The topic of this thesis is spatial orientation and navigation in children with combined visual impairment. This study introduces different theoretical stages and compares different attitudes of families, teachers and counselors. Furthermore this study is to identify various levels of parents' awareness of this problem. Qualitative research based on interviews has been used for this observation. The objective of this thesis is to create an information brochure which should then serve as an aid and support for parents with visually impaired children. Such brochure should include basic information about spatial orientation and navigation, as well as it should share personal experience and relevant advice useful in daily life. Recent research suggests that parents of visually impaired children learn about these issues mainly from special education centers or Early Care. Materials obtained at said institutions were, according to research, insufficient. However the availability of these materials was satisfactory. Children with impairment need specific and individual approach and teachers, parents and counselors, when working with children with visual impairment, seem to often focus on different subjects.

The diploma thesis on the topic Special pedagogical support in the field of work training of persons with multiple disabilities aims to clarify the issue of work training of students of the One-Year Practical School and the Two-Year Practical School and their subsequent employment. The work is divided into several parts, the theoretical part is focused on information from professional publications and electronic sources, which describes the basics of this issue, which is an integral part of the topic. Furthermore, the theoretical work reveals the definition of the term person with disabilities, the specification of multiple disabilities and related terms such as education of people with multiple disabilities, vocational training and employment. It also describes the possibilities of connecting social services with education, social services that students can use within the Arpida Center. The practical part of this diploma thesis was divided into two parts. In the first part, a semi- standardized interview with open-ended questions was used to find out how employees who work with students of the One-Year Practical School and the Two-Year Practical School at the Arpida Center help to integrate into the open labor market. In the second part, case studies were processed that are related to the...

The thesis deals with the topic of the differences in human corporeality as uniqueness of our existence. It is divided into four parts. The theoretical part defines the concept of corporeality and the associated topics of self- concept, self-acceptance and self-presentation, with an emphasis on supporting the development of people with combined disabilities. Furthermore, the theoretical part deals with the use of human body in art, especially modern art - action art, based on ritual, and body-art. The didactic part brings a proposal to adapt the curriculum of the school program of Ceramic Production for pupils with combined disabilities, by assigning suitable artistic tasks using the material of ceramic clay. The presented result is a series of art lessons - methodological sheets for four teaching blocks focused on the use of physical gestures, emotions and self-concept by students with combined disabilities. The aim is to involve pupils with all types of disabilities, and cause their conscious use of physicality in working with ceramic clay. The research uses the method of qualitative research, namely a questionnaire survey and participatory observation. Research has confirmed that the art lessons series is suitable for pupils with all types of disabilities, and namely that adapting tasks to...

This master's thesis, named "Care and support of the elderly with multiple disabilities in retirement homes," focuses on the potential admission of these persons to retirement homes in the Czech Republic. The aim of this study is to find out whether and under what conditions seniors with multiple disabilities are admitted to the standard type of retirement homes. The empirical section deals with the legislative basis for retirement homes in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, it deals with sight, hearing, movement and cognitive functions in old age. For each of these monitored areas, this section contains descriptions of the greatest functional changes in the daily life of a senior citizen. The research section of this thesis is based on the testimonies of individual retirement homes. Sixteen randomly selected retirement homes were sent an application for the admission of a grandmother with diagnosed deafness and blindness. Based on their answers we can observe the attitudes of the individual facilities regarding this issue, and their conditions for admission. KEY WORDS Retirement homes, multiple disabilities, seniors, registry of social service providers, old age

Parenting plays an important role in many adult lives. Parenting a child with profound multiple disabilities results in a distinct parenting experience. This qualitative phenomenological study examined the role of social media in the lives of parents raising children with profound multiple disabilities. Five parents raising children with profound multiple disabilities were interviewed, and resulting themes were identified. Consistent with previous research, parents described the initial adaptation to their child’s disability-related needs as the most challenging period of their parenting to date. Adaptation was followed by an acclimation to a new normal of their parenting experience. Parents described moving from medical crises, feelings of isolation, and unfamiliarity with resource systems to becoming empowered through interactions with other parents raising children with profound multiple disabilities, both in-person and through social media. Parents focused on three areas with their social media efforts: their own social needs, their child’s social needs, and their child’s disability-related needs. To address disability-related needs, parents used a social media bricolage approach to create a composite of social media group memberships that reflected their child’s complex medical, disability and intervention profiles. Parents described social media use as daily and essential to their functioning both personally and within their parenting. However, parents prioritized in-person social connections and utilized social media to make and maintain relationships both online and in-person. Parents expressed awareness and deliberate use of privacy settings in using social media. Parents described common pitfalls to social media use and described engaging in disability awareness through social media. Parents described social media as providing a sense of community through which they became empowered in their parenting. They also networked through in-person and virtual social interactions. Social media provided these parents with a networked community empowerment experience as they parented their child with profound multiple disabilities.

