La Jornada – Unesco: online classes hinder education for the disabled

People with disabilities “have many difficulties accessing quality education,” and the Covid-19 pandemic put greater barriers to this sector by bringing classes to virtuality, experts from the United Nations Educational Organization considered, Science and Culture (Unesco) in the presentation of the Let’s Navigate for Inclusion campaign.

On a global scale, one billion people, that is, one in eight, experience a disability and in Latin America and the Caribbean this sector represents 13 percent, said Indira Salazar, Communication and Information Officer of the UNESCO office in Quito, Ecuador.

He added that given “the demanding context of Covid-19, innovative responses to emerging demands are required” and that is why Unesco launched the platform https://es.unesco.org/naveguemosporlainclusion, which is aimed at governments, educational institutions, teachers and evaluating bodies. The site contains a series of essential measures and follow-up processes to improve education for people with disabilities, as well as tools that can be implemented in their educational plans ”.

Fréderic Vacheron, Unesco representative in Mexico, explained that in Latin America and the Caribbean 8 million children under 14 years of age live with disabilities and due to the barriers “seven out of 10 children with disabilities cannot attend school.”

He highlighted that it is 15 years since the convention for the rights of persons with disabilities, which has been in force since 2008, and although it is an “ambitious instrument, it is the first of the human rights of the 21st century, the progress and the inclusion policies are slow ”.

Both specialists considered that the pandemic could increase school dropout among students with disabilities. Currently, according to Inegi, in Mexico “46 percent” of people with disabilities who should be in school are not. According to the group Yo Also: Disability with all its letters, with the coronavirus there could be up to “30 percent more dropouts” than usual in this sector.

UNESCO stressed that online classes can be a problem for infants with disabilities. For example, for those with motor limitations, “traditional mice and keyboards complicate their interaction”; for those with “speech difficulties, interactive sessions do not always consider their needs to communicate” with their peers, and for those with “visual disabilities, traditional printed materials are not always accessible to them”, among other problems.

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