Needs Assessment of Facilities, Services and Accomodation for Students with Disabilities at the University of Ghana
Keywords:
Assessment, Facilities, Services and Accomodation, Students, Disabilities, University of GhanaSynopsis
Disability is reported to be one of the wide spread phenomenon especially, in Africa and continues
to rise. Research shows that there are about 600 million persons with disabilities worldwide and
about 5-10 percent live in Ghana. Majority ofthem are faced with inaccessibility to facilities and
services, unequal opportunities especially, to education, employment and to participating fully in
society. The main objective of this research centres on investigating the needs of University of
Ghana students with disabilities. This study adopted the Maslow's hierarchy ofneeds and the Social
model of disability as its theoretical framework. The study sampled 42 respondents and sourced
information from students with disabilities and key informants like resource persons, counsellors,
ICT instructors, librarians and tutorial officiais from the halls of residence at the University of
Ghana. Findings of the study indicated that, though accommodation is provided for all registered
students with disabilities on campus, access to most facilities in the halls of residence remain a
problem. Also, access to most lecture halls and other building structures as well as the campus
shuttle posed lots of difficulties to a good number of the students with disabilities. Many of them
therefore depend on friends for assistance. It was again evident that the provision of disability
services such as brailing, sign language interpretation, note-taking and information dissemination
were inadequate for them. Finally, recommendations focused on meeting the short-term, medium-term
and
long-term needs ofstudents with disabilities at the University of Ghana.
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June 27, 2023
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