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A glimpse into smartphone screen reader use among blind teenagers in rural Nepal

SANKHI, Prakash
SANDNES, Frode Eika
2020

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Purpose

Access to appropriate assistive technology is a challenge worldwide and especially in low GDP-per-capita countries. Nepal is one example of a country with several coinciding challenges: some claim having a high rate of blindness in the general population, a low-GDP-per capita and some studies claim it has a low literacy rate, especially in rural areas. Without appropriate assistive technology, some disabled youth may not get full access to education.

 

Methods

To gain insight into assistive technology use in rural Nepal, five blind teenagers in a mixed secondary school with disabled and non-disabled students in rural Nepal were interviewed about their daily smartphone use.

 

Results

The results show that all the participants used screen readers on donated smartphones. None of the participants had received formal training in using smartphone screen readers and therefore lacked knowledge about basic and essential operational aspects of the devices as well as misguided expectations about the technology.

 

Conclusions

One implication of the findings is that smartphone accessibility features training material needs to be made easily available to schools and all disabled youth worldwide, as smartphones are increasingly becoming available in low-income remote regions with low literacy rates. The built-in accessibility features of smartphones promise disabled youth a non-stigmatizing platform for social participation and access to the information society.

Innovate for Inclusion. Four cases of application of the social innovation lab methodology to enhance disability inclusion in mainstream settings

MAARSKE, Anneke
NEDERVEEN, Matthijs
BAART, Judith
2019

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This publication reflects back on four co-design processes undertaken by Light for the World’s Disability Inclusion Lab during the past few years. These different journeys in solution development have demonstrated the power of this methodology to create genuine inclusion in livelihood programming while striving to empower persons with disabilities to achieve economic success. In this publication the social innovation lab methodology is described as a unique approach to inclusive programming, highlighting four cases: The Livelihood Improvement Challenge in Uganda, the lab in the EmployAble programme in Ethiopia, the AgriLab in Cambodia, and the InBusiness pilot in Kenya. Lessons learnt are described.

Making HIV/AIDS our problem : young people and the development challenge in South Africa

KELLY, K
et al
March 2002

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During 2001 Save the Children commissioned a study to explore approaches to engaging youth response to HIV/AIDS. This involved the development of two action research interventions in very different communities, one in a rural community in the Eastern Cape, and the other at a school for the blind. The case studies chosen for the report were selected because they involve young people who have been particularly overlooked in HIV prevention responses, namely disabled young people and young people in rural areas. The projects in these communities set out to explore the capacity of young people to respond to AIDS, and how contextual factors mediate response at individual and community levels

A visible form of charity

KALE, Rajendra
1994

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This article is in response to a BBC documentary and the author suggests that health camps, which is one way of searching India' s rural patients, perhaps have different motives. The author suggests that most are done for charity and good will but they are only temporary and have inadequate follow-up

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