Search

People with intellectual disabilities often experience difficulties in wayfinding tasks which obstructs active participation. They typically rely on landmarks but have difficulties in identifying appropriate landmarks on their own. To this aim a concept for an augmented reality application is presented which allows people with intellectual disabilities to train landmark-based navigation based on routes selected together with a guiding person. To enhance training motivation gamification elements are incorporated.

Personal hygiene and grooming involve a variety of behaviors that should be performed regularly to support physical health and social inclusion. Sufficient personal hygiene and grooming practices can be difficult for people with intellectual disabilities to attain due to deficits in motor, communication, and cognitive abilities. This chapter outlines evidence-based approaches to teaching a variety of grooming and hygiene practices, including dressing, oral hygiene, menstrual care, handwashing, bathing, grooming, and toileting. The chapter begins by describing general evidence-based approaches, commonly implemented in the teaching of personal hygiene tasks and concludes by summarizing the available evidence supporting their effectiveness for use across specific personal hygiene activities with people with intellectual disabilities.

Employment opportunities for disabled people are limited, and the employment rates are far below that of the wider population. Employment rates are in particular low among people with intellectual disabilities. The vast majority is occupied at day activity centres or in segregated, sheltered settings with no pay or a low ‘encouragement’ pay. In Norway, the country from which the concrete facts of this chapter are drawn, people with intellectual disabilities appear to be on a ‘fast track’ to the disability pension, leading to low priority in the system for employment supports. This chapter addresses typical positive functions of work in the everyday life of adults and asks if the occupation of people with intellectual disability can fulfil such functions. This is partly dependent on to what extent it is perceived as work. Perceptions and priorities among individuals themselves appear to vary, and six different coping strategies with accompanying self-presentations are discussed. Some individuals find current work stigmatising, others enjoy the activities or the social network, and some argue that they prefer this to doing nothing. Some individuals exit work because they do not regard the work they are offered as real, and that ‘pretend work’ is more stigmatising than not working. ‘Family resemblance’ with common perceptions of work appears to be a key point.

There have been few products or research efforts on designing for people with intellectual disabilities. The caretaking companies have no enough caretakers to keep an eye on the clients with intellectual disabilities, who are suffering from circadian rhythm disorder. We report on the design of a system to detect the sleeping behavior of people with intellectual disabilities in the daytime. The system utilizes an inexpensive 2D camera with computer vision techniques to track whether a user is falling asleep. The system wakes up the clients gradually in several steps when a long-time sleeping is detected. Our study explores taking eye aspect ratio, head orientation as inputs, and a support vector machine to managing complex situations in real life.

Compared with the general population, people with intellectual disabilities have worse health, lower levels of activity, and greater barriers to participating in fitness activities. Regular physical activity has positive effects on cardiovascular and psychosocial health and thus it is important to identify effective interventions for people with intellectual disabilities in everyday settings. In this position paper we present the design and development of prototypes of game-based eHealth solutions for behaviour change and health promotion by influencing physical activity. Participatory design and agile development have been applied in this project to deliver a system based on three solutions to promote, motivate and maintain physical activity in people with intellectual disabilities: Guided in-door bicycle exercise, guided out-door exercise and guided mild workouts. All the solutions provide virtual environments and motivation features adapted to people with intellectual disabilities for better engagement.

This project intends to revisit the experience of inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in college grounds by undergraduate students, using a robot built with economical and accessible materials, regardless of their economy and educational level. The main objective of this research is to analyze and contrast the meanings that has for university students and young people with intellectual disabilities the development of a robot of materials accessible to anyone. In order to achieve the previous a methodology based on science fiction prototyping (SFP) was used. The participants built a cardboard robot with simple electric circuits and LEDs in order to empower the participants with cognitive disabilities, with the help of an undergraduate student. The analysis was focused on four axes: perception of the workshop, enjoyment, learning, and motivation and engagement. It was found that this workshop encourages the university students to support the participant with cognitive disabilities, feeling excited and grateful for the possibility of collaborating with people with different conditions. On the other hand, the young people with disabilities realized about their capabilities (it is common that their families are distrustful and negative about their changes to achieve an objective or task) and that science is not necessarily far from them.

