Disabled people get say on state policies

The Jakarta Post, Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The Jakarta administration has renewed its commitment to providing for the participation of disabled people in the development of polices that affect them, including on access to public facilities, Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo says.

“I will take over the management of the accessibility team myself, since its contribution has not been big enough in the last few years,” he said recently.

Hopes ran high five years ago when the city administration issued a decree establishing a special team to review how friendly public facilities and government policies were for disabled people.

But the decree, and the hopes of the disabled along with it, soon languished under “101 other pressing concerns”, so that there has been little evidence of progress in recent developments in the city, such as the busway.

“We did have several meetings following the decree, but none of what we’ve been fighting for was evident in recent developments, such as the busway, the monorail and such,” chairman of the Tanpa Batas Foundation, which is chiefly concerned about accessibility for the disabled, Irawan Santoso, told The Jakarta Post.

He said that Fauzi’s promise to revitalize the team had stirred new hope that public facilities in the capital would soon become more accessible to people like himself, who could only get around in a wheelchair.

“We’ve already made it mandatory for all developers to provide basic (access) facilities for the disabled, or we won’t give them a building permit,” Fauzi said.

In accordance with a 2001 gubernatorial decree, most positions on the team are held by officials from the Jakarta administration, with the Jakarta-based association for the disabled one of its members.

Some of the team’s functions include figuring out the number of disabled people in the city, conducting a survey of buildings that are inaccessible to disabled people, and making suggestions on the formulation of various government policies.

“During this first stage, Pak Fauzi asked us to make recommendation on improvements to the busway corridors,” Irawan said, explaining that meetings held from this week on would fine-tune the team’s goals for the next six months.

He said that some of the complaints about the busway concerned its ramps — which are still much too steep for wheelchairs — and the wide gap that passengers have to step over between the shelter and the bus.

“We will try to improve busway facilities to make the system more accessible to the disabled,” Fauzi said. (06)

Special needs pupils left to struggle alone

The Jakarta Post, Monday, March 27, 2006

Eighteen-year-old Riqo wants to be an IT expert. He spends most of his spare time browsing the Internet for programming scripts to improve his website riqoentertainment.netfirms.com.

Unfortunately, despite already being in his third year of high school, Riqo is not yet sure that any local university will accept him as a student.

You see, M. Ikhwan Toriqo’s eyesight has steadily declined due to glaucoma, which he has suffered since the age of 11. His poor vision only enables him to see a website if he puts his eyes right up against the computer screen.

Riqo could, of course, invoke Law No. 4/1997 for his right to equal education and demand entrance to a university of his choice based on his intelligence, but the fight would not be over, even if he did that successfully.

“Even after winning that first step, the entrance test, many children with disabilities get discouraged because a very small support system is in place to help them get by,” the Handicapped Care Community (Kopetunda) chairman Indrayant told The Jakarta Post recently.

Law No. 4/1997 stipulates that all people with disabilities have equal rights and opportunities in all aspects, including education. But accessibility to it is perhaps one of the most challenging obstacles facing people with disabilities.

Besides having to overcome limitations posed by their various disabilities, they must also deal with people’s misconceptions of their abilities.

“I really hate it when people think blind people are only fit for being masseuses,” the student at State High School No. 66 in South Jakarta, said.

The Jakarta Statistics Agency officially listed the number of people with disabilities in Jakarta at 13,040 people as of 2004 — the majority of whom live in East Jakarta, with 5,503 people, followed by Central Jakarta with 2,282 people and South Jakarta with 2,071 people.

The number of special schools available to them, however, is limited to just three state special schools — all located in South Jakarta — and at least 81 private special schools everywhere else in the city.

Of these, only one — the Indonesian Society for Care of Disabled Children’s (YPAC) Special School in South Jakarta — caters specifically to paraplegics.

“It’s not a matter of whether the schools are enough, but students should not have to travel long distances simply to attend a state special school,” Tolhas Damanik, a counselor from a local NGO for the blind, the Mitra Netra Foundation, said. He added that private schools were often not affordable for low-income people with disabilities.

According to Tolhas, only around 5 percent of school-aged visually impaired children have access to basic education in Indonesia, while the rest are either hidden away by parents or forced to stay home due to economic restraints.

An eight-month survey conducted by Mitra Netra in East and South Jakarta found at least 150 blind children of school age were being kept at home.

