How does community inclusion initiative support people with a disability?

Provide at least three best practise examples of community inclusion for people with a disability.

Community Outreach and Education: Social work students can engage in community outreach programs to raise awareness about the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities in shopping malls. They can collaborate with local disability organizations and conduct educational workshops to promote empathy, understanding, and support for accessibility initiatives. These workshops can create a positive impact by fostering a more inclusive and accepting community.

Week 11 explores community psychology approaches to issues of disability. Historically, understandings of disability have located deficiency and limitations within the individual instead of examining contextual, social and cultural barriers to inclusion, freedom of movement and well-being. The participatory and collaborative practices of community psychology can help those with disabilities engage with, inform, and transform structures and systems so that these barriers (and their assumptions) can be dismantled.

Disability is a complicated subject that is constantly evolving. There are many different types of disability, both visible and invisible. In addition, there are many different types of social barriers for the disabled population, especially in the workplace. Because of these barriers, disabled people are disproportionately unemployed and companies are losing out on a valuable demographic of people. In order for employers to reap the full benefits of employing people with disabilities, it is important that they understand how to be inclusive and accommodating of all people, regardless of ability. Many people may not be inclined to share with their employer that they have a disability, which is why it is important for employers to make their workplace as accommodating as possible without a specific request. Our research suggests that there are many reasons why a person may not want to share their disability with their employer, including on the intraindividual, interpersonal, organisational and societal levels. The intraindividual level has to do with the individual’s personal understanding, or lack thereof, their disability. The interpersonal level is related to how a disabled individual has been and is treated by others. It is on this level that the difference between people with visible disabilities and those with invisible disabilities may have differing experiences and strategies for identifying in the workplace. The organisational level is about how the overall company culture approaches disability. And finally, the societal level is how disability is viewed by society as a whole (Santuzzi, 2016). Employers can influence both the organisational level and the interpersonal level, by creating an accommodating and inclusive company culture. By creating a place in which employees can advocate for their needs, ask for help, and openly discuss any issues, employers will be creating an environment in which a disabled person is not persecuted or ridiculed for needing an accommodation.We also researched how employers feel about the employment of disabled people. Our research shows that employers have misguided conceptions of disability in general. As a result there is a lack of knowledge on the disabled employees’ needs and how to accommodate someone with a disability (Vornholt et al., 2017). In addition, employers seem to have a skewed idea about the cost of employing a person with a disability. For example, they may not realise that costs for accommodations, such as specialised equipment or workplace modification are often one-time things (Graffam et al., 2002). Additionally, employers may not need to pay for such accommodations if they utilise JobAccess and its resources. Short learning videos can be an effective way to help employers have a better understanding of what disability is, as well as how they can accommodate their employees’ needs. However, there is the issue of how to keep viewers engaged. We researched both video length and interactivity in order to maximise engagement. Videos that are under two minutes receive the most engagement, and each minute over two has a drop off of engagement until the video length reaches six minutes. Between six and twelve minutes there is a steady level of engagement, and after twelve minutes the engagement levels begin to drop more, as seen in the table below (Fisherman, 2016). According to a study by Rachel Ellis and Mark Childs (2006), trainees from SMEs concluded that interactivity is an important part of the effectiveness of a video training model. Interactivity encourages viewers to pay attention to the information and then act on what they have learned. In addition, interactive media allows the participant to adapt the information to adhere to their cognitive needs. These adaptations can include pausing, replaying, slowing down, or speeding up the video. As a result the participants are able to ingest the information in a way that works best for them, leading to more efficient means of understanding (Schwan & Riempp, 2004).

Which of the following are barriers to participation for people with disability. Stigma caused by stereotyping and negative mindsets of other people.Assistive technology to help people participateCommunication difficultiesAn inaccessible physical environment