The following article presents the characterization of the Integral Foundation for the Special Child - FINE (Pomasqui, Ecuador) users and the selection of pedagogical models to guide the design, monitoring, evaluation, and formulation of training plans for the development of socio-cognitive skills in people with intellectual disabilities. To define the socio-cognitive characteristics and needs of users, their records and the cards issued by the Ministry of Public Health - MSP was reviewed by the foundation. Among the most relevant results, it was determined that the study population requires extensive support systems considering the various dimensions of human functioning. The use of an educational model based on multiple intelligences accompanied by a socio-ecological disability model that emphasizes the fit between the person and the environment, with a multidimensional approach, is recommended according to the new disability paradigm.

Stigmatization is a complex process that emerges in manifold forms in a variety of social contexts. This paper sheds light on people with intellectual disabilities (ID) who are often affected by numerous negative prejudices which can lead to restrictions of human rights and various forms of social discrimination. This qualitative focus group study aims to examine perceived stigmatization experiences by people with ID when using and accessing the Internet. Besides, this study focuses on respondents’ behavior and coping strategies to deal with perceived stigmatizations. Therefore, data from a focus group study with 50 participants with ID (23 males, 27 females, aged between 18 and 35) conducted in 2018 was secondary analyzed for this paper. Findings show that participants are well aware of stigmatization by their social environment (e.g., parents, caregivers). Issues include incompetence, lack of media literacy, weak cognitive skills and low decision making abilities. The results also indicate that participants react in different ways to perceived stigmatization. In this paper, we analyze behavior characteristics and arrange them into three different user types: “the Anxious Avoider, “the Help-Seeking-Realist”, and “the Confident All-Rounder”. The three different types differ in terms of Internet usage and coping strategies.

The transition into work is challenging for people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and there are few digital services that support this process. The transition involves several organizations and professionals that need to collaborate and coordinate their documentation and their initiatives. This prototype paper describes a self-reflective career tool designed to support young adults with ID towards self-determination and transitions into work. The users are supported through features such as mapping of interests, skills and abilities, goal setting and progress overview. The prototype of the self-reflective career tool has been evaluated formatively and is continuously redesigned and further developed. User tests have shown the importance of enabling an understanding of concepts such as skills, preferences and goals in regard to working life. The tool transfers the ownership of the information to the young adults and enables the users to identify, articulate and present their abilities in a visual and customizable manner.

Labor market insertion of persons with disabilities is a great challenge. It is a societal imperative of ensuring that all citizens can take part in society seeking social equity. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to contribute to the labor insertion processes of persons with intellectual disabilities through the implementation of a mobile application for the development of cognitive skills through the resolution of time sequences and the revision of vocabulary that represent specific work scenarios. For the development of the application, the user centered design approach of iPlus methodology is followed. This article illustrates the development of the application using iPlus.

This chapter provides a selective review of research about the problem-solving and working memory of people with intellectual disabilities. This scholarship is viewed through the lens of Norman Ellis’s empirical and theoretical studies of the determinants of intelligence-related differences in memory performance. The chapter begins by describing a theory of problem-solving that accounts for constraints on working memory. It then proceeds to review Ellis’s (Handbook of mental deficiency, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 134–158, 1963; International review of research in mental retardation, New York: Academic Press, pp. 1–32, 1970) research on structural and strategic aspects of intelligence-related differences in memory performance. The latter work spawned decades of research about the influence of strategic and self-management processes on the problem-solving and memory of people with intellectual disabilities. The chapter concludes by briefly reviewing current scholarship about the self-determination of people with intellectual disabilities. As the reader will see, the interest in self-determination reflects the zeitgeist of self-advocacy as well as the historical interest in self-management and problem-solving.

Today, the development of special-purpose software for helping People with Intellectual Disabilities (PID) in their daily life and professional activities is a very active trend. Various testing systems with simplified text, images or videos are used to analyze problems, interests, and preferences of the PID related to their daily life or professional activities. However, in relation to the PID, the credibility of the test results might strongly depend on how much they understand the testing process and how they interpret questions and choose the answers.

