Inclusive Education --The answer to disability

"The only disability in life is a bad attitude"- said author, Scoot Hamilton.CACR and ADAPT together want to sensitize people about disability and make the city more disabled friendly.

CACR has partnered with ADAPT (Abled Disabled All People Together).ADAPT was formerly known as 'The Spastic Society Of India' . The CEO and Trustee of ADAPT has written about their future and current initiatives with CACR.

CACR was instrumental to help ADAPT to plan and initiate the 'sensitization program' for the Municipal school Principals of Mumbai, India.

Over to Varsha "

Education and Accessibility

The Right to Education Act (RTE) makes it mandatory for schools to take in children with disabilities. As a result, the government programmes of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) are now including children with special needs.

There are however challenges, the main one being access. Access does not pertain only to architectural barriers that prevent persons from disability from participating in mainstream life. It also refers to access to education, to the curriculum, to employment.

The Persons with Disability Act mandates that the State create a barrier free environment for person with disabilities and make special provision of the integration of persons with disabilities into the social mainstream. These include:

1. ramps in public buildings;
2. adaptation of toilets for wheel chair users;
3. braille symbols and auditory signals in elevators or lifts;
4. ramps in hospitals, primary health centers and other medical care and rehabilitation institutions.

On the other hand, regular teachers and other professionals are not trained in inclusive education. Since the ‘How’ of inclusion has still not been worked out, teachers find it difficult to deal with differences in the classroom. The Training and Pedagogy department of ADAPT, set up by Founder Chairperson, Dr. Mithu Alur in 1978 as there were no trained professionals to teach children with multiple disabilities, has been conducting training programme in the field of education, disability, inclusion in education and the community for various stake holders and has trained over two thousand teachers, Principals, Master Trainers, therapists and parents.

We have trained regular teachers from schools under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in inclusive education. Programmes have also been held for the Municipal Corporations of Greater Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan, Dombivali and Meera Bhayender.

We are therefore very happy to partner the H West Federation and the Citizens Association for Child Rights-CACR to spread awareness about inclusive education and make the H-West Ward a ‘disabled-friendly ward’.  

Future Plans

A half day sensitization programme for the Principals of 1150 schools run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is planned in April 2014. This we hope is the first step to including children with disabilities into their schools so that the Right to Education can be implemented and no child is left out of school.

Simultaneously, we hope to initiate the campaign for equal access undertaken by The ADAPT Rights Group (ARG), set up by Malini Chib, Trustee, Acting CEO, disabled advocate and author, ‘One little Finger’ entitled ‘Mumbai Rising for Disability Access: We the People Too’

A group of young persons with and without disability will now conduct access audits of public buildings along with students of architecture and advise on the ways in which they may be made more accessible to those with physical disabilities or limitations.

A beginning was made at the MUST Run when establishments in Bandra that had incorporated ramps at their entrances were felicitated. Unfortunately very few turned up to accept this acknowledgement but we are hopeful that as awareness on this spreads, we will have many more supporters.

Once again, this is an appeal to all to join us in our campaign of making first H Ward and then all of Mumbai accessible. "

Varsha_ADAPT