Contextualizing disability within the Czech republic: between invisibility and inclusion
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Full acceptance and low level of prejudice towards people with disabilities in the context of formal and non-formal relations is a necessary precondition for the successful inclusive process within all types of institutions (family, work, neighborhood). The Czech Republic is a country with specific history of processes of inclusion and exclusion – both were virtually unknown in the framework of education and within the public sphere for decades before 1990. Our paper aims to analyze the context of inclusive processes in the Czech Republic through researching attitudes of the general public towards people with disabilities to find out where on the road between their „invisibility“ and „inclusion“ we are. In our research, carried out in December 2011, we administered an adapted version of Bogardus scale of social distance to a representative sample of Czech population aged 15 to 65. The questions were aimed to provide information about three types of disabilities (Physical, Intellectual and Sensory). The analysis looked closely at the level of acceptance in educational settings and also at focus on generational comparison. Data showed that younger and more educated groups of population are more tolerant than older groups and groups with lower education. This has been found not only when considering the overall relation to people with disabilities, but also when focusing on acceptance of people with different disabilities in educational context. A person with a disability has been more often accepted as a schoolmate or child’s schoolmate by respondents with lower age and higher education. These statistically and practically significant differences could be assigned to socialization of young age cohorts in the democratic political system, after the end of the era of “invisibility“ and isolation of people with disabilities and start of processes leading towards inclusion and community participation in all spheres of social life. |
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