Being able to travel in public transportation autonomously is one daily task that doesn’t imply any special effort or learning process for most of the human population. But, for people with intellectual disabilities, it requires an extensive learning process where many possible situations should be considered before the person can perform successfully this task. Currently these people are taught by specialists following supervised learning methodologies in real environments. But, through the use of immersive virtual reality and interaction within a virtual world, they could be trained in a safe environment, increasing their self-confidence in a saver and quicker way. This paper describes the creation of a customized simulator that prepares subjects to use the bus as a means of transportation in a medium-size city. The design of the virtual reality environment and the interaction mechanics is thought to be highly customizable for each subject with a very realistic environment, thanks to the use of photogrammetric digitalization technologies. The environment has been developed in Unreal engine and uses the head mounted display Oculus rift, as well as Oculus touch for interaction with the different assets.

The denial of citizenship to people with intellectual disabilities makes them among the most marginalised in every nation. Their exclusion comes from the persistent stigma associated with this disability, their assumed helplessness and the lack of self-advocacy. Their citizenship needs to become an international imperative, not least because more equal societies benefit everyone. It could be realised by ensuring that interventions to ameliorate the disability are available to infants and families and that all children have access to education and to productive employment in adulthood. More fundamentally it requires changed mindsets; new media images of persons with this disability and persistent challenges to discriminatory practices. Yet the most profound action is also the simplest: parents and professionals treating each person as though they are already a citizen.

Many a person with intellectual disabilities (PID) will experience various problems in daily life. The use of mobile applications can help PIDs to cope with these problems and feel more confident. At the present time, the number of applications (apps) that are intended to support the everyday life of PID is growing rapidly. However, different PIDs have different capabilities and limitations. Focusing on a certain category of PID significantly limits the usage of such apps. On the other hand, attempts to cater to a wide range of disabilities can make the app less suitable for most of them. Meanwhile, most PIDs have caregivers who are well aware of the capabilities and limitations of their clients and, if allowed to, would be able to customize mobile apps for each individual user. This situation makes it possible to develop apps for PID that are adaptable by their caregivers.

Aggression and tantrumming behaviors are among the more common topographies of challenging behavior observed in individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID). First, this chapter defines and describes these challenging behaviors. Next, risk factors and adverse outcomes associated with aggression and tantrumming are reviewed. Finally, evidence-based approaches that involve psychological and educational treatment components aimed at reducing these challenging behaviors are presented with examples from research involving people across a range of ID severity and age. Specifically, functional assessment followed by function-matched treatment options is covered.

The concluding chapter discusses future trends in research and application for people with intellectual disabilities. Although predicting what might happen in the dynamic fields of research, education, and social policy development is always hazardous, there are trends in all fields that can lead to improvement in assessment, diagnosis, medical, educational, therapy, service delivery, and policy development. Given the direction of professional trends, there can be reasonable speculation about the direction of the field. This chapter also discusses some of the aspects of prevention and prophylactic treatment to reduce problematic behaviours and increase quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities, their families, and communities. Ultimately, improvement of service delivery for people with intellectual disabilities will depend on the ability of professionals, parents, individuals with intellectual disabilities, policymakers, and other stakeholders to implement the advances in research and the ability of educators and service providers to guide future directions in research.

This chapter is concerned with how family caregivers respond to the sexuality of their adult children with intellectual disability (ID) in the context of the provision of lifelong care. We note that families receive little support in their caring task and that their responses, arising from the responsibility that they feel to protect their seemingly vulnerable disabled family member, are to contain sexuality and to limit or forbid sexual expression. This curtails the sexual rights and full citizenship of adults with ID and raises questions as to how these rights could be addressed with due consideration for the family’s needs. We suggest that the relationship between caregiver and the disabled family member should be the central focus of this discussion within a feminist ethics of care.

Educating people with intellectual disabilities (ID) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a non-trivial process and differs from the learning methods of typically developed people. Recently, serious games (SGs) have been used to enhance the learning process of these groups and address different skills. On the other hand, blended learning (BL) is applied to formal and informal educational contexts and combines face-to-face and online learning. In this study, we examine if SGs can provide the necessary means for applying BL, especially for people with ID or ASD that could be benefited by personalized learning opportunities. In addition, we examine 43 existing SGs for people with ID or ASD, as well as the perceptions of 93 special education professionals (SEP) and teachers (SET) working in schools and institutions for people with ID or ASD regarding the role of technology and SGs in their education. We concluded that SGs could enhance the learning process of people with ID or ASD in many skills. In addition, the opinions of SEP and SET regarding the importance of technology in the learning process of people with ID or ASD and the familiarity with SGs, indicate that BL could be effectively promoted through SGs.

