scholarly journals Models of Disability and Human Rights: Informing the Improvement of Built Environment Accessibility for People with Disability at Neighborhood Scale?

Laws ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Models Of Disability ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
Neighborhood Scale

scholarly journals Accessing the Neighbourhood: Built Environment Performance for People with Disability

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Research Participation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Models Of Disability ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
Neighbourhood Scale ◽  
Environment Performance ◽  
Health And Well Being

In the face of rapid urbanisation, increasing diversity of the human condition, ageing populations, failing infrastructure, and mounting evidence that the built environment affects health and well-being, the existing built environment still fails to meet the needs of people with disability. Nevertheless, in something of a parallel universe, improving built environment ‘sustainability’ performance, via measurement, receives much contemporary attention, and analysing the built environment at micro-scale (buildings), meso-scale (neighbourhood) and macro-scale (city-wide) is undertaken from various multidisciplinary perspectives. But, although built environment performance is already measured in many ways, and community inclusion is considered essential for health and well-being, accessibility performance for people with disability, at neighbourhood scale, is rarely considered. The institutional and medical models of disability help explain the inaccessibility of the existing built environment. On the other hand, the social and human rights models of disability offer insight into improving the accessibility of the existing built environment for people with disability. However, ‘disability’ and ‘built environment’ tend not to mix. People with disability continue to experience lack of meaningful involvement in research, participation in decision-making, partnership equality, and direct influence over policy, with the built environment arena increasingly becoming a private-sector activity. The actors involved, however, have little understanding of either the accessibility needs of people with disability, or the inaccessibility, particularly at neighbourhood scale, of the existing built environment. It is in this context that this paper explores the design, planning and politics of an inaccessible built environment, concluding that assessing the built environment accessibility performance for people with disability, at neighbourhood scale, is an essential component in the process of built environment accessibility improvement. Requiring collaboration between the built environment and disability knowledge domains, a new tool measuring neighbourhood accessibility, the Universal Mobility Index (UMI), has emerged and is undergoing further development.

scholarly journals Disabled Independent Living: From the Perspectives of Built Environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-112
Author(s):  
Nurul Fadzila Zahari ◽  
◽  
Adi Irfan Che Ani ◽  
Robiah Abdul Rashid ◽  
Haslina Hashim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Independent Living ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Fundamental Freedoms ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
Neighbourhood Scale

In 2006, Malaysia has signed the Convention of Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD) and put oath to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities. Even with the advent of the UNCRPD, the existing built environment fails the neighbourhood accessibility needs of people with disability. Little is known about the extent of built environment inaccessibility, and an improved measure, at a neighbourhood scale, is required. This paper argues that built environment practitioners must recognize the disabling potency of current built environment practice. It argues that they need to engage directly with people with disabilities to improve understanding of accessibility needs.

The many faces of disability in evidence for policy and practice: embracing complexity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Rivas ◽  
Ikuko Tomomatsu ◽  
David Gough
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Deficit Model ◽  
Research Recruitment ◽  
Combined Application ◽  
Models Of Disability ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
The Many ◽  
Evidence For Policy ◽  
Existing Data

Background: This special issue examines the relationship between disability, evidence, and policy.Key points: Several themes cut across the included papers. Despite the development of models of disability that recognise its socially constructed nature, dis/ableism impedes the involvement of people with disability in evidence production and use. The resultant incomplete representations of disability are biased towards its deproblematisation. Existing data often homogenise the heterogeneous. Functioning and impairment categories are used for surveys, research recruitment and policy enactments, that exclude many. Existing data may crudely evidence some systematic inequalities, but the successful and appropriate development and enactment of disability policies requires more contextual data. Categories and labels drawn from a deficit model affect social constructions of identity, and have been used socially and politically to justify the disenfranchisement of people with disability. Well rehearsed within welfare systems, this results in disempowered and devalued objects of policy, and, as described in one Brazilian paper, the systematic breakup of indigenous families. Several studies show the dangers of policy developed without evidence and impact assessments from and with the intended beneficiaries.Conclusions and implications: There is a need to mitigate barriers to inclusive participation, to enable people with disability to collaborate as equals with other policy actors. The combined application of different policy models and ontologies, currently in tension, might better harness their respective strengths and encourage greater transparency and deliberation regarding the flaws inherent in each. Learning should be shared across minority groups.

