Glossary of Terms
Disability Awareness Training:
Challenging and altering negative attitudes and beliefs about disability through training and promotional activities.
Vocational Training:
Organised training programmes directly related to preparing people for employment.
Advocacy:
Negotiating with agencies, employers and institutions on behalf of and with people with disabilities, who are experiencing access barriers.
Sheltered Employment:
Long-term work activities carried out by people with disabilities in workshops specifically established for that purpose.
Positive Action:
Proactive action to accomplish the purposes of a program which is designed to increase the employment opportunities of certain groups, which may involve goals, timetables, or specifically outlined steps to be undertaken to assure that objectives are reached.
Reasonable Accommodation:
Adaptation of the job, including adjustment and modification of machinery and equipment and/or modification of the job content, working time and work organisation, and the adaptation of the work environment to provide access to the place of work and to facilitate the employment of individuals with disabilities.
Case Management:
A service that assists individuals in obtaining and co-ordinating community resources such as income assistance, education, housing, medical care, treatment, vocational preparation, and recreation. Can also be defined as the planning, implementation, and monitoring of an individuals’ programme from diagnosis through treatment.
Vocational Rehabilitation:
A planned and orderly series of services relating to the total needs of a person with a disability. The services are designed to assist the person to maximise his/her potential to gain and retain employment.
Pre Vocational Training:
Aims to prepare clients to enter vocational rehabilitation programmes. The programme is not integrated within a vocational training service but is offered as a separate programme.
General Transport System:
Equipment, products and technologies used by people in activities of moving inside and outside buildings, such as motorised and non-motorised vehicles used for the transportation of people over ground, water and air (e.g. buses, cars, vans, other motor-powered vehicles and animal-powered transporters), not adapted or specially designed.
Barriers:
Barriers are factors in a person’s environment that, through their absence or presence, limit functioning and create disability. These include aspects such as a physical environment that is inaccessible, lack of relevant assistive technology, and negative attitudes of people towards people with disability, as well as services, systems and policies that are either non-existent or that hinder the involvement of all people with a health condition in all areas of life.
Communication Systems:
Equipment, products and technologies used by people in activities of sending and receiving information, such as optical and auditory devices, audio recorders and receivers, television and video equipment, telephone devices, sound transmission systems and face-to-face communication devices, not adapted or specially designed.
Availability of Assistive Communicative Devices:
Having available adapted or specially designed equipment, products and technologies that assist people to send and receive information, such as specialised vision devices, electro-optical devices, specialised writing devices, drawing or handwriting devices, signalling systems and special computer software and hardware, cochlear implants, hearing aids, FM auditory trainers, voice prostheses, communication boards, glasses and contact lenses.
Positive and Supportive Attitudes of Immediate Family Members:
Positive general or specific opinions and beliefs of immediate family members about the person or about other matters (e.g. social, political and economic issues) that influences individual behaviour and actions.
Negative and Unsupportive Attitudes of Immediate Family Members:
Negative general or specific opinions and beliefs of immediate family members about the person or about other matters (e.g. social, political and economic issues) that influences individual behaviour and actions.
Positive and Supportive Attitudes of Friends and Acquaintances:
Positive general or specific opinions and beliefs of friends and acquaintances about the person or about other matters (e.g. social, political and economic issues) that influences individual behaviour and actions.