Children and young adults with intellectual disabilities experience problems to go from one place to another using public transport because of the complexity of its network. Different learning activities are practiced in order to make them learn a path and to take the right bus. For example, the creation of small paper books as learning tools which describe the actions to do in a chaining way using pictograms, texts, colors, landmarks, photos and times. Additionally, specialists do the path as many times as it is necessary with the children completing the learning process. However, unexpected situations while the person is doing the path by himself can induce to errors not allowing the person to arrive to the destination. In order to help people to reduce the errors and to propose a learning tool, an app called “Assist Motion” has been created. This work has been done in collaboration between ADAPEI Belfort and Altran Technology. The app was developed in Android operating system with the function to save the steps of the path with specific information and to reuse it to visualize the different steps sequentially as a learning tool. This information associated to the GPS coordinates proposes navigation, emergency and surveillance systems. Tests with specialists and disabled children have been done showing a good acceptance of our first approach.

The LIT (Labour Interest Test) for people with intellectual disabilities is an online test that probes interest for different labour opportunities. This test is based upon an earlier test, made by Lamings and Hezemans, a test which is frequently used for career counseling and guidance of people with intellectual disabilities, but which lacks theoretical basis and empirical validation. Therefore, in-dept interviews with the job coaches, observations during the test and statistical analysis led to suggestions for improvement and updating the test which were tested in several iterations. This paper focuses on the process through which these changes were made and the stakeholders who were involved in this process.

Limited communication abilities are associated with important psychosocial challenges and people with intellectual disability (ID) are no strangers to this reality. Interventions involving specialized high-tech augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems have shown positive outcomes but important difficulties involving access, maintenance and social acceptability are experienced. Mainstream mobile technology has been suggested in response to these issues. This retrospective and exploratory multi-case study reports on the experience of 7 adults with ID who used an iPad® as a AAC. Descriptive analyses showed an increase in use of tablets as AAC, compared to their prior specialized system, as well as gains in expressive and general communication abilities. These results suggest that tablets may be an efficient tool to support communication needs for people with ID and can contribute to their social as well as their digital inclusion.

In order to enable or facilitate online communication for people with Intellectual Disabilities, the Text-to-Pictograph translation system automatically translates Dutch written text into a series of Sclera or Beta pictographs. The baseline system presents the reader with a more or less verbatim pictograph-per-word translation. As a result, long and complex input sentences lead to long and complex pictograph translations, leaving the end users confused and distracted. To overcome these problems, we developed a rule-based simplification system for Dutch Text-to-Pictograph translation. Our evaluations show a large improvement over the baseline.

Our society is radically changing at an astonishing rate essentially, due to the fact that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are becoming an ever greater part of our lives. The frenetic rhythm at which the technology has evolved in recent years, has caused a significant separation between individuals who use communication technologies and those who don’t. There is a technological gap, and most of the time it’s because of the inadequacy both of the hardware and the software currently present for people with different levels of disability. This article discusses the use of a new visual language, known as VILA (VIsual LAnguage), to resolve the accessibility problems that people with certain types of disabilities have when they use ICTs to access to information and knowledge society and to communicate with other people under equal terms. We also present a first evaluation of a software prototype performed by a group of trainers specialized in children with Down syndrome to demonstrate their utility and the application fields of the language, as well as its advantages.

In this paper an accessible Web application that uses icons instead of text to performed YouTube video search, called SAMi, is presented. With this iconic interaction Web application (SAMi), we aimed to develop universal access on the Web, by presenting an alternative way of Web search (without using text); to be a starting point for the definition of an accessible interaction metaphor, based on universal design iconography for digital environments; and ultimately, to contribute to the democratization of access to the Web for all users, regardless of the degree of literacy. The main results obtained with the user test evaluation were: first-rate performance, higher satisfaction and total autonomy in their interaction with SAMi.

