Disability Debates
Amity University targets mentoring future Leaders & Higher Education Access
The overarching theme for this year’s (2024), International Day for Persons with Disabilities was ‘Amplifying the leadership of persons with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future.’ In sync with this, the Amity Institute of Rehabilitation Sciences (AIRS), Amity University, had organized a symposium, ‘Aspirations and Accommodation for Students with Disabilities to Equitably Access Higher Education.’
The event was held on December 5. The PwD Day is observed on December 3 every year, however programs are held through the month to create awareness, present achievements and draw policy gaze for transformational strategies and opportunities.
My talk & Excerpts of what other panelists said:
Recently at the Jahanpanah Petrol Pump in South Delhi, I met a Hearing Impaired attendant, who was filling up cars with a small white display board that he would hand out to commuters and gesture them to tick their preferences. It had sections marked in English about the fuel type, quantity and payment mode. All you had to do was tick your boxes and he would fulfill the order. He rendered the service attentively and with a smile.
Seeing him at work, I thought, this youngster is a leader at his workplace. And if he had got his life chances, he could have made it to the University.
The reason I am narrating this incident is that both - this year’s theme as well as the symposium topic – tell us that leadership presupposes capacity building because the efflorescence of leadership cannot happen without a systemic and systematic preparation.
The nub of government policy in recent years has been that those who are marginalized or those sections that have vulnerabilities or have faced historical discrimination come on the policy radar and get opportunities through government interventions. Thus we see mandatory CSR obligations on companies, robust programs like Digital India carrying digitization networks to remote locations with difficult terrain and scant population. Access to All is the operative dynamics that we see in diverse settings.
Budget cut back
However in the Disability sector, recently we have seen some disturbing news. We have had the Karnataka government cut back the budget for disability services by 80 per cent. This week Deccan Herald ran a very good story on how Inclusion is not possible without data. I am sharing the link here: www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/opinion/inclusion-is-not-possible-without-data-3302353
Data Deficit
In the context of Autism, data deficit is the rule. It is a travesty that when anyone asks about autism in India we report the CDC data - which is the US prevalence. Or some such fog which is totally an under reporting, anecdotal evidence bears it out. Pediatric data is highly inefficient hence we see such statistical vacuum. And without statistical significance, it is very difficult for the affected population to receive policy focus on a sustained basis. According to Dr. Indumathi Rao, Regional Adviser, CBR Network, South Asia, “Trinetra 2.0 has an amazing technology which helps in screening to development of district block- wise rehab support roadmaps for all districts in India…but there is need for political will.” Dr Rao who has worked extensively for decades in the disability sector, says, “the software costs only Rs 2000/local body/school to be spent once a year.” The limitation is therefore in the realm of administrative priorities and processes.
For many years now, some of us have been campaigning for the need of Spectrum data from block, district and cities to plan educational capacities and rehab roadmaps into adulthood including employability and care supports.
Autism: 5 Subsets for College Readiness
The following 5 Subsets of Facts demonstrates what we are doing to equip our students for higher education access, notably College readiness for degree and professional courses; it also dwells on Public Policy interventions that we are canvassing for and a forum like this should consider.
# Capacity Building: At Higashi Autism School (HAS), Delhi, we follow a mesh design consisting of a robust clinical bouquet and academic portfolio. Both are delivered in a bespoke teaching model with required care supports where needed. The Clinical services comprise of Occupational Therapy (OT) and Speech and Language Therapy (SLT). The therapeutic services are undertaken in a graded structure from Early Intervention to Elementary, Middle and Higher Levels. To give an example OT plans scale up from Sensory Processing, Gross and Fine Motor goals to higher order executive skills. Students at our school receive these therapy sessions daily; we believe therapies are the oxygen for a learning profile. They are the buttresses for academic exposure and a scaffold for pushing fungibility of skills necessary for personality development. There are some who think thrice a week therapy is good enough. We disagree. If there is no rigor in teaching practices, there is no capacity building.
#The Higashi System: The Daily Life Therapy Method with its two pillars repetitious practice and perseverative teaching is the basis of the Higashi system. It was developed by late Dr Kiyo Kitahara in Tokyo, Japan. The daily life therapy in the Indian context of autism has four anchors - Clinical services as Daily Life Therapy, Subject Learning variegated Teaching Learning Materials, group education and education for achieving social independence. We are a multi-department School. We are accredited to NIOS; however our Curriculum Development is not limited only to the NIOS stack, it is very research oriented and elements from other boards/institutions like CBSE, IB, ICSE, NCERT books and relevant reading material are included in students’ education plans. Next year, eight of our autistic students will be taking their Grade-level NIOS exams.
#Language Learning: We place a lot of emphasis on language development – both the clinical side and the academic part. Oral Placement Therapy or OPT, Prompt therapy, Articulator activations, remedial for echolalia are all done to achieve the trajectory of different classes of sounds, word, phrase, sentence and conversation levels. Misarticulations are handled; an enormous AAC portfolio through the AVAZ app builds language ability in non-verbal autistics while verbal autistics use it to hone their writing and syntactic skills. Language is the vehicle of communication and subject learning. And as we know communication is a major deficit in autism. This is targeted for capacity building in a major way. Another deficit is restrictive and repetitive behavior. We have turned this deficit on its head at Higashi and used it to usher a virtuous cycle in two domains: establishing healthy daily life rhythms and digital skills training.
