Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So, when I talk about what we've learned and
what we're doing, I want to be clear that we have not done this from necessarily an
evidence research base but mostly anecdotal.
But what we did learn was that at least in the communities that we visited, this was
in Ecuador, that mostly the access were for people with blindness, that primary focus
of \ was for people with physical disabilities around mobility, that there were very few
strategies for people with developmental or cognitive challenges, that children with disabilities
attended the schools but without many supportive services or accommodations.
Yes, you can come to school and you have every right to be a part of the classroom, but there
were not supportive services to support to aid the student to be independent or to
have access to the curriculum. We met with a large group in the Deaf
community. We found that many attended schools, but remained illiterate when they left the
school environment. That most disabilityrelated organizations
that we met with had not met other organizations, so they had very little ability for networking.
And that many organizations, specifically
disabilityrelated organizations and the schools supporting communities, were mostly located
in inaccessible settings. So, 2006, having followed what we had witnessed
especially in a region of Ecuador called Tungurahua
It's near the town of Ambato (phonetic) which is south of Quito, about two hours south of
Quito. \ We started to establish relationships with
the disability communities there and we actually gathered about ten different organizations
together for a meeting and they had not met each other before.
And I'm saying they were within like a 20mile radius of each other.
So this opportunity showed us that there was a hunger for the exchange of information,
but they hadn't really had some way to come together before.
So, what we did was that we met with them and we made a plan for our return. I have
to say that we were also met with crossed arms and "so, what do you have to offer us?"
Because so many times, people come from the United States and other industrialized countries
and go there, say they want to help, pat themselves on the back, and then they go off and have
their life. \ What impressed the people where we went was
that we actually came back. And that actually almost all of the volunteers who came the
first time came the second time. And then it's continued to be much of the same.
So, they've begun to build trust. So, yes, we've begun to have the trust of
the organizations. We've had an increase of awareness of how
the communities's existing programs and services work.
We've had an increased awareness of the concerns the families have, teachers, therapists, and
the adults with disabilities have in their communities around accessibility.
We've had an increased awareness in the types of information and resources that are commonly
available or lacking in the communities.
We've had an increase in the I'm sorry, a better understanding of the unique needs
in the communities that are culturally appropriate.
So, in our first goal to be increase\'a0 to increase awareness, I want to just define
our goal. It's to expose communities in developing countries to the benefits of assistive technology
that can lead to a sustainable increase in the number of people with disabilities participating
in education, employment, and independent living.
So, our progress around that goal, 2007 to present, we started having exchanges with
communities, what we call information and cultural exchanges. And in those exchanges
we learned together collaboratively what would be meaningful in these communities.
We began to have a model of what this looks like.
So, we've actually since the time have had 22 cultural and information exchanges with
disabilityrelated organizations and schools.
We learned about what programs and services are there and they also learn from us the
kinds of things that we may be able to help bring into the community and they make choices
about what they'd like to consider to integrate.
One of the things that popped out of that was what we call adaptation libraries.
We would help each other learn about how to create adaptations made from local materials.
We would not bring things from here but we would basically go to the local markets, gather
materials, and start creating hand splints and mouth sticks and head wands and a wide
variety of things. And when the organizations would have
invite people in the community to come to the workshops and we would hold these workshops,
and then they would have all these adaptations.
The one year we came back and the quite a number of the adaptations were gone. We
were like: Oh, okay. Because we were thinking of them like models to replicate. Somebody
would come and see something and then they would create it for themselves and maybe kind
of customize it. Well, they said: Well, there was this one
head wand we had made, a very simple head wand we had made from a hat with a brim and
the stick coming from it. Well, it worked really well for this one guy who could use
it for his work, and it worked so well for him, they gave it to him. \
Well we thought that was great. But then there was no model left for anyone
else to see it and to learn from it or to replicate it.
So, we decided together that it would be good to establish these adaptations libraries where
we could have displays of all the various types of adaptations that have been created
in the community and so we've to date established three of those in different areas and we're
currently partnering with the university in Ibarra, it's the northern part of Ecuador,
to establish an adaptation library there, where their students and the community can
come in and learn from what's there. Our second goal to increase availability is to collaborate
with the communities to provide assistive technology that's culturally sustainable and
appropriate. Our progress around that is that we've actually
created a costeffective sustainable model for replicating adaptations.
And that is by using materials in the local markets.
And that we train parents, teachers, therapists, and adults with disabilities, to provide workshops
to their own communities. The third goal that we've had is the increasing
capacity. And this is to provide appropriate training and resources that enable communities
new to assistive technology to become increasingly
knowledgeable about its benefits and independent
in its development and use. To do this, one of the wonderful things that
came out of our collaborations was a visual guide, and I'm holding up a guide here that
is basically an 81/2 by 11 spiralbound guide that is available on line to download.
I'll leave a copy out on the table where people can take a look at it, but you're welcome
to go to our Web site and download a copy.
We've created these printed guides for the areas in the world where there's it's
hard to get to the Internet or expensive to downloading and print it out.
But basically what this guide is, is a collection of the adaptations that we created and in
order to cross cultural and language barriers, we created it in picturebased format.
So that I'm showing a picture here of the guide and a sample page where we show the
end result of the adaptations, very simple. In this case it's just a long handled reacher
where it is on a stick with the hook on the end, something to soften the end tight around
the end and that somebody could actually use it as a reacher to hang their clothes or to
reach from a wheelchair to the ground and pick something up, that kind of thing.