2023

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Browsing 2023 by Author "FAYYAZ HUSSAIN"

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    Challenges and opportunities for inclusion of persons with visual impairments at higher education
    (UMT Lahore, 2023) FAYYAZ HUSSAIN
    Inclusive Education has become the hot talk among the Educationists, Researchers, Policy makers and the practitioners of the current world of education. The title of this study was “Challenges and Opportunities for Inclusion of Persons with Visual Impairments at Higher Education”. After reviewing the relevant literature, The study was conducted to address the objectives like: Identify the challenges faced by the institutions while providing the facilities of inclusive education to the visually challenged students at higher education level, identify the challenges faced by the faculty members while accommodating the visually challenged students in their class rooms, identify the challenges faced by the sighted students while accommodating the visually challenged students in their class rooms, identify the challenges faced by the visually challenged students at higher education level in Pakistan, document the opportunities of inclusion for the visually challenged students at higher education level, identify gaps between challenges and opportunities available at higher education and recommend measures to bridge the gaps between challenges and opportunities. To fulfil the above research objectives, the data were collected from administrators, faculty members, sighted students and visually challenged students belonging to ten purposively selected HEC recognized institutions of higher education functioning in the city of Lahore. With the major focus on qualitative, data were gathered and analyzed according to the norms of mixed method. Based on results and their conclusions, the gaps between challenges and opportunities of inclusion of the visually challenged students studying at higher education level were identified like: Gap at policy level, gap at campus accessibility level, gap at communication level, gap at awareness level, gap at training level, gap at Subject accessibility level and gap at resources level. To bridge these gaps, recommended measures have been proposed. The study will be beneficial for the students of inclusive education to understand the status of inclusive education in Pakistani institutions of higher learning. It will also help policy makers to revisit their policies in line with the international norms of policy making and implementation. It will not only help the visually challenged students studying in Pakistani universities and colleges in terms of the improvement in inclusive education but also contribute to the general well-being of the society. Despite the mentioned benefits, the study has the limitations of being conducted in Pakistani settings and the results can not be globally generalized. Further, the researcher was himself a visually challenged person, this fact may have caused delays in collecting data from different universities. Further accessibility issues like security enabled PDF documents on the internet, non-compatibility between secure online databases and screen reading software may have caused delays in the process of whole research.