[pt] O objetivo principal deste estudo é discutir e compreender as concepções atribuídas à autonomia da criança com deficiência múltipla e as interdependências na escola inclusiva. Dedica-se à investigação e compreensão das concepções atribuídas à autonomia da criança com deficiência múltipla por profissionais da educação com experiência de trabalho com essas crianças. Avança-se para compreender como esses profissionais concebem, constroem e assumem, em seus trabalhos, uma prática que contribua para a autonomia da criança com deficiência múltipla, analisando como ocorre a participação do aluno com deficiência múltipla em atividades escolares. A pesquisa é qualitativa e fundamenta-se no método de interpretação dos sentidos. A produção de dados desdobra-se em observações participantes que envolvem cinco crianças com deficiência múltipla e seus cotidianos escolares, além da realização de entrevistas semiestruturadas com 33 profissionais da educação. Seis escolas foram parceiras deste estudo, incluindo uma escola de educação infantil em um município da Baixada Fluminense/RJ e cinco escolas localizadas no estado do Rio Grande do Sul. A análise é fundamentada nos estudos de deficiência, situando-se principalmente entre os modelos social e de direitos humanos. A perspectiva histórico-cultural fundamentou a análise dos conceitos de instrução, aprendizagem e desenvolvimento. Dedica-se atenção especial à comunicação e às vivências escolares que potencializam a tomada de decisão conjunta e/ou individual da criança com deficiência múltipla. Agir e/ou ir sozinho referem-se a concepções de autonomia com maior destaque nas falas dos profissionais entrevistados. Nas observações de campo, destaca-se que os colegas e os profissionais de apoio escolar foram figuras marcantes nas relações de tomada de decisão. Ressalta-se a importância de uma abordagem voltada para o planejamento de práticas pedagógicas estruturadas de maneira colaborativa, visando a promoção de uma educação inclusiva. A pesquisa possibilitou compreender como a autonomia é potencializada e desenvolvida em contextos de interdependências no cenário escolar, em que as vivências com a diversidade humana são catalisadoras de aprendizado e desenvolvimento. / [en] The main objective of this study is to discuss and comprehend the conceptions attributed to the autonomy of children with multiple disabilities and the interdependencies in inclusive schools. The focus is on investigating and understanding the conceptions attributed to the autonomy of children with multiple disabilities by education professionals with experience working with these children. The study advances to understand how these professionals conceive, construct, and adopt in their work a practice that contributes to the autonomy of children with multiple disabilities, and to analyze how the participation of students with multiple disabilities occurs in school activities. The research is qualitative and is based on the method of interpreting meanings. Data production unfolds through participant observations involving five children with multiple disabilities and their school routines, along with conducting semi-structured interviews with 33 education professionals. In total, six Brazilian schools collaborated in this study, including an early childhood education school in a municipality in Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and five schools located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The analysis is grounded in disability studies, primarily situated between social and human rights models. The historical-cultural perspective underpins the analysis of the concepts of instruction, learning, and development. Special attention is given to communication and school experiences that enhance joint and/or individual decision-making by the child with multiple disabilities. Acting and/or going alone refer to concepts of autonomy with greater emphasis in the statements of the interviewed professionals. In field observations, it is highlighted that classmates and school support professionals were significant figures in decision-making relationships. The importance of an approach focused on planning collaborative pedagogical practices, aiming at promoting inclusive education, is emphasized. The research made it possible to understand how autonomy is enhanced and developed in contexts of interdependencies in the school, where experiences with human diversity are catalysts for learning and development.

