Creating awareness for persons with disabilities

Ignorance is a factor that contributes to the stigmatization and ostracization of persons with disabilities (PWD). However, knowledge cures ignorance. When asked about ways people could be oriented about persons with disabilities in order to end discrimination against them, some members of society gave quite an opinion.

Feranmi, student

I think we can start by organising campaigns. What better way to draw attention than by organising peaceful assemblies with banners and posters that contain information about persons with disabilities? Some people, not many people, still believe that having a disability is not the work of the ordinary – that it’s babalawo or onisegun that turned them to that when it’s not true. As a society, we can raise awareness by joining persons with disabilities in their protests and showing our support. People generally fear what they don’t know. Let us make them know so that they won’t need to fear or stigmatise them. The level of understanding will rise, and you will see how things will begin to look up. The problems of this country are many and we can’t solve them all at once, but we can start somewhere.

Adeolu, designer

I don’t know if this is a thing already but I think a way to create awareness is to make schools for persons with disabilities open to volunteer work or even compulsory work for a period of time (like NYSC). I know people visit such schools to donate and take pictures, which is already degrading but it should be open for work so that people can be properly informed on how to relate with persons with disabilities. Also, people should stop going there to take pictures and show what they donated for public approval. It doesn’t do anything to stop the discrimination of persons with disabilities. Yes, those schools need all the help they can get, but are the pictures really necessary?

Nancy, student/entrepreneur

I was looking for something to do one day, and I started learning British Sign Language (I can introduce myself and sign my name). Anyway, as I was learning, it occurred to me that I may or may not have been wasting my time because I believed that the majority of people with auditory impairment in Nigeria cannot sign. Most people communicate with them by pointing. My point is, for persons with disabilities to be properly included, we need to know how to communicate. We can create awareness by teaching sign language to people, whether they can hear or not. It doesn’t even have to be a gathering. There could be posters with pictorial illustrations of basic conversations.

Boluwatife, student.

One of my secondary school classmates had Down syndrome, and let me tell you, she was bullied! People treated her somehow, and I always felt bad. They didn’t really know what Down syndrome was – it was a boarding school, so access to the internet was kind of difficult. She just looked different and acted differently, and she was treated like trash for it. I’m sure there are many kids like that who don’t know about persons with disabilities and treat people somehow. To raise awareness, people need to be educated, even illiterates. We need to find a way to explain it in a way or language they will understand. Persons with disabilities are heavily bullied and ostracized, but if people come to understand their disabilities, that will be hard because some people don’t even know their own rights, much less the rights of other members of the community.

Bashir, trader.

With the way that many public places are inaccessible to persons with disabilities, I believe the managers or owners simply don’t know that their buildings are not all-accommodating. A walk-in into a random building that is not accessible to tell them about accessibility is raising awareness and it will go a long way. That’s my opinion.