Children with other disabilities suffer more or less the same fate.

“Many people, and not only those in the lower income brackets, still consider it a curse to have a disabled child and therefore are likely to hide them away,” Tolhas said, adding that some people do not even know about the existence of special schools for children with disabilities.

Curriculum designed for special schools puts special emphasis on vocational material rather than academic material to help them gain living skills according to their abilities.

“I think what we all expect is for all children to eventually be able to be independent, but with children with advanced cerebral palsy for example, it is more important to simply teach them to feel useful in society,” one of the chairwomen of YPAC’s National chapter, Fatimah P. Sidharta Soerjadi, said.

Those who wish to continue to higher education are advised to attend regular schools with inclusion programs.

In these inclusion programs, children with special needs study side by side with other children, serving also as a solution to the difficulty in providing a full range of educational services to children with disabilities.

“The inclusion program was established to give opportunities for students with disabilities who are academically capable to continue on to a university, which is why, competition-wise, they are not segregated,” a top official, Budiana, said.

In 2003, at least 21 regular schools across the five regions of Jakarta — from kindergarten to high school and the vocational high school level — participated in the inclusion program.

However, Budiana said, despite annually publicizing the inclusion schools to students attending special schools, not many are taking advantage of the offer.

“It largely depends on how ready the students and their parents are in competing with those without such disabilities,” he said, while explaining that so far the only inclusion school that regularly has blind and deaf students is State High School No. 66 in South Jakarta, because of its close proximity to special schools.

“And it’s been proven that students with disabilities at SMA 66 can compete with their peers, many even excelled,” Budiana said.

To help them in their studies, students with disabilities are accompanied by someone from a foundation, such as the Mitra Netra Foundation for the blind.

“For blind students, we give them an option of taking national examinations in braille or have someone from their foundation read the questions for them,” Budiana said.

While the blind can still listen to teachers’ explanations of lessons, deaf of hearing impaired students are disadvantaged because teachers rarely know sign language.

“There should also be special teachers who know sign language to help deaf students. Denying them that right is the same as denying them information,” Deaf Family Foundation (Sehjira) director Rachmita M. Harahap said.

On the other hand, paraplegic students with only mobility problems can go to any regular school they want. Unfortunately, not all of these schools are equipped with ramps or large toilets for their wheelchairs.

“Sometimes, out of ignorance, a school places paraplegic students in classes located on the upper levels, causing difficulties for them,” Indrayant said.

At the university level, this seemingly simple problem of getting to classes on time may cause other problems for paraplegic students.

Budiana said that for the most part, the problem lies in people’s insensitivity of what students with disabilities need, and when that happens he suggests the student, or his foundation, launch a complaint at his office in the Jakarta education agency.

“We always try to encourage schools to accept students with special needs, so that they can get the same opportunities as other students”.

Fighter refuses to let discrimination win

The Jakarta Post, Monday, 27 March 2006

Born deaf, Rachmita Maun Harahap — or Mitha, as she likes to be known — has spent most of her life overcoming communication barriers and the social stigma that comes with her disability.

Hard work is nothing to her, disappointments don’t deter her, but she really resents being underestimated.

Despite being the only employee with a Master’s Degree in Interior Design, Mitha was denied an appointment as permanent lecturer in Mercu Buana University’s newly opened interior design program — a program she had helped devise.

“I guess they feared I couldn’t communicate well,” Mitha told The Jakarta Post, who speaks clearly with a slight accent, like a foreigner speaking Bahasa Indonesia. No one would guess she was deaf unless they caught her lip reading.

“But it’s all right, one has to be patient,” she said.

Luckily, patience is something Mitha has a lot of, together with a determination to live a normal life.

Mitha’s parents, who had six children, three of whom were born deaf or hard of hearing, never taught their children that they were different to anyone else.

At home she was taught the names of objects by replicating the shape of her parent’s lips, which also taught her to “listen” through lip-reading.

“I didn’t even know I was different until my parents decided I needed hearing aids when I was nine. I thought everybody had to learn like that,” the 36-year-old said.

Her father’s job as civil servant forced the family to move several times, but she attended regular schools, such as one in Bukittinggi, until she was in the fourth grade.

“Because some of my brothers had difficulties keeping up with lessons, we were advised to transfer to a special school,” Mitha said.

