Ensuring Disability Inclusion in Disasters & Post COVID-19

One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, have a disability, and the prevalence of disabilities is higher in developing nations. In general, people with disabilities are more likely than people without disabilities to experience negative socioeconomic outcomes, such as lower levels of education, poorer health outcomes, lower employment rates, and higher rates of poverty, are more likely to affect people with disabilities.

Through malnutrition, insufficient access to healthcare and education, hazardous working conditions, a polluted environment, and a lack of access to clean water and sanitary facilities, poverty may increase the risk of disability. Through limited employment and educational opportunities, lower pay, and higher costs of living with a disability, disability may also increase the risk of poverty.

Inaccessible physical environments and modes of transportation, a lack of assistive devices and technologies, unadapted communication channels, service delivery gaps, and discriminatory stigma and prejudice in society are all obstacles to the full social and economic inclusion of people with disabilities. Disability-inclusive development is becoming more widely known.

 

Disability Inclusion: Post COVID-19

The full integration of people with disabilities into society is encouraged by the 185 countries that have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The importance of international development in addressing the rights of people with disabilities is specifically mentioned in the CRPD.

Disability cannot be an excuse or criterion for denial of access to development programming and the realization of human rights, according to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework includes six additional targets on people in vulnerable situations, which also include people with disabilities, and seven targets that specifically mention people with disabilities.

The COVID-19’s far-reaching effects continue to have an impact on people with disabilities, including in the areas of health, education, and transportation concerns. Many people with disabilities have additional, underlying health needs, which makes them particularly susceptible to experiencing severe COVID-19 symptoms if they contract it.

Because information about the disease, including the symptoms and prevention, is not frequently provided in accessible formats like print materials in Braille, sign language interpretation, captions, audio provision, and graphics, people with disabilities were also at increased risk of contracting COVID-19.

Children with disabilities lost access to fundamental services like meal programs, assistive technologies, resource personnel, recreation programs, extracurricular activities, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs as a result of widespread school closures. In addition to widening the gap between students in terms of access to technology, electricity, and the internet, COVID-19 caused a sudden change in the role of the parent or caregiver, who now serves as both their teachers and their students’ parents.

 

Disability Inclusion: Post Disasters

Disasters can have devastating effects. It might change your life, depending on where you are, who you are, and what you have. No different is the COVID-19 crisis. The most vulnerable and marginalized groups, who do not have access to basic health, education, and sanitation services, are disproportionately affected. The recovery is also affected by this.

Most people fare much worse than those who have access to resources, social networks, support networks, and communities. Recovery becomes more difficult the more excluded a person is, and people with disabilities frequently fall into this category.

Only 10% of people with disabilities believe their local government has emergency, disaster management, or risk reduction plans that address their needs, according to an online survey conducted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDDR), and only 20.6% said they could independently evacuate immediately without difficulty in the event of a sudden disaster.

Their plight has received particular attention as a result of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 and other recent emergency situations. The needs of people with disabilities are frequently not taken into account in post-disaster recovery efforts. This is a lost chance to create a community that is inclusive, accessible, and disaster-resistant. We could lessen these disproportionate risks if we considered the needs of people with disabilities.

1. ensuring accessible and resilient infrastructure (through barrier-free construction and land use planning).
2. establishing initiatives to actively hire people with disabilities, such as by including them in the planning and execution of recovery and reconstruction.
3. ensuring that healthcare is accessible to people with disabilities before and after a disaster by enrolling all schoolchildren in training programs that will help them respond to disasters, and communicating hazard exposure and risk information in a way that can be understood and acted upon (for example, sign language interpretation and plain language)

Older people, those who are ill or have been injured, pregnant women, and some speakers of indigenous and non-native languages all benefit from increased accessibility before and after a disaster. This is becoming more crucial as new vulnerable populations are revealed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.