Skip to content
Who are persons with disabilities?
All those who need any type of support in the functioning, regardless of whether it is current, periodic or permanent need for support, those are persons with disabilities.
Every type of reduced sensory, motor, mental or biochemical functionality is the situation of disability. It means that persons with disabilities aren’t the only one with visible disability, it also includes persons with invisible disabilities, those are a numerous chronic conditions. Every condition or situation which disable the independent realisation or equality of the person, those are disability situations.
Beside the acute and chronic situations, upon the occurrence of a disability also affect other situations like consequences of trauma or rehabilitations.
The basic values of Academic inclusive association are what make organization the unique and what distinguishes AIA from other organizations for people with disabilities.
The concept of disability recognizes unequal conditions in the society and support to someone for overcoming the barriers on which faces in his/her functioning and social interaction. People created all in the society or they adapted natural resources to themselves. But, in their creating and adapting environment to themselves, people as a creators of the society, for most things didn’t make equal conditions. There are a lot of diversity in the society and concept of the disability recognizes those differences through creating of support which would enable equal conditions for functioning to all individuals in society. Disability doesn’t target on the basis of different personal characteristics of the individuals in society, but predicts an intervention in the society for every person to have equal abilities to actively participate in social activities, and on that way give functioning support to person with disability.
On that view, it creates equal abilities and encourages every person to actively participate in all social activities. Disability is a situation in which persons overcomes various barriers by using some type of support, therefore it means, disability is:
Overcoming of all barriers, starting with architectural and ergonomic to social and psychological.
Adapting of working materials, , conditions for functioning, time schedule and all other type of inaccessibility.
Using of assistive technologies and application of the universal design.
The support of personal assistants and sign language interpreters.
Application of the affirmative measures (affirmative actions for persons with fewer opportunities in the society).
Concept of disability actively contributes to access to inclusive society and bring practical application of the “social” model. The disability concept is in contrast to “medical (expert)” model, as well as “merciful”, “integrative” and other models which doesn’t recognize persons who are in the situation of disability as active actors in the society.
By the EU data, every fifth person faces with some type of barrier in daily functioning, therefore it means that people with disabilities make 20% of total Serbian population. As a persons with disabilities Academic Inclusive association recognizes all those who need a certain type of support in the functioning, be it temporary or permanent need. It means that persons with disabilities aren’t the only one with visible disability, it also includes persons with invisible disability, more precisely persons with a different chronic or genetic diseases, for example Diabetes or Crohn’s disease, persons treated of Cancer, persons with mental disability like a Down syndrome or Bipolar affective disorder, but also persons with anxiety and depression, dyslexia or dysgraphia, and like any other situations.
Academic inclusive association isn’t interested about medical diagnosis or situation of any person, but which type of support person needs, to provide it. The organization is against marking people by the diagnosis and it’s because organization doesn’t intrude on privacy of persons, the only question is about support which is potentially needed.
Academic inclusive association is committed for respecting of the differences and insists on the application of the social model and individualistic access to persons, therefore it means that their activities directs to advocacy of development of the system support services for persons with disabilities. Individualistic access predicts adapted support for all persons who need it, it’s because every individual functions differently despite to a type of disability.