Several “high-tech” assistive technologies are currently used in the field of rehabilitation to support the achievement of daily activities. These technologies have proven to be especially effective when used with persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). It is important, however, to consider the interactions between the technology and the people to determine which conditions to set up to optimize the impacts of this intervention method. This case study on using computerized guidance modalities in the performance of a daily living activity will help create a first schematic of the interactions between the users and their environment.

The comprehensive realization of social participation for all individuals is a particular challenge in which the working world proves to be an important sphere. Despite normative reference points through socio-political innovations, people with intellectual disabilities and a high need for support are particularly excluded. Even in sheltered workshops, this group of people is excluded from participating in work as the challenges of life and labor in the 21st century are becoming ever more complex and the demands of production and business stricter. As a result, people with intellectual disabilities and a high need for support often fall off the radar in current inclusion efforts and – despite legal obligations – do not receive adequate support to participate in work. To counteract the negligence and tacit acceptance of the deprivation of a large part of the sheltered workshop employees – in the sense of social affiliation by work participation – design options for promoting work participation require careful consideration. This paper analyses the use and impact of technical assistance to promote work participation for people with intellectual disabilities and high support needs and reports the results of a field study on the use of technical assistance in a sheltered workshop.

Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has created new imperatives for thinking about decision making and people with intellectual disabilities. In this chapter, we consider the emerging evidence about decision support and the practice of supported decision making developed from our programme of research at La Trobe University in Australia. The overarching aim of our research programme has been to understand what constitutes good decision support practice, how to guide the practice of supporters, how the quality of practice might be judged and how to protect people with disabilities from abuse by holding supporters accountable for their practice. Drawing on our research findings on people with intellectual disabilities, we consider the issues supporters grapple with to provide support that respects the will and preferences of people with intellectual disabilities and their right to participate in decision making about their lives.

This chapter will draw upon some of my recent work with colleagues in Sheffield and Manchester in Britain (www.dishuman.com) and in response to some inspiring writers and writings. Drawing on research projects and intellectual moments of engagement, the chapter considers the ways in which disability disavows normative constructions of the human. I use the term disavowal in its original psychoanalytic sense of the word: to simultaneously and ambivalently desire and reject something (in this case, the human). I will then clarify and expand upon this disavowal—with explicit reference to the politics of people with intellectual disabilities (Throughout the chapter I will use interchangeably the terms “learning disability” and “intellectual disability” to acknowledge the ways in which their different usage reflects different national contexts. Learning disability is preferred in Britain whereas intellectual disability is used in Australia and the USA)—and make a case for the ways in which the human is (1) a category through which social recognition can be gained and (2) a classification requiring expansion, extension, and disruption. Indeed, an under-girding contention of this chapter is that people with intellectual disabilities are already engaged in what we might term a post-human politics from which all kinds of human can learn. The chapter outlines seven reasons why we should ask what it means to be human. Then we will move to focus on four very human elements—support, frailty, capacity, and desire—and disability’s place in redefining these elements.

This chapter looks at some of the impulses that drove the movement to privilege and protect ‘healthy minds’, by segregating people with intellectual disabilities to prevent their ‘breeding’. It argues that the desire to prevent childbearing and child-rearing remains today, although the means of prevention are less obvious. Efforts to change this state of affairs, such as normalisation/social role valorisation, rely, not on challenging the fundamental undervaluing of people with intellectual disabilities, but on persuading people to ‘pass’ as normal, and persuading others to support such passing by offering and talking up ‘valued social roles’.

Staff training is considered vital in ensuring high-quality services for people with intellectual disabilities. Staff supervision and management are also important for maintaining effective high-quality care for people with intellectual disabilities. This chapter will focus on brief staff training programs particularly in relation to care staff who work directly with people who have intellectual disability, challenging behavior, and or mental health issues. Training of this type typically focuses on changes in behavior, knowledge, attributions, and confidence of care staff with a view to improving the quality of care provided by staff. The efficacy of these approaches will be considered. Recent developments in the management and supervision for this group will also be discussed as important methods for enhancing and maintaining the impact of training.

