowledge and awareness of the community in relation to disability in general and in particular females with disabilities, 97.3% of the subjects reported that they know what disability is, types of disabilities. Especially 89.8% of the total sample reported that they know about visual impairment, 80.3% of the total sample reported that they know about hearing impairment, 75.3% of the total sample reported that they know about motor disorders, 74% of the total sample reported that they know about leprosy and 72.8% of the total also reported that they know about language or communication disorders. Finally 55.8% of the total sample questioned reported that they knew about mental retardation and 51.5% of them reported that they know about behavioral disorders. 

The findings of both quantitative and qualitative studies show that the society have misconceptions towards females with disabilities; they are seen as potentially weak, unproductive and useless. So FWDs are segregated, isolated and neglected from public activities, still now communities hide FWDs at home so not to be seen by others.  

To this day, society devaluate females and believes in that a woman cannot hold any responsibility and cannot represent or stand for any position within the community or any public leading position. 

Marriage; the participants of the study mentioned that, it is harmful to an able-bodied person to marry a female with disabilities because his relatives, parents and friends would discriminate or segregate her. It was also a recurring quote by the participants that females with disabilities tend to marry men with the same type of disabilities. 

Recommendations: 

Make the public aware that all people with disabilities are productive, valuable and they can be trainable, educable like any other person. Teach the community that women with disabilities could be productive if they are provided with different opportunities; promote their well-being, to assist them to develop a high self esteem and when they are struggling for the attainment of equal opportunity and full participation in any social, economic, political, etc activities. 

Provide awareness education on the causes of disability and increases the participation of parents, government bodies and the community at large through information, education and counseling on prevention of the problem and assistance that should be provided to women with disabilities. Create awareness within society and keep up the psychological well being of women with disabilities by building abilities, rights, skills and moral security. 

Implement and make practical laws and policies endorsed by government regarding people with disabilities and women. 

Organize the associations of people with disabilities to encourage and support them to realize their objectives that might bring about attitude change towards people with disabilities. 
Create work opportunities, open projects and vocational training centers to ensure that females with disabilities are productive. Implement the socio-economic rehabilitation projects that provide the opportunities for women and girls with disabilities. 

Ø The purpose of this handbook is to provide guidelines and best practices for the planning, implementation and maintenance of successful home-based telework arrangements involving workers with disabilities. Two broad goals are underlined in this handbook. People with disabilities who want to work at home for reasons unrelated to their disabilities should have the same access to opportunities as those provided for people without disabilities. Furthermore, people with disabilities should also have additional access to home- based tele-work if they see working at home as an appropriate and effective way of accommodating to the disabilities and obstacles that they experience.

 Ø This handbook gives suggestions on how to provide home-based work for people with disabilities who want or need to work at home. Working at home is an attractive opportunity for some people with disabilities, but it is not a broad solution to the employment barriers encountered by them in Canada or anywhere else. For the people with disabilities who want or need to work in their homes, home-based work can be an effective way of accommodating disability.