Abstract:

Many of the persons with disabilities are still away from education in developing countries. It is because most of them cannot recognize their rights, particularly in third world countries. This study is an effort to depict the current situation of awareness among persons with disabilities about their primary rights as well as to identify the most and least awared segment of disabled population of their rights. The study was descriptive in nature and survey method was applied to collect data from randomly selected 106 persons with disabilities, which were visually impaired, hearing impaired and physically handicapped. Forty six disabled persons were working in different fields and sixty disabled persons were studying in different colleges of Lahore and Okara. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data. Validity of research instrument was scored by Chronbach Alpha and its turnout was 0.77. The collected data was analyzed by taking frequencies and percentages of the obtained responses. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to find the difference in the awareness level of different categories of disabled persons about their basic rights. Results showed that visually impaired persons were more aware of their basic rights than other persons with disabilities. The study showed that persons with hearing impairment had less awareness of their rights. Conclusion also represented that persons with disabilities were well aware of their financial and educational rights like quota, educational provision and employment opportunities given by the Govt. of Punjab, but on the other hand, they had poor awareness of their social and safety rights as self respect, equality and job security. Recommendations were made on the basis of conclusions. Media may perform its role to aware the persons with disabilities about their fundamental rights.

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