The topic of this thesis is the situation of families with children having severe visual or multiple disabilities, examined from the father's standpoint. The aim of this thesis is to map out (explore) the lives of fathers whose children have severe visual impairments or multiple disabilities from their subjective point of view. The focus will be on the process of accepting disabled children, the fathers' experiences, their behavior and expectations in relation to the children, their spouse / partner and other family members. In addition, the focus will be on their view of the relationship between the larger society and individuals with disabilities, including organizations dealing with this issue. For the purposes of qualitative research "What it is like to be a father whose child has a severe visual impairment," a method of semi-structured interviews for data collection will be used. The Grounded Theory method will be used to analyze the data obtained from the research. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The thesis deals with specific emphases of special educational support provided to people with severe mental and multiple disabilities in their adult age. The aim of the thesis is to determine what the specifics of therapeutic support for adults with a severe handicap are, and how professionals adapt their specialized care to the fact that their clients are adults. To obtain the data for the purposes of the thesis, a qualitatively oriented research has been conducted, using semi-structured interviews with teachers and social service workers who have been involved with severely disabled adults for a long time. Data has been analyzed by methods of open and axial coding, which are part of the grounded theory. Other methods of data collection utilized for thesis processing include content analysis of specialized literature, content analysis of service users' documentation, and participant observation. The data obtained suggests that professional support of adults with mental and multiple disabilities must take into account both the specific level of development needs of these individuals, and their physical age. A significant component of the professional care is creating a relationship to the disabled person as an equal partner.