Given two sets A and B, often the question arises how far objects a of A and b of B can be combined to a pair (a,b), fulfilling certain requirements. A first example is the marriage problem, another, the successful assignment of scientific projects to the needs of small or medium-sized enterprises. A third example, which motivated this study, arises from the project iBaMs–Barriere-Reduced Machines in Innovative Interaction. This project was aiming at promoting social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities and their integration into labor markets and everyday activities. Especially, the project iBaMs “examines the preconditions and requirements for the development of control panels for computer-numerical-controlled (CNC) machines” (Wiesner-Steiner et al., Proceedings of the International Conferences Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2014, Game and Entertainment Technologies 2014, and Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing, pp 54–61, 2014). On the one hand, different control panels can be identified and characterized by a set of indicators. On the other hand, classifications of people with intellectual disabilities are available, leading to a profile of skills. The question arises on how optimal control panels based on indicators can be assigned to the profile of skills of employees. This assignment is called a matching between optimal control panels and profiles of skills. A first approach will be discussed on how this matching can be performed. It turns out that the Copeland index (Al-Sharrah J Chem Inf Model 50(5):785–791, 2010; Saari and Merlin, J Econ Theory 8:51–76, 1996) in its simplified form can be applied to answer the question.

Our review examines the literature on Serious Games used as learning tools for people with intellectual disabilities. Although intellectual disabilities are a very broad field where each individual has very specific characteristics, it would be beneficial to have general evidence-based recommendations about how to design videogames adapted to their cognitive requirements. Thus, the first step of our investigation is to identify and review the available literature on Serious Games for intellectual disabilities classifying them according to the learning outcomes associated. Search terms identified 43 papers covering this topic and our review presents the initial results. A second aim is to understand the mechanics designed, the methods used in the investigation and the data obtained. The final goal is to identify what is working in this kind of games and how this can be generalized into a methodology to simplify the creation of more effective games for people with intellectual disabilities.

The current research focuses on building a set of games for training and improving people’s cognitive abilities with intellectual disabilities. Serious games (SGs) can be an effective training coaching and assistance method for persons with intellectual disabilities because they are effective learning tools that motivate students. The application to stimulate cognitive abilities development consists of 22 mini-games hosted on the LudoMinga platform. For better development in the environment, it is essential that people with intellectual disabilities develop cognitive functions, understood as the mental processes necessary to carry out any task, enabling the reception, selection, transformation, storage, processing, and retrieval of information. For the development of the application, the user-centered design approach of the iPlus methodology is followed. This article illustrates the development of the application using iPlus.

This article describes the experiences, initiatives and advances in disability issues for external consumers at a university in Ecuador, which has promoted collaboration agreements with various institutions. This synergy has allowed technological solutions to be developed in the field of disability. These include software for blind students, an augmentative communication board app for people with hearing disabilities, a telerehabilitation platform using the Kinect sensor for those with physical disabilities, a literacy kit with tangible interfaces and RFID sensors. Also, an inclusive board for people with intellectual disabilities which integrates Braille code, QR codes and augmented reality. These technologies have transcended academic frontiers and today, thanks to projects of connection with society, they support a vulnerable and traditionally forgotten population. In terms of educational inclusion, figures and initiatives that the university carries out through its Academic Department and Research Institute are presented. In the workplace, the institution developed a MOOC platform to raise awareness on the treatment of people with disabilities, through which nearly 800,000 public sector workers have been trained. Thanks to all these technological initiatives, a teleworking proposal was generated, which is still in development to connect people with disabilities and companies in carrying out intellectual tasks through a technological platform. The result of all these initiatives has left gratifying experiences and increasingly higher challenges in favor of educational and labor inclusion, especially of people with disabilities where there are more barriers in society than due to their abilities.