Habilitative Health and Disability

2018 ◽  
pp. 62-81
Author(s):  
Lawrence C. Becker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Behavioral Functioning ◽  
Social Health ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Health It ◽  
Social Models ◽  
Individual Health ◽  
Models Of Disability ◽  
Complete Health

This chapter introduces and defines the concept of habilitative health as the ability to succeed at three types of tasks necessary for human survival and thriving: self-habilitation, habilitation of others, and habilitation of the physical and social environment in which one lives. Habilitative health is an aspect of the complete health scale, ranging from worst to best health in terms of physiological, intellectual, psychological, and behavioral functioning. The argument here is that the nature and gravity of disabilities generally can best be understood in terms of a lack of habilitative health in specified ranges of physical and social environments. This eliminates many differences between the medical and social models of disability and unifies discussions of individual health with discussions of public or social health. It also recasts the discussion of human rights to healthcare as a discussion of human duties of care to self, others, and the habitable world.

scholarly journals Building communities of trust: Challenges for disability

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander M. Phiri
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Research ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Development Research ◽  
Research Partnerships ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Disability Research

This article asks questions about power and partnership in disability research in Africa. Research has been located too much in one type of organisation or another and not sufficiently in the interaction between a range of legitimate stakeholders. Across Africa and Europe, and government and civil society dialogues, the African development research agenda must be owned by Africans. Fully inclusive national and international research partnerships are crucial, but they must be driven from Africa. European constructions of and interventions concerning people with disability have often been inhumane, seeking to eliminate them from society. African cultures have also stigmatised people with disability. I call for a new African-driven research agenda that promotes the human rights of people with disability, and has people with disability not only participating in this research, but directing it. The Southern African Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD) Research Programme (SRP) is breaking new ground in this regard by allowing ‘the researched’ to become ‘the researcher’.

The effects of roadway and built environment characteristics on pedestrian fatality risk: A national assessment at the neighborhood scale

2018 ◽  
Vol 121 ◽  
pp. 166-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore J. Mansfield ◽  
Dana Peck ◽  
Daniel Morgan ◽  
Barbara McCann ◽  
Paul Teicher
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
National Assessment ◽  
Fatality Risk ◽  
Neighborhood Scale

scholarly journals Disability, Education and Development Perspectives from Tokelau

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kathryn Meredith
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
Education And Development ◽  
Disability Education ◽  
People With Impairments

<p>This thesis is concerned with the issue of people with disability accessing education. The contemporary international dialogue about how best to include people with disability in education recommends developing regular education systems to cater for the full diverse range of learners' needs and abilities. This approach is part of an Inclusive Education philosophy and is designed as a response to all populations who experience exclusion from education, including people with disability. By examining people's opinions, experiences, attitudes, aspirations, perceptions, knowledge, and understanding about disability, education and development, this thesis aims to identify the challenges of including people with disability in education and society in the context of a small Pacific Island developng nation, and the ways in which these challenges can be addressed. In doing so, it contributes to the growing body of literature which raises awareness of the experiences of exclusion faced by people with impairments; as well as the literature exploring disability issues from a social and rights-based perspective in developing countries. Semi-formal interviews were conducted with ten participants from Tokelau, New Zealand and Samoa to garner traditional, modern and personal perspectives about disability, education and development. The main findings of the research are that although disability is still predominantly understood within a medical, religious or deficit-model paradigm in Tokelau, some historical attitudinal barriers to inclusion may be shifting. This is occurring as people become better informed about disability through education, personal experiences and awareness of the causes of disability. Consequently, there is some indication that the younger generation are less likely to stigmatise the cause of disability because of their exposure to scientific explanations and increased familiarity and comfort with human rights concepts. People in Tokelau called for raising public awareness about disability causes and issues. Another finding of the research is that although there is a perception from some that the rhetoric of human rights is demanding and antithetical to the culture, responsibility is more easily accepted because it is considered in line with traditional communal values and social systems of support like inati (sharing of resources). Terminology aside, the concepts involved in Inclusive Education reflect traditional Tokelauan beliefs about treating people equally and with fakaaloalo (respect), alofa (love) and poupouaki (support). Although the inclusion of disability issues into the international human rights framework through the UN 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is not yet widely known in Tokelau, human rights concepts are beginning to be introduced and understood at the community level, and they are seen in the constitutional documents and education policies of Tokelau. Support and partnership from New Zealand is welcomed in enabling locally developed inclusive services in Tokelau. Overall, the research suggested that inclusive philosophies and approaches within the education system in Tokelau are emerging, and that it is an opportune time to develop capacity and services for ensuring that people with impairments can access education. Despite material and human resourcing difficulties, there is a general willingness to include people with impairments in society and a strong preference for a collaborative community wide approach.</p>

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