Websites blogs: an analysis of parenting a child with special needs challenges (Published)
Blogs are online published materials or journals where different community members can express, communicate, and share their news and experiences through posting photos, videos, and audios. This article investigates website blogs that were authored by parents of children with special needs (SN), from the last five years (2014 – 2019) and analyzes the challenges parents encounter which are related to social life experiences and the way they feel when facing these challenges. The collected data were processed with the WebQDA software and analyzed by Content Analysis. We could see that all parents, regardless of their kids’ special needs, face challenges related to accessibility, child’s characteristics, people’s reactions, and child with SN behaviors, and experience a lot of positive and negative feelings when they’re dealing with these challenges.
Keywords: Parenting, Special Needs, social life challenges, website blogs
EXPERIENCED BARRIERS BY PERSONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS ON ACCESS TO HIGHER INSTITUTIONS (Published)
Higher education is a much desirable level of education for most youths in the society. The fact that a person is with special needs does not alienate such a person from being able to access higher education. Like all fundamental human rights persons with special needs must have access to higher education as stipulated in the United Nations Convention on Rights of persons with disabilities. This paper takes a closer look into the barriers that have being experienced and encountered by persons with special needs in accessing higher education. Three research questions were generated for the study. The research design for this study is descriptive survey. Two hundred and seventy three (273) students with special needs responded to the forty item questionnaire designed for the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics of ANOVA and Correlation (PPMC) were used to test the study at 0.05 level of significance. The analysis of data revealed that social and environmental factors affect the access to higher education by students with special needs. A number of other barriers that also contributed to lack of access to higher education by persons with special needs include academic, communication, instructional or institutional, individual and financial barriers. The government and other stakeholders have to intensify supports for persons with special needs to ensure easier access to higher education and to eradicate limitation to certain courses for persons with special needs. Disability policies should be enacted in tertiary institutions in Nigeria in order to eliminate barriers to access to higher education by persons with special needs.
Keywords: Higher Institutions, Special Needs