Disability is not Inability

:: WASHINGTON OPIYO JOINS UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI.

Unconfirmed reports say that Washington Opiyo has joined the premier University to pursue parallel a degree course in Sociology. The new student who is deaf and is the current coordinator of disability programme at LVCT learns through a sign language interpreter.

The cost of education for sign language using students has been prohibitive as many universities in kenya are yet to see the need for adjustments to suit people with disabilties.

Many universities are still old versioned and lecturers are heavy with attitude that out side what they know learning cannot take place. They therefore are yet to see the importance of subsidizing costs of adjustments like sign language interpreters.

there is still also resistance to change as many lecturerers are poorly paid in public universities and find it hard to accomodate new teaching methods that may be inclusive to people with disabilties.

Deaf people also have right to equal and affordable higher education. The current push to upgrade polytechnics should consider adjustments for people with disabilties to expand the learning they have in vocational schools. Deaf people need more marketable skills to be able to compete equally for employment.

disabilitykenya.org will be interviewing Washington soon after he has hard one full semester at the university to catch up on the challenges.

As part of the disability manifesto 2007-12 higher education opportunties are one of the requirements to enable people with disabilties compete with others for higher level emplyment opportunties available in Kenya.

There is need also to redefine fees for such students. reports indicate that washington has to pay for the interpreter as part of his tuition fees. This is outrageous since the costs of an interpreter for one one month for quality work cannot be below Kshs. 25,000 or about 400 USD.

Add that to tuition fees for a paralel course, accomodation and transport apart from food and miscellenoues and the costs of four years in university is almost equal to three student in a regular class in the university.

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