Nowadays, checking the ease of interaction with a serious game is a tremendous challenge for universal design and accessibility experts. Therefore, accessibility in this context means that people with intellectual disabilities can easily navigate and interact in a web application. Accessibility is an essential parameter to consider in each software development phase with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. As a case study, it was applied to the Ludominga platform. Accessibility experts defined 18 guidelines to evaluate ten serious games with a manual method. This research can serve as a reference for future work related to accessibility in serious web-based games.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, approximately 12% of the population has some type of disability, 80% of them are unemployed and the 20% who have a job do not have the same conditions as the rest of the employees. To address this, public policies have been proposed and implemented with a focus on the labor insertion of people with disabilities. In this context, people living with a disability find it more difficult to find a job. They are less likely to be employed compared to people without disabilities. This article analyzes the employment of people with disabilities in Ecuador. Since Ecuador is considered a developing country, employment plays a fundamental role in the economic development of the population, particularly of people with disabilities. We want to identify the occupation rate in the formal market in Ecuador, establishing the percentage of participation by type of disability. In addition, an analysis will be carried out according to the affiliated institution in which it is active. The research is descriptive, and the data recorded in official sources were analyzed. We conclude that the employment rate of people with disabilities is only 15.3%, and that people with intellectual disabilities have the lowest employability rate, at 7.5%.

This chapter relates to the inclusive or democratic turn in social science research. Increasingly, researchers are seeking to shift the dynamics of research production away from doing research on people, mining them for information, and towards researching with participants and recognizing that research needs to be purposeful and beneficial for participants. One important way of doing this is by creating vibrant interactive spaces in which best use can be made of participants’ potential not just to contribute, but to learn from each other’s contributions and come to know themselves and their own situation a little better. Focus groups can create these spaces, especially when the researcher is alert to their inclusive and transformative potential and open to the idea of hybrids of focus groups and other methods. Taking a Freirean approach to the focus group method, the authors have been using focus groups to support participants’ power in the research process. This comes through embracing the praxis of defining their focus collaboratively and by embedding the research authority in the interactive space between individuals. The chapter shows how focus groups can be political or playful as a means of co-production. This will be illustrated using data from studies involving people with intellectual disabilities, where the mutual support among those in dialogue is evident. The authors argue that the experience of taking part in focus groups enhances the social inclusion of those involved.

This chapter reviews developments in the conceptualization of self-injurious behavior throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Self-injury was identified as a phenomenon distinct from attempted suicide from the early years of modern psychiatry. We trace the evolution of conceptualizations of self-injury and its relationship to attempted suicide from the eclectic empiricism of the nineteenth century and into a period of psychoanalytic theorization in the early twentieth century, and then describe the challenges to psychoanalytic theory from applied behavior analysis and the concept of behavioral phenotypes in the second half of that century. The chapter also traces parallel developments in thinking regarding self-injurious behavior engaged in by people with intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum conditions, and other neurodevelopmental conditions. As atypicality in aspects of neurodevelopment has increasingly been implicated in the pathogenesis of mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, which are also associated with non-suicidal self-injury, the chapter also briefly reviews arguments for and against considering self-injurious behavior in persons with conditions associated with childhood developmental disabilities as a phenomenon distinct from deliberate self-harm in the broader population.

In this paper, we aimed at exploring the use of iconographic navigation to support inclusive and accessible search for Web content through an extension for Google Chrome browser, entitled Extension Icon. Despite Extension Icon was developed to be a solution that allows people with intellectual disabilities to search autonomously using an iconographic navigation, supported by platforms as Vimeo and YouTube, it intends to be an accessible solution for ALL users. Through participatory design, the solution was iteratively developed and with the outcomes it was obtained two versions of this solution.

International audience; Being able to move independently is a skill that seems necessary for social inclusion and participation. However, people with intellectual disabilities often face difficulties in developing autonomous mobility. Similarly, existing mobile navigation aid systems, which could help them to move from one place to another, are not adapted to their cognitive specificities. The purpose of this paper is to present an ontology of spatial navigation established to serve as a basis for the development of mobility aid systems adapted to people presenting an intellectual disability. It presents the method used to create the ontology, a representative extract of the ontology obtained and an illustration of the use of the ontology for the development of a mobility aid system. The limitations of the ontology and future work are also discussed.

Becoming a parent is an intense transition and is often seen as a highly regarded social role. However, this choice is challenging for many people with (intellectual) disabilities. This chapter will examine the history and research concerning the choice to become a parent. The focus will be on people with intellectual disability and borderline intellectual functioning. The chapter will consider choices within a relational context, exploring the role that parents, caregivers, support workers, child protection services, government, and society play in the parenting choices adults with ID make. We will describe approaches to providing education, services (including using specialized intervention and tools), and support for parenting choices.