Her parents were at first opposed to the plan, she said, and thought the children would miss out on having the same opportunities as other students.

Fortunately Mitha attended Karya Murni special school in Medan, North Sumatra, which was far more advanced than others like it.

Every morning, students at the school had to recite what they had done the night before in front of the rest of the class. This sort of simple act teaches deaf and hard of hearing children self confidence and trains speech.

“It was difficult, but the teachers were very helpful and kind and never treated us differently,” Mitha said.

However, only six months into the school year, Mitha’s father was transferred to Surabaya, East Java, and Mitha attended a special school there.

“But after only three months, I moved to a regular school. At the time I was in the fifth grade, but the new school used books for the third grade,” she explained.

This was perhaps the first time Mitha felt discriminated against, being made to feel she was slower at her studies than other children because of her disability.

At the regular school in Surabaya, Mitha learned to rely on herself. Unlike her Bukittinggi days, where the people were “kind and tolerant”, in Surabaya Mitha learned to deal with the taunts of other children.

“Schoolmates would sometimes jeer because I was deaf, different from them. But it was the consequence I had to face for wanting to attend regular school, and I learned to ignore them,” she said.

At this time also, the quality of Mitha’s training at home and in the regular school in Bukittinggi proved itself. Faced with teachers who were often unaware she was deaf, Mitha learned to speed read their lips.

At home she revised what she had learnt at school that day, and would usually borrow notes from friends. Mitha also read a lot to build up vocabulary — something that hearing-abled people take for granted because they can pick up words by hearing them used.

“I studied very hard, I was never lazy. People like me can’t afford to be lazy. Perhaps knowing just how much I wanted a normal life, God made me diligent,” Mitha said.

Proving herself quite able to compete with other students, Mitha attended top state high schools in Surabaya, and later in Serang, Banten, when her father’s job took the family there.

At State High School No. 1 in Serang, Mitha joined the school’s marching band as majorette and even received the title of West Java’s Favorite Majorette in a competition in 1987.

“I learned the songs by memorizing the differences in the vibrations they created,” she explained.

With full support from her parents Mitha attended Mercu Buana University’s department of architecture in 1990, where she graduated cum laude after four and a half years of study, earning her a scholarship for a Master’s Degree in Interior Design at the Bandung Institute of Technology.

But when she came back to her alma mater at Mercu Buana in 2000, she was faced with discrimination. While four other scholarship recipients were offered places as staff or lecturer, Mitha was advised to accept a position as a non-permanent staffer.

“It was only after I threatened to take legal action that the university finally gave me permanent staffer status”.

The discrimination she felt prompted Mitha to establish the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Family Foundation, or Sehjira, in 2001, to help deaf and hard of hearing couples cope with hearing family members, provide scholarships for education, and help with employment.

“We should never feel ashamed of our condition, although others may make fun of us. We may be deaf, but we’re certainly not dumb. We must show them that we can do anything we put our minds to, just the same as them,” she said.

Disabled children given the chance to learn skills

The Jakarta Post, Monday, 27 March 2006

It’s the small successes — a child being able to tie her shoes up on her own, or use the toilet without assistance — that make it all worthwhile for the Indonesian Society for the Care of Disabled Children (YPAC).

“We would love it if all our students could be independent, but for many it’s more important to make them feel useful by knowing certain simple skills,” YPAC chairwoman Fatimah P. Sidharta, told The Jakarta Post.

YPAC was founded in 1953 to deal with the rise of polio, but now also accepts children with cerebral palsy, as well as those suffering from muscle atrophy and congenital disabilities.

The foundation’s center — located on 8,000 square meters of land in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta — provides physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and music, occupational and speech therapy.

“We have a specially constructed swimming pool to help children build up their muscles through hydrotherapy,” chairwoman of YPAC’s Jakarta chapter, Renny Suparyanto, explained.

In occupational therapy, children are taught to perform everyday tasks such as using the toilet, bathing, eating and putting on their clothes.

“Some children with cerebral palsy are unable to perform these seemingly simple tasks, so we try to form the habit in them,” Renny said.

Besides therapy, the foundation also provides schooling for the children from kindergarten to senior high school levels.

“We separate severe cases from those who we hope will someday be able to attend regular schools and the curriculum is the same as a normal school,” headmaster Deden Mulyadi said.