# Digital Skills – Our Special Educators have undergone Google Certified Educator program, which is a comprehensive certification. What this does is basically equip, educators with the skills to seamlessly integrate Google tools and digital pedagogy into the teaching practices. Through this program, teachers gain knowledge of Google for Education apps, including Drive, Sites, Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, Gmail, YouTube, Classroom, Meet, Chat, and Calendar. They learn effective strategies for blending technology into online and classroom teaching, designing creative and interactive lessons that foster deeper student engagement. The program empowers to streamline workflow and organization, create immersive learning experiences, facilitate real-time collaboration and feedback, and enhance student engagement. The exposure to Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools helps teachers to integrate AI-powered tools into lesson planning, automate administrative tasks, and develop innovative assessments and feedback mechanisms.
Small chunks of this program is taught to students by teachers for we believe that inorder to pursue higher education students must be digital skills ninjas and this process has to start during school years.
#Coaches for Academics & Life Skills: Now, we all know because of certain core cognitive differences that the condition of autism entails like Executive Dysfunction, Weak Central Coherence, most autistics require job coaches, mentor support and other forms of assistive modalities. Unlike those with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), the post-school phase experiences of autistics have been extremely bleak. There are individual instances of success and sometimes even extraordinary achievement but that is a flash in the pan, it is not process driven. And if an opportunity of social fairness, which is one of the principles of Industry 5.0, is not harnessed, we may lose some unique talent pool.
Developing courses for college readiness, bespoke & skill-based undergraduate and graduate programs are indeed an urgent requirement. Open Learning Institutions like IGNOU, School of Open Learning/Delhi University need to work on this template.
#Policy Accommodations Needed: Harsh realities necessitate some path breaking initiatives. Most autistics go certification less. This state of affairs just cannot go unaddressed. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 targets achieving an equitable and inclusive education system by 2030 also provisioning inter alia home schooling for severe disabilities. Four steps must be taken. Firstly, a Special Education Needs (SEN) Board must be constituted. This is necessary to account for the strengths of most autistic students, who though they cannot cope with a full curriculum, usually possess unique skills and ‘islets of excellence.’ Skills Based Training Courses, Certifications for Professional, Domain Specific and Practical Studies must be a major focus of this board. Subject-wise proficiency should be encouraged, since we know that our autistic children have restrictive and repetitive interests. Secondly, NEP 2020 has done away with the segregation of curricular, vocational and co-curricular. The suggested SEN board should reflect this pedagogic shift. Thirdly, there is no official certified course for sign language for HI students (autistics & neurotypical). They can learn the language from teachers and interpreters. This needs to change. Fourthly, autistic children struggle with handwriting but are good with Qwerty keyboard and device navigation. Examinations should be hybrid, both digital and physical handwriting should be allowed. CBSE offers accommodations of a scribe for Special needs but we need to go beyond the culture of scribe dependence and promote the ethics of social independence.
Fellow Panelists
Dr. Anil Kumar Aneja, Director, Centre for Disability Studies, and HoD, Department of English, Delhi University recounted his journey of challenges and achievements and of how successive legislations and policies had brought about changes. A visually impaired academic and a Hellen Keller awardee, Dr. Aneja expounded how comprehensive services including accessible reading materials, Braille recorders, tactile inputs, ramps, accessible toilets, and elevators, advanced computers and customized books on demand are eliminating barriers to reading and learning.
Dr. Geet Oberoi, Founder, Orkids Foundation gave a presentation on Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) and advocated for ‘Dyslexic Thinking’ with examples. Dr. Oberoi said dyslexics are a preferred hiring choice for several tech companies like LinkedIn. The lamentations over ‘b’ and ‘d’ reversals is passé.
Amity: Stellar work
Amity University is truly an Education 5.0 institution with social fairness at its core. And this goes far beyond organizing symposiums, conferences, art expos, and hosting Special Olympics events that they do every academic year. I saw SpLD students thriving at the undergraduate level in Social Sciences, Languages through accommodations made by a very proactive and involved faculty. The unique initiatives of repeated mentoring, department heads anchoring extra classes for conceptual learning and presentation skills are some such examples. The Amity Institute of Rehabilitation Sciences (AIRS) apart from running very successful graduate, post-graduate and doctoral programs in Special Education and Disability Studies serves as the nodal agency for spreading awareness about different challenges and engineering customizations required for Higher Education. Prof. (Dr.) Balvinder Shukla, Vice Chancellor, Amity University particularly mentioned how she values the work done by AIRS. Dr. Anusuya and Prof. Jayanti Pujari, your commitment gives us hope, please continue to uplift us with your work.
Postscript
The Companies Act, 2013: it is mandatory for the companies covered under section 135 to comply with the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) provisions in India. Companies are required to spend a minimum of 2 per cent of their net profit over the preceding three years as CSR. How much of this is going into education on disability spends to lay the ground for a neurodivergent workforce is a matter of both research and advocacy.
Excellent
Article worth reading and important to create awareness among other higher education institutions to contribute towards inclusion meaningfully.