Abstract
This article examines how a group of students with visual disabilities speak about becoming disabled and living with disability in relation to: material entities, practices, and their own expectations regarding the future in the Sultanate of Oman. It draws upon individual interviews among six adults with visual disabilities. The article outlines, from a material semiotics approach, how various forms of modes of ordering enact disability. An interdisciplinary approach, informed by disability studies and science and technology studies, is implemented to interpret: How do students with visual disabilities express the relationships between material entities (such as bodies and technologies) and practices? In what ways are these relationships enacting different modes of ordering disability? What kind of modes of ordering disability are the participants experiencing in their lives? How have they responded to the modes of ordering that they have encountered?
Highlights
In the Sultanate of Oman, information and communication technologies (ICT) and education are highlighted as important areas to be developed to match the lives of people with disabilities
This study examines how a group of students with visual disabilities speak about becoming disabled and living with disability in relation to: material entities, practices, and their own expectations regarding the future in the Sultanate of Oman
The article addresses the following questions: How do students with visual disabilities express the relationships between material entities and practices? In what ways are these relationships enacting different modes of ordering disability? What kind of modes of ordering disability are the participants experiencing in their lives? How have they responded to the modes of ordering that they have encountered?
Summary
In the Sultanate of Oman (hereafter Oman), information and communication technologies (ICT) and education are highlighted as important areas to be developed to match the lives of people with disabilities. The result shows that besides the individual body, societal support, different forms of material entities: books, black boards, technologies (computer, Braille typewriter), the educational practices are an integral part of the modes of ordering disability. This, together with the material entities (such as the individual’s body, technologies, blackboard, books, play dough, etc.) and different forms of practices, impacts students with visual disabilities during the course of their studies as well as when they are out of the university environment. The participants give voice to values such as wishing for independence, acceptance, awareness, inclusion, equal opportunities, and choice They express how these values are related to disability, bodies, societal support, educational practices, and technologies. ( ... ) that they get equal opportunities for education ( ... ) for during ( ... ) during school and higher education ( ... ) well. ( ... ) that they get enough support ( ... ) from the government and from ( ... ) non-governmental organizations. ( ... ) from the people ( ... ) that awareness spreads to all parts of Oman about disability and that people ( ... ) people treat them ( ... ) as equals not as people who are disabled and excluded from certain parts of ( ... ) the society or ( ... ) from ( ... ) taking part in certain activities or ( ... ) like ( ... ) not taken into schools and things like that
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