Understanding disabilities from different approaches

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5 Jan 2021

To commemorate December 3, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Movimiento Congruencia held five webinars to better understand the different types of disabilities, from different approaches.

In order to commemorate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (December 3), we organized and held 5 webinars to help us understand each type of disability better, from different approaches. In those webinars, several speakers with disabilities shared with us their life experiences.

Each Thursday for 5 weeks, we held a panel that we live streamed on our Facebook page Movimiento Congruencia, where we gathered:

  • 16 panelists with disabilities: 3 panelists with motor disabilities, 3 panelists with psychosocial disabilities, 3 panelists with hearing impairment, 4 panelists with visual impairment and 3 panelists with intellectual disabilities.
  • 5 representatives of organizations for people with disabilities: Ingenium, Dilo en Señas, Diálogo en la Oscuridad Monterrey, Movimiento Hecho con Capacidad, Effeta and the Social and Educational Integration Program (PISYE) of the Mexican University of Monterrey (UDEM), as well as the members of Movimiento Congruencia, who acted as moderators.
  • 2 Mexican Sign Language interpreters.

In those 5 panels, we asked each panelist to talk about themselves and to answer 3 questions:

  1. Could you share an example of a situation where you felt completely included?
  2. What has been the most difficult aspect of living with a disability?
  3. What has been the biggest challenge you have had to face and how did you manage to overcome it?

We can attest that it was a great awareness-raising and learning experience, and each panel has had an average of 5000 views. Each panel was unique, just as each type of disability and each person with disability is unique. The panels helped us understand that sometimes you are born with a disability and sometimes you acquire it. We also learnt about the different challenges and obstacles that people with disabilities face, the facilitators that can help us reduce or remove those barriers, and the impact that, because of a lack of understanding, attitudinal barriers can have, among many other things.

We encourage you to be a part of this experience by watching the videos in our YouTube channel (in Spanish):