African Journal of Disability最新文献

Background: Youth with disabilities benefit by developing a skill set to help resolve any issues during their daily activities, including pursuits that lead to productive livelihoods. Acquiring leadership skills through leisure education programmes may be particularly effective for youth with disabilities to gain confidence in their leadership abilities.

Objectives: This study aimed to develop and reach a convergence of opinions on the preferred elements of a leisure education programme to promote leadership development among youth with physical disabilities.

Method: In this study, a three-round Delphi methodology was used. In the first round, 16 experts participated; in the second round, 14 experts participated; in the third round, nine participated. The first round of the Delphi method consisted of a qualitative questionnaire with open-ended questions, which assisted in developing guideline statements. The results from the first round informed the second and third rounds of the study. The guidelines were reviewed for consensus in subsequent rounds using a Likert scale format.

Results: In the final round (third round) of the Delphi method, the expert panel consisting of nine participants agreed that leadership development for youth with physical disabilities could be promoted by leisure, recreation, sports and activities of daily living.

Conclusion: These guidelines are essential in building resilience, empowerment and independence and can be seen as a positive contribution to communities with disabilities and young people with and without disabilities.

Contribution: These guidelines would build capacity and resilience among youth and equip them with the skills and abilities to initiate leisure programmes.

Background: Despite the inequality of resources in South Africa, learners in less-resourced schools and contexts can be resilient in the face of adversities.

Objectives: This study sought to investigate the impact of unequal resources in diverse contexts and schools on the resilience of learners with specific learning disability (SLD) in learners with special education needs (LSEN) schools in South Africa.

Method: A quantitative explanatory design was adopted and respondents were selected using a purposive sampling technique. A sample of 217 learners with SLDs across four LSEN schools located in diverse contexts in the Gauteng province, was selected. Data were collected using the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28). The SPSS software was used to analyse the data and one-way analysis of variance was used as a statistical technique.

Results: The results showed that resilience scores did not yield a significant statistical difference among learners from unequally resourced schools (p = 0.300 > 0.05) and diverse contexts (p = 0.173 > 0.05). These results suggest that resilience was the same across unequally resourced schools and diverse contexts; thus, all learners are capable of resilience regardless of these contexts.

Conclusion: Resilience of learners with SLD was not necessarily associated with the accessibility of resources in their contexts but with their agency in identifying them and using them meaningfully to combat their learning disabilities.

Contribution: The study contributes to the limited body of knowledge on the resilience of learners with SLD in unequally resourced contexts and LSEN schools.

Background: Many developed countries have made rapid strides in addressing issues related to dyslexia but in the developing countries like South Africa, it has not received adequate attention.

Objectives: The study therefore sought to evaluate awareness and knowledge of dyslexia among primary school teachers working in the government sector.

Methods: A phenomenological design was used and the study followed a mixed methods approach. The sample included 30 purposively selected primary school teachers. A questionnaire that consisted of true and false questions, closed-ended questions and open-ended questions was used to collect data. SPSS Version 22 and Excel Data Analyser 4 were used to analyse the quantitative data whereas the qualitative data was analysed thematically.

Results: The results indicated that the primary school teachers had a basic awareness and knowledge of dyslexia. Many of them were found to be using limited strategies in order to teach learners with dyslexia in their classrooms.

Conclusion: Based on the findings, recommendations such as early diagnoses through testing, parental involvement, conducive learning environment and teachers' professional development regarding dyslexia were made.

Background: South African tourism is evolving towards accommodating disabled people. Within the same standpoint, the country receives ageing tourists as a major international tourism market from the Global North, whose access needs are similar to disabled people. The present article explored 'blind and blank spots' in the extant literature on tourism-impairment disability as a synchronised field within academic research to provide theoretical insights and gaps for the disability-tourism research community to consider the composite concept instead of individualistic concepts.

Objective: The objectives were: (1) to track knowledge development from 1990 to 2018 using a narrative literature review approach and (2) to justify future research areas previously overlooked and understudied within a tourism-impairments-disability perspective in South Africa and beyond.

Method: A narrative literature review search strategy was used. Keywords and synonymous terms were used in electronic searches of Scopus, ScienceDirect, Sabinet Online, Emerald Insights Journals, African Journals and Google Scholar. The literature screening process used predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria for the data source. Content thematic analysis was adopted for the present study.

