Equal Participation in Education

Background

People with disabilities face discrimination in all phases of education system (enrollment, classrooms, etc). The contents of textbooks also reinforce the negative perception against persons with disabilities. Teachers need guidance and materials to handle the issue of discrimination in the classroom.

Project Results

• Within the Disability in Textbooks Research, 35 textbooks which were used in the 2016-2017 academic year were analyzed and discriminatory contents were detected.
• An Advisory Report was prepared in order to improve the content of textbooks and submitted to the related departments of the Ministry of National Education.
• Infographics were prepared and shared on social media to make the analysis and recommendations on textbooks more visible.
• Animation videos on disability rights were prepared such as “What is disability?”, “Disability rights”, “What is accessibility?” and “Disability rights for education”.
• 225 teachers and 80 education faculty students were informed on how to prevent discrimination against persons with disabilities in education.

“Individuals with disabilities are misperceived as people who need one’s ‘pity’ or ‘help’, but there is a lot to do to prevent that. Yet, none is as powerful as any impact one could make on children. Textbooks are very important at that point. Children need to understand that disability is a matter of human rights.” Project Partner

“Textbooks are a major component of the educational environment. With an initial aim to examine how disabilities are perceived in textbooks, this project has made great contribution to development of a right-based approach in the educational environment. SEÇBİR has gone beyond identifying the problems in books and produced alternative educational materials.” Project Beneficiary