For those unable to attend school, YPAC provides training in various skills, including weaving mops, assembling cigarette lighter heads, making greeting cards and hydroponic farming.

People with visual impairments are always welcome at the Mitra Netra Foundation’s headquarters in Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta. There they can make full use of a range of audio and braille books, which the foundation produces through its talking and braille books production units.

“We’ve been developing audio books since 1992 and have more than 3,000 titles in stock,” Mitra Netra’s vice executive director Irwan Dwi Kusnanto said, adding that the foundation had developed its own software to make it easier to convert books to braille.

Besides helping to minimize the information gap between blind and sighted people through reading, Mitra Netra also conducts rehabilitation programs to help the visually impaired accept their condition and adjust to their surroundings.

Blindness counseling services are conducted at Mitra Netra’s head office, as well as the Medical Rehabilitation division and eye polyclinic at Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Central Jakarta.

A support group for parents of blind children has also been organized, aimed at helping parents cope with the challenges of visually impaired children.

“Orientation and mobility training is aimed at optimizing the senses and to help people recognize environments, move about and go places, and carry out daily activities,” Mitra Netra counselor Tolhas Damanik said.

People who are newly blind are taught to read and write braille for at least two months before being trained in other areas.

Mitra Netra provides courses in ten-finger typing to make it easier for students attending regular school to do assignments, as well as lessons in using a computer with a screen reader installed, and calculating simple maths using an abacus.

Blind students are encouraged to attend regular schools with inclusive programs to be able to access the full range of academic services available.

Mitra Netra also helps these students with admission, providing companions to assist visually impaired students to write assignments in the Roman alphabet, reading them test questions during examinations and providing extra assistance in lessons.

It also provides education counseling as well as always maintaining good relationships with the participating schools in order to help with problems that may arise.

Jakarta, Bandung pilot programs will ‘aid the blind’

The Jakarta Post, Monday, February 20, 2006

There are no arguments for the cause of the blind stronger than those presented by the blind themselves. But for the visually impaired to be able to fight for their rights, education comes first and foremost.

Unfortunately, the main stumbling block facing the blind, or people with any other disability, is the attitude of society, which tends to dismiss their capabilities, including in the field of education.

“There’s a lot of negative images that surround blindness, which manifest themselves in either overt or sometimes subtle attitudes of what blind people can and cannot do,” the president of the International Council for the Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI), Lawrence F. Campbell, said Friday.

The biggest obstacle preventing blind people from entering university, for example, usually comes from entrance committees that cannot imagine the difficulties a blind person must face to get through university life.

“So we are concerned that in the developing world today, nine out of 10 children with visual impairments are locked out of the education system,” Campbell told The Jakarta Post.

He said that while over the years there had been increasing concern for providing children with visual impairments basic education, less attention had been given to those who aim at higher education.

“Admittedly, there are only a small percentage of people that reach the point where they can actually qualify to enter higher education, but when they reach that point it’s not easy at all,” Campbell said.

Underlining this point, a member of local non-governmental organization Mitra Netra Foundation, Tolhas Damanik, said blind and visually impaired people in Indonesia were encouraged to continue to vocational school after junior high school, instead of pursuing a university degree.

“The challenges that they face, the lack of support systems in place at universities, can be very discouraging and only the most determined really persist,” Campbell said.

To make increase access to higher education for the visually impaired, the ICEVI, together with the Overbrook-Nippon Network on Educational Technology (ON-NET), is working with the Mitra Netra Foundation, the Indonesian Union for the Blind and the Indonesian University for Education (UPI) in Bandung, on a pilot project in Jakarta and Bandung.

“This pilot project can demonstrate that with a modest investment these barriers can be overcome, and life at university can be made easier and less stressful for blind students,” said Campbell, who is also ON-NET’s project director.

The project, expected to be set up at Bandung’s UPI and at Mitra Netra’s office in Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta, will provide visually impaired university students with assistance such as screen reader-equipped computers, educational materials in Braille and recorded form, as well as orientation and counseling support.

The US$60,000 project is expected to benefit more than 80 students, including some 50 students in Bandung, most attending UPI, and about 33 students at 14 universities in Greater Jakarta. It is hoped the project will encourage other universities and institutions to set up similar programs.