
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), together with the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA), has organized a two-day online Disability Sensitivity Training to further improve its provision of services to persons with disabilities (PWDs).
The Disability Sensitivity Training held in May was developed to equip the frontliners and professionals in understanding the concepts of disability and to enhance their skills in communicating and assisting PWDs with their specific needs and concerns towards promotion of quality life.
The training aimed to capacitate focal persons and DSWD personnel in frontline service in handling PWDs by increasing their awareness of disability concepts and enhancing their skills in communicating and assisting different types of PWDs.
The training also required participants to create a disability inclusive plan to integrate the concepts learned from the training to the plans of all DSWD offices, bureaus, services, and units.
NCDA Regional Programs Coordinator Randy Calseña and NCDA Planning Officer Jonalyn Lucas served as resource persons during the training.
Among the topics they discussed include the Disability Concepts, description of PWDs based on Philippine laws, types of disabilities, laws concerning PWDs, and ways to address the barriers encountered by PWDs.
One of the highlights of the training was the discussion on providing reasonable accommodation to PWDs.
The United Nations Disability Convention refers to reasonable accommodation as the “necessary and appropriate modifications and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Examples of reasonable accommodation include ensuring physical accessibility in the selection of meeting venues; using simple and easy-to-understand instructions; using captions, sub-titles, and sign language insets in videos; ensuring access formats for information materials; readers for blind persons; and ensuring disability accessibility on websites.
DSWD reminded the public to always respect the preferences for independent mobility of persons with physical disabilities.