Results: The findings reflect a dearth of tourism-impairments-disability research in South Africa. Nonetheless, there is an observable pattern of slow growth in research after the 2000s. The extant literature is skewed towards the tourism supply side and sporadic on tourism demand (tourist experiences), education and skills development.

Conclusions: It is clear that the absence of scientifically developed knowledge on disability-impairments-tourism affects inclusive tourism growth. Therefore, the research community should consider disability-inclusive (accessible) tourism management, human resources and marketing practices and knowledge for teaching material in future research.

Contribution: The article mapped and provided insights that sets a research agenda for tourism research community to see the gaps in literature and/or knowledge for accessible tourism (disability-inclusive) tourism to be a game changer as found by UNWTO (2020) with low-resources setting. Thereby setting a tone towards call for more research that can uncover an economic narrative that shows a relationship between skills development, labour and consumer markets for the participation of diverse disabled persons as such is shown as understudied in Low-to-Middle income earning countries like South Africa.

Background: Head-loading, as a mode of transporting food, water and firewood, is a longstanding tradition assigned to female South African youth and has been associated with adverse health consequences.

Objectives: This study determined the impact of head-loading on the neuromusculoskeletal health and proprioception of female South African youth.

Method: This study comprised a counterbalanced, within-subject, single-factor experimental design which compared the changes that occurred when the same independent variable (head-loading) within two homogenous groups was measured in terms of the dependent variables (outcomes: neuromusculoskeletal pain and proprioception) at two time periods, before and after the introduction of the independent variable. A cohort of South African female youth (n = 100), aged 9-17 years, voluntarily partook in the study. The participants were randomly distributed into an experimental (n = 50) and a control (n = 50) group. The experimental group stood in a head-loaded state with their respective habitual head-load mass. Their proprioception measurements were compared during their unloaded versus loaded states, with the proprioceptive measurements including the total proprioception index, the anterior-posterior (front-back) index and the medial-lateral (side-to-side) index. Participants furthermore completed a head-loading health-related questionnaire.

Results: Participants had a mean age of 12.3 ± 2.5 years, body mass of 44.4 ± 13.7 kg, stature of 145 ± 10 cm and a head-load mass of 8.0 ± 2.5 kg. Participants had poorer medial-lateral proprioception during head-loading as compared to their unloaded state (1.4 ± 0.8 as compared to 1.6 ± 0.9) (p < 0.05). Most youth (96%) experienced neuromusculoskeletal pain in their cervical vertebrae (40.9%), shoulders (27.3%), lumbar vertebrae (10.7%), arms (8.3%), legs (8.3%), knees (1.9%), fingers (1.5%), toes (0.5%) and thoracic vertebrae (0.5%) (χ²: p < 0.05).

Conclusion: Head-loading adversely affects the medial-lateral proprioception and neuromusculoskeletal health of participants.

Contribution: The findings of this study confirms that head-loading produces musculoskeletal pain.

Background: Amputation is one of the leading causes of disabilities because of reduced mobility. Without assistive devices specifically prostheses, the quality of life of persons with lower limb amputation (PLLA) further deteriorates. Therefore, prostheses are fundamental to improving their quality of life.

Objectives: This study aimed to establish the number of PLLA with or without prosthesis and to determine their socio-economic profile in Rwanda.

Method: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in all sectors of Rwanda. As a result of coronavirus disease 2019 movement restrictions, data collection was carried out through telephone calls with participants to complete the questionnaires. Descriptive, inferential statistics and chi-square test were performed to analyse data using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 21.0.

Results: Of the 3026 participants identified countrywide, 68.8% were males and 60.3% of them did not have any prosthesis (p = 0.003). The majority (62.4%) of those who had prosthetic devices needed repair of their prostheses while 14.8% of participants reported that their prosthetic devices were completely broken and/or damaged (p = 0.604). Among the participants, 63.7% had no source of income and 66.7% had dependents (p ≤ 0.001).

Conclusion: The majority of the PLLA in Rwanda did not have prosthetic devices and even those with prostheses did not fully function and thus required repair. Therefore, it adversely affects their livelihood.

Contribution: The government should collaborate with stakeholders working with persons with disabilities and implement mechanisms and/or strategies to make prosthetic devices accessible and affordable.