Manual signs are an augmentative and alternative communication mode which enables and facilitates communication for persons with impairments in speech, language and hearing. There are different ways of teaching signs to persons with intellectual disabilities. One of them is milieu teaching, which is a method where the teaching takes place in natural settings. This method has proven to give good results in generalization and maintenance. Teaching signs to staff in groups has been shown to be effective.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur några lärare i grundsärskolan arbetar med läsinlärningvad gäller elever med utvecklingsstörning. Studien redogör för deras arbete medläsinlärningsmetoder, läromedel, individanpassning, pedagogiska hjälpmedel samt vilkahinder och möjligheter som uppstår.Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är det sociokulturella perspektivet och vilken ses som enövergripande teori för lärande och utveckling. I studien används kvalitativundersökningsmetod där materialet samlades in med hjälp av intervjuer. Det insamladematerialet analyserades och tolkades utifrån en hermeneutisk ansats.Resultatet visar att läsundervisningen har stor betydelse för elevernas utveckling ochmöjlighet till delaktighet i samhället. Elevernas läsning sågs som en mycket viktig förmåga attutveckla och som kräver erfarenhet och kunskap.

The aim of our study has been to investigate what kind of space there is to exert influence for adult persons with mild intellectual disabilities who live on group housing. We wanted to investigate what kind of hindrance and possibilities there were to exert influence for people on group housing. Our study has been built on qualitative group discussions with 9 persons with mild intellectual disabilities and 6 care-keepers. We have analysed our discussions on the basis of the theory of empowerment. Our result indicates that there is different kind of factors that affect the possibilities for people with mild intellectual disabilities to increase their influence, and it does not always have to do with the disability how the persons can make their voices heard.

AbstractThe purpose of our study was to get a deeper understanding and a better knowledge about the study situation students with disabilities experience at the University of Kristianstad. Our choice was to focus on their experience of the supporting measures, the accessibility and how they felt they were met by both students and teachers. It was a qualitative study and it was based on interviews with eight students with disabilities at the University in Kristianstad. In the study we have used the theoretical concept of empowerment as an analysis tool. The different kinds of support the students with disabilities were using were in common described as positive and the students thought that the supporting measures helped them getting more independent.

Siblings of persons with disabilities tend to be sidelined and not get the same attention in the same amount as the child with the disability gets, both by the parents and the society. Previous research in this area is limited and siblings of people with disabilities and their experiences of support needs to be explored. The purpose of this paper is to learn about support for siblings of people with disabilities in terms of both adult siblings own experiences from his childhood and from practitioners experience. Six qualitative interviews with four adult siblings of people with disabilities and two professionals were interviewed. Systems Theory and Bronfenbrenners ecological model has provided the theoretical basis for the essay.

AbstractDuring my university trip to South Africa I visit a black township called Lingehlile. There I examined the life situation and education for children and youth with mentally disabilities. I was interested in knowing more about what basic condition they have, period of school and what kind of support they get outside the school. The subjects that I have handled are a school for all, support for the person with mentally disabilities and their family, the opinion of the society, education and life after school. I got my result by two interviews.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate teachers? views on play as a method for developing pupil?s communication and interaction in schools for children with severe learning disabilities. I am interested in pupils with autism spectrum disorder and their opportunities for social interaction with peers in playful activities. I focus on the subject communication and the parts about speech, conversation and interaction. My study is based on a qualitative study.

The last 1½ decade young people with intellectual disabilities have been a part of my life. My now 13 year old son and several pupils I have taught as a teacher in the compulsory school. Their future and what will affect their lives has always been interesting to me. How do I affect them, why do I do the things I do and think the way I think? This study springs out of that curiosity.

This present study is a result of a research that I made . My purpose is to find out how the debate about inclusion looked like back in the history. My research was about the view we had absolut inclusion in the history, I also made some interviewes among teachers and students in the schools of today. I wanted to se their views about inclusion today and I wanted to know their opinions about inclusion. Did the students and the teachers have prejudice against other students with functional disabilities as Down syndrom and blindness? What was their thoughts about inclusion of students with differents functional disabilities?One more task I had with this study I made was to raise another debate about inclusion .! Keywords: Inclusion and funtional disabilities.

The aim of our study was to investigate how much self-determination persons with intellectual disabilities living in group-homes have when it comes to recreational activities. We studied what the recreational activities looked like, if there was any self-determination concerning recreational activities and which factors influenced self-determination for persons with intellectual disabilities. We used qualitative interviews with persons with intellectual disabilities, next of kin and personnel at group-homes. The result has been analyzed from earlier research, central concepts as self-determination and recreational activities and the theory of empowerment. The most important results that emerged in our study were; that recreational activities for persons with intellectual disabilities varied substantially, that there is a large number of to recreational activities available and no one seemed directly displeased with their recreational activities.

About 29 000 different services was given by the Swedish welfare state to children with disabilities within the ages 0-22 years before October first in the year 2008. Studies about children with disabilities and their experiences of their situation have rarely been done and it is therefore difficult to know how they think and feel about their lives. Both Swedish law and the UN:s convention about children?s rights states that children have the right to tell their opinion in matters that are of their concern. Thus, we don´t know much about if and how the Swedish welfare state maintain this right towards children with disabilities.

The purpose of the present qualitative study is to create knowledge about librarydigital services and their marketing to patrons with disabilities in Armenia, on theexample of the National Library of Armenia, as well as, to discover opinions of theNLA librarians and patrons with disabilities about the importance of library digitalservices to people with disabilities. Literature review and qualitative interviewing has been employed as methods to collect the empirical data. The results have been analyzed and discussed based on the library-marketing model of marketing research, marketing segmentation, marketing mix strategy and marketing evaluation suggested by Koontz & Gubbin (2010). It has been concluded, that 1) e-accessibility issomething new at the NLA and the NLA does not provide equally available knowledge, resources, services, facilities to patrons with disabilities, because of the following main challenges: lack of continuous funding and support from the state, lack of appropriate facilities and technologies, lack of qualified staff, and historicallyinherited library infrastructure impediments; 2) no library service marketing is conducted to patrons with disabilities at the NLA; 3) the opinions are that provisionwith such services is very important to people with disabilities, since they allow those people to gain access and use information in formats adopted to their various needs, and, of course, they become integrated into the modern society. The important role of a library as a non-discriminator and copyright protector in a developing country when delivering digital library services to patrons with disabilities has also been discovered..

People living with disabilities in our society today are more likely to be without a job compared to the rest of the population. The fact that a high number of people are not given the opportunity to work, and thereby being self-sufficient, is a failure for both the individual and the society. My purpose with the study is to increase knowledge and understanding regarding disabilities in the working life, with focus on the disability dyslexia. In the study, I am investigating the employer?s obligations and rights when employing a person with disabilities.

The aim was to examine writing ability and some of its underlyingfunctions in adults with intellectual or communicative disabilities at dailyactivity centres by comparisons with children and adults without disabilities.66 adults with intellectual or communicative disabilities, 39 children and 14adults without disabilities were included. The following tests/tasks wereexecuted: Test for Reception of Grammar-2, graphomotor task, nonwordrepetition, Rapid Automatized Naming and Writing elicited by pictures. Thepicture elicited narratives were examined regarding length, spelling,syntactic complexity, interpunctuation, content and general impression. Theresults demonstrated that adults at daily activity centres performed lowerscores than adults without disabilities. The group generally didn?t differ fromthe children, but they made a smaller proportion of phonologicallyacceptable misspellings and achieved lower scores on nonword repetitionand Rapid Automatized Naming, which could indicate limitations inphonological processing ability.