Accessibility
The accessibility in African countries vary greatly due to differences in economics. But overall, the accessibility for the continent is fairly below standards compared to countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. There have been significant amounts of changes made in the South African government regarding advocacy for people with disabilities. However, there is still room for improvement. In opposition to South Africa, many other countries are struggling to support themselves in general without having to invest money in disability related components. These countries are struggling to supply normal health care and job opportunities for individuals without disabilities. So it is safe to say that they are focused on handling those issues before moving on to others.
The best approach for struggling countries would be to select a few disability components that would improve accessibility the greatest but also cost the least. According to the Independent Living Institute, this would include things adding ramps, changing toilet cubicles, size of elevators and doorways, and removing hazards to blind people. Restructuring buildings entirely would be fairly expensive, so adding small components like wooden ramps would be the best option.
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| From Youth Village Kenya |
A man from Japan with a spinal cord injury that requires him to use a wheelchair, Hideto Kijima, made a website that reviews a multitude of countries for: hotels, accessibility, barber shops, and coca-cola. Some of his trips were fairly recent so his reports haven't changed much. He found that the most accessible places for someone in a wheelchair were the tourist areas like hotels and airports. Most of them had proper bathrooms, ramps, and even sometimes transportation for those who are immobile. However, he found that Malawi, Cameroon, Mozambique, Eritrea, Guinea, Liberia, Sudan and Mauritania had almost no accessibility. He saw one, maybe two, wide bathrooms, struggled to travel around on the dirt roads and sometimes couldn't enter buildings because of the lack in ramps. Although, in all of his logs of each country, he explained that no matter the accessibility or lack there of, people were very kind to him and always offered help. Especially in Senegal where he said there was a lot of others in wheelchairs so they understood his struggles.
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| From Voice of America Blogs |
Universal Design & Assistive Technology
Universal design is meant to make all amenities of infrastructure accessible for everyone, people with physical or mental disabilities, mothers with strollers, and children. This idea is being widely implemented throughout the United States, but only because we have the luxury of doing so. As I mentioned before, South Africa is the most developed country in the continent of Africa. They have implemented programs to advocate for those with disabilities. A organization, Universal Design Africa has completed projects in South Africa at universities and other institutions, in addition to reforming some modes of transportation. There isn't any type of universal design being implemented in any other countries because most are still trying to make accessible bathrooms and doorways.
Assistive technologies consist of hearing aids, wheelchairs, prosthetics, eyeglasses etc. UNICEF reports that, "Studies in Malawi and Namibia indicate that more than 80% of those who need assistive technology do not have it." Similar to universal design, the majority of assertive technologies are in South Africa. According to IT News Africa, in 2016, Google awarded a little over $700,000 to the South African Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD) to help people of sub-saharan Africa that are disabled. Their primary goal was to map areas were there were significant amounts of accessibly and assistive technologies vs areas with little to none. This would allow SAFOD to focus on areas that needed the most changes.
There is one program, The SWING Project, that is aiming to increase access to education centers and universities by increasing the prevalence of assistive technologies in Northern Africa. This project previously existed in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean region. Their primary focus is on one institution in Egypt and two in Morocco. One drawback of this project is that they are skipping to the top of the education chain and starting with college. Where in many other African countries, children are struggling to make it to elementary level classes.
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| From Pinterest |
Healthcare
General healthcare is still in the works for many African countries, let alone mental health care. The Rand Corporation found that in African countries, "75 percent of people who suffer from mental illness do not have easy access to the mental health care they need." However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan. Their plan includes updating current mental health policies and laws, then slowly integrating better systems into the communities. Britain and the WHO are partnering up with African governments from Uganda, Ethiopia, Nepal and South Africa to set up pilot programs in order to gage the possible outcomes of these programs.
They also are actively implementing programs to attempt to erase the stigma behind mental illnesses. In low income countries, people with known mental illnesses have their legs chained together, to a tree or to beds in their homes. The WHO has created the Chain-Free Initiative which works against these actions in homes, hospitals and the environment as a whole. No progress can be made if members of these counties don't believe in the change.
They also are actively implementing programs to attempt to erase the stigma behind mental illnesses. In low income countries, people with known mental illnesses have their legs chained together, to a tree or to beds in their homes. The WHO has created the Chain-Free Initiative which works against these actions in homes, hospitals and the environment as a whole. No progress can be made if members of these counties don't believe in the change.
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| From The New York Times |
Accessibility in South Africa. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.independentliving.org/cib/cibharare5.html
Borg, J., Berman-Bieler, R., Khasnabis, C., Mitra, G., Myhill, W. N., & Raja, D. S. (n.d.). A Discusion Paper. Assistive Technology for Children with Disabilities: Creating Opportunities for Education, Inclusion and Participation,6-29. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/disabilities/files/Assistive-Tech-Web.pdf.
Eastern Mediterranean Region. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.emro.who.int/mental-health/chain-free-initiative/
Google awards R10 Million grant to African organisation. (2016, April 19). Retrieved from http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2016/04/google-awards-r10m-grant-to-african-organisation/
Kijima, H. (n.d.). Travel for All. Retrieved from http://www.kijikiji.com/english/access/africa.htm
W., & A., M. (2015, March 10). Mental Health Care in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/blog/2015/03/mental-healthcare-in-sub-saharan-africa-challenges.html
The role of assistive technology in renegotiating the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education in North Africa. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2018.1437721?journalCode=cshe20
Universal Design Africa - Accessible by Design. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://udafrica.com/
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