Abstract
PurposeThis scoping review aimed to identify the barriers and facilitators to everyday activities and social participation of people with a disability (PWD) during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThe search terms (disability and COVID-19) were used in four databases: CINAHL, Medline (Ovid), EMBASE and Web of Science. The search conducted from January 2019 to September 22, 2020, identified 465 peer reviewed articles and abstracts and were screened in Covidence software. Studies were included if they had the terms “COVID-19” and “disability,” were published in English, and specifically examined how COVID-19 impacted the daily lives of PWD. Exclusion criteria included: disability as a symptom or result of COVID-19, the health outcomes when PWD acquired COVID-19, disability leave for someone who is sick and the risk of acquiring the disease for PWD. 74 articles met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed via data charting. Charting began with existing barriers and facilitators identified by the World Health Organization and new barriers and facilitators, that emerged from the texts were added during this process.ResultsThe barriers that emerged included: access to information, ease of communication, financial impacts, mental health impacts, access to essential services, physical safety, educational challenges, and changes to care and rehabilitation. Significant facilitators included: changes to care and rehabilitation, new innovations, social and familial support and inclusive policy measures.ConclusionCOVID-19 exacerbated existing challenges in the lives of PWD and raised new quality of life concerns. Findings also demonstrate that policy makers, health care professionals and others continually support PWD in times of crisis.
Highlights
In December 2019, doctors in Wuhan, China identified a cluster of pneumonia cases that were caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-Co-V2 (1)
While it is important to address the health outcomes for COVID-19 cases, as well as the risk of acquiring the disease for people with disabilities (PWD), the focus of this review is to examine how pandemic responses have affected the daily lives of PWD
While some studies have reported findings on how the daily lives of PWD have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (11, 12), to our knowledge, no review has been published that has compiled the aforementioned research to identify common experiences of activity restrictions and social participation limitations of PWD during the COVID-19 pandemic. This scoping review intends to fill this gap in the literature by answering the following research question: How have the pandemic responses affected the daily lives of PWD worldwide? The objective of this paper is to identify common inclusivity successes and failures of the COVID-19 pandemic response seen globally
Summary
In December 2019, doctors in Wuhan, China identified a cluster of pneumonia cases that were caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-Co-V2 (1). The WHO had reported nearly 33 million cases, alongside almost one million deaths worldwide, with. The United Nations (UN) definition of disability inclusion is the meaningful participation of people with disabilities (PWD) in all their diversity, the promotion of their rights and the consideration of disability-related perspectives (3). The UN stated that PWD are disadvantaged by the socioeconomic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic (4). This is not surprising, as PWD have regularly experienced a variety of access and inclusivity barriers (5). PWD across all socioeconomic circumstances struggle to receive enough financial compensation, equal job opportunity and inclusive care and rehabilitation (5). The UN has predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated aforementioned existing inequalities, in addition to proposing new challenges to PWD (4)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
