Overcoming barriers to inclusive mobility: Experience of disabled people in Tertiary Institutions of Kano, Nigeria / Ahmed Abubakar

For persons with disabilities Mobility is an essential part of their inclusive participation. Yet, the environment still presents one of the unresolved problems of mobility restrictions. This qualitative research explores the mobility experience of staff and students with disabilities to examine why and how disablement is experienced and negotiated in and within educational setting amidst inclusive policies. The aim is to establish a model for overcoming the barriers to the inclusion of disabled people in tertiary institutions in Nigeria, to inform on decision-making in the practice and policy. Data comprise 19 semi-structured interviews with participants from and across two tertiary institutions offering special education at the departmental level in Kano State Nigeria. The multiple embedded approaches reinforced the interview findings from the case study participants. Physical observations in the form of physical accessibility audit checklist (PAAC) and document review are employed as a source of multiple evidences. Data analysed using an interpretative phenomenological approach are within the framework of the social-ecological model to decode the mobility experience using NVivo (version 10). Mobility experience of persons with disabilities emerged, complex and diverse. For interpretation, the experiences of hearing, visually and walking impaired emerged in four levels of influences: Individual, social, physical and policy. Free nodes identified are barriers to disabled peoples’ mobility, barrier impact, and ways to overcome and negotiate the barrier subjectivities. The barriers emerged under psychological, attitudinal, physical and logistical influences. While some barriers are impairment related, there exist impairment and campus specific. From case study site-1, physical barriers are expressed more by the walking impaired, followed by attitudinal, than logistical. In the case study site-2, however, attitudinal barriers frequently emerged from the visually impaired followed by physical barriers. Cross-case analysis revealed the replication logic between intragroup similarities and differences with variations based on degree rather than kind. Overall, the prominently expressed barrier with the greatest impact on disabled people is physical, followed by the attitudinal, while the psychological barrier is the least of their mobility problems. The impact of the barriers on the individual includes loss of confidence, and demotivation, financial burden, physical stress and time constraints. Overcoming barrier subjectivities involve a resilience-based approach and coping strategy through time management and selfmotivation at the individual level. Improving awareness and support, barrier removal and policy improvement and implementation help in overcoming the barrier at the social, physical and policy level respectively. Often, the individuals manage the psychological barriers, but socio-attitudinal at the social level, and socio-spatial barriers at the physical level, as well as a lack of support, communication and policy implementation, becomes impediments to mobility in the form of logistical barriers and they are the hardest to manage by disabled people. The model for overcoming barriers to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in tertiary institutions in Nigeria, have the potential of mitigating problems associated with inequality and disability. These extend at various levels of environmental influence, especially in developing countries and widening participation in the global drive to achieve “education for all”