Dans le domaine de la conception d’Interfaces Homme-Système (IHS), un des concepts clés est celui de la Conception Centrée Utilisateurs (CCU), qui place les utilisateurs au centre de la démarche. Bien que cette démarche constitue une avancée considérable pour proposer des solutions qui répondent aux besoins et aux attentes des utilisateurs finaux, elle n’est pas totalement adaptée lorsque ces derniers présentent des déficiences multiples. Egalement, malgré les bénéfices de la CCU, il est constaté que les concepteurs demeurent peu nombreux à appliquer cette démarche, l’utilisation d’approches plus classiques restant encore dominante. Les concepteurs sont peu sensibilisés à la prise en compte des utilisateurs finaux, encore moins lorsque ceux-ci présentent des déficiences.Face à ces constats, notre travail s’est articulé selon deux axes réalisés en parallèle. Nous avons élaboré et formalisé une méthode de conception systémique d’IHS : AMICAS (Approche Méthodologique Innovante de Conception Adaptée Systémique), afin de permettre la conception d’outils et services adaptés aux utilisateurs finaux, quelles que soient leurs spécificités. Cette méthode a été testée auprès d’enfants en situation de multihandicap dans un contexte scolaire et de personnes âgées en institution. En parallèle, nous avons élaboré un système d’aide à la décision, à destination des concepteurs d’IHS, afin de les sensibiliser à la prise en compte des utilisateurs finaux et de leurs déficiences dans les démarches de conception. Au regard des résultats obtenus, nous proposons en synthèse une version améliorée de la méthode de conception AMICAS et une mise en ligne de notre système d’aide. / In the field of Human-System Interface (HSI) design, one key concept is the User-Centred Design (UCD), an approach that considers the user as the centre of the design process. Although this approach is a significant advance to provide solutions that meets the needs and expectations of end-users, it is not totally suitable for end-users with multiple disabilities. Moreover, despite the benefits of the UCD, only few designers apply this approach. The use of standard approaches remains dominant. There is a general lack of awareness among designers on how take account of end-users, even less when the end-users have multiples disabilities.In view of these observations, our work has been structured to two main axes, conducted in parallel. We have elaborated and formalized design method of HSI, named AMICAS (Innovative Methodological Approach of Adapted Systemic Design), in order to design tools or services adapted for users, whatever their disabilities are. This method has been tested to children with multiple disabilities in educational context and with elderly in care homes. Also, we have developed a decision support tool. The purpose of this tool is to help designers to take into account end-users and their disabilities into the design stage. Based on the results, we suggest in synthesizing an improved version of AMICAS and we have published the decision support tool online.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:46:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4499.pdf: 1267353 bytes, checksum: 547920f26358fbfed66010786411fd00 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-27 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / The present work aims to describe and analyse communication and social interaction strategies of a female child, who was four years old in the beginning of the research, with multiple disabilities; visual impairment (congenital blindness), associated with physical disability (paraparesis), with a non-confirmed diagnosis of toxoplasmosis and citomegalovirus. The road to this identification is the playful interaction, in intervention situation, realized in conformity with the needs and initiatives of the child. Thus, the interaction becomes the way to identify signs, sometimes subtle, as forms of expression, which generally go unnoticed. The child received care in an institution which was linked to the Municipal Secretariat of Health from a medium-sized city of the State of São Paulo. Since the child feared being touched, as well as touching unknown objects, and great difficulty to communicate, the search for communicative signs was chosen. These signs expressed by the child when noticed by the interlocutor, may help the interactions and, therefore, her development. By considering the sensorial ways of perception which the people with visual impairment have, this work searches, in the last instance, subsidies to their scholar inclusion. The proposal is justified through the fact that while the visual images are enough for the immediate comprehension of the child with no visual impairment, subsidied by the sensorial integration given by sight, the child with visual impairment needs more specific contextualizations. In the beginning, a period of familiarization with the child was realized, in which the interaction with her was tried to be established, so that she would trust the researcher. To the collect of the data, individual interviews with the participant's mother were made, through means of adjustments of the "Educational Evaluation of Students with Low Vision and Multiple Disabilities in Childhood Education" instrument )developed by Bruno, 2005), to the research's objectives and to the mother's vocabulary, with the purpose of identifying aspects of the child's development, as well as her interest centers and situations which generate pleasure or discomfort to the child. afterwards, the sessions of intervention/teaching proposal were made, also aiming to identify the child's interest centers as well as communicative signs expressed by her. Transcriptions of the individual interviews with the mother and the categorization of communicative behaviors during the period of intervention which demonstrated pleasure or discomfort were made for the analysis of the data. Results point to the importance of vocalization and physical contact allied as helpers of the interaction and communication with and by the child. / O presente trabalho tem como finalidade descrever e analisar estratégias de comunicação e interação social de uma criança do sexo feminino, com quatro anos de idade no início da pesquisa, com deficiência múltipla; deficiência visual (cegueira congênita), e deficiência física (paraparesia) associadas, com diagnóstico não confirmado de toxoplasmose e citomegalovírus. O caminho para essa identificação é a interação lúdica, em situações de intervenção, realizadas em conformidade com as necessidades e iniciativas da criança. A interação, portanto, passa a ser a via para identificar sinais, por vezes sutis, como formas de expressão que geralmente passam despercebidas. A criança recebia atendimento em uma instituição vinculada à Secretaria Municipal de Saúde de uma cidade de médio porte do Estado de São Paulo. Como a criança tinha receio de receber toque, assim como de tocar objetos desconhecidos, e muita dificuldade para comunicar-se, optou-se pela busca por sinais comunicativos. Esses sinais expressados pela criança quando compreendidos pelo interlocutor, podem favorecer as interações e, por conseguinte, seu desenvolvimento. Ao considerar as vias sensoriais de percepção de que dispõem as pessoas com deficiência visual, esse trabalho busca, em última instância, subsídios para sua efetiva inclusão escolar. A proposta justifica-se pelo fato de que enquanto as imagens visuais são suficientes para a compreensão imediata da criança sem deficiência visual, subsidiada pela integração sensorial fornecida pela visão, a criança com deficiência visual necessita de contextualizações mais específicas. Inicialmente, foi realizado um período de familiarização com a criança, em que se buscou estabelecer interações com ela, visando sua confiança na pesquisadora. Para a coleta de dados foram realizadas entrevistas individuais com a mãe da participante, por meio de ajustes ao instrumento Avaliação Educacional de Alunos Com Baixa Visão e Múltipla Deficiência na Educação Infantil (desenvolvido por Bruno, 2005), aos objetivos da pesquisa e ao vocabulário da mãe, com a finalidade de identificar aspectos do desenvolvimento da criança, bem como seus centros de interesse e situações que gerassem agrado ou desconforto à criança. Posteriormente, foram feitas as sessões de intervenção/proposta de ensino, visando também identificar centros de interesse da criança, bem como sinais comunicativos expressados por ela. Para a análise dos dados foram feitas transcrições das entrevistas individuais com a mãe e a categorização de comportamentos comunicativos da criança durante o período de intervenção (que indicassem agrado ou desconforto). Os resultados apontam para a importância da vocalização aliada ao contato físico como favorecedores da interação e comunicação com e pela criança.