StudyAble

Education is a fundamental human right not limited to just a group of people. Because of this, we believe that everyone should be able to get proper education, we have noticed based on research done by several organizations that our current education system doesn’t have great support for children with disabilities, and therefore, a lot of these children can’t/don’t have access to proper education to fit their special needs. We strive to create an education system which also caters towards those with disabilities, and that's where we come in.

This problem is a big problem because the disabled children have limited access to education. According to a new UNICEF report on the 10th of November 2021, there are 240 million children with disabilities globally. Based on that, 24% are less likely to receive early simulation and responsive care, 42% are less likely to to have foundational reading and numeracy skills, 25% are more likely to be wasted and 34% more likely to be stunted, 53% more likely to have symptoms of acute respiratory infection, 49% more likely to have never attended school, 47% are likely to be out of primary school, 33% are likely to be out of lower-secondary school and 27% are likely to be out of upper secondary school, 51% are most likely to feel unhappy, 41% are most likely to feel discriminated against, and 32% more likely to experience severe corporal punishment. 

Furthermore, based on UNICEF’s data in 2020, in our country, Indonesia,  0.8% or around 460 thousand children are disabled, with nearly 30% of these children having never set foot in a school. Other than that, children with disabilities are also more likely to drop out than children without disabilities, and only 26% of the disabled children are able to complete upper secondary education successfully. This means that most children with disabilities are underserved in terms of formal education.

There are several factors contributing to the problem that we can identify:

• There is a lack of infrastructure to facilitate students with disabilities in Indonesia. Based on statistics done by the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, dan Teknologi Republik Indonesia) regarding special education in Indonesia in the year 2018, there is a great disparity between the number of facilities for special education in provinces in Java and provinces outside Java; in 2018, there were an average of around 215 special schools per province in the island of Java, while only 33 special schools per province outside. Furthermore from 2016-2018, there had been stagnant development in the total of special education schools (both private and public) in provinces outside Java compared to provinces in Java. This is seen as the highest development was experienced in the island of Java was in East Java with 64 new special schools established in the span of the period, whilst outside of the island of Java was in Aceh, Sumatra with only 20 new special schools established.
• There is a lack of efficiency in educating students with disabilities in Indonesia. According to data by UNICEF in 2020, the rate of completion of children with disabilities in primary school is at 54%, compared to children without at 95%. This is the same with junior secondary school and senior secondary school, where children with disabilities have a completion rate of 37% and 26%, respectively, whilst children without disabilities have a rate of 85% and 62%. In addition, in a report published from Monash University by authors: Lisa Cameron and Diana Contreras Suarez, in 2017, it states that "The average years of education of a person without a disability is 6.5 years. However, for someone with a moderate disability it is 4.4 years, and for someone with a severe disability it is on average only 2.8 years."
• Some students with disabilities can't afford to attend a formal school setting. From the same source from UNICEF in 2020 as mentioned previously, it also states that 1 out of 2 children with disabilities come from 40% of poorest households.

Sources:

• https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/nearly-240-million-children-disabilities-around-world-unicefs-most-comprehensive# 

• http://publikasi.data.kemdikbud.go.id/uploadDir/isi_912870BD-6D0C-4AE9-88C1-1796A884026C_.pdf 

• https://www.unicef.org/indonesia/documents/children-disabilites-and-education 

• https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1107138/Disability-in-Indonesia.pdf 

Our solution is to make an application to help provide education for children with disabilities that we will offer to already-existing institutions such as public or private schools, in hopes that they reserve some of the accommodations to educate children with disabilities. We will also offer our application to parents of children with disabilities who might be previously unable to enroll their children in formal education settings. In addition, we believe that education is a basic human right, thus we will provide our services with minimal to no cost. The revenue we receive from this application will be used to keep our program sustainable and in no way, taken for profit.

Our solution will be available to all children between 5-18 years old with disabilities. When students first login into our application, they will need to complete a questionnaire together with a legal guardian. The questionnaire's purpose would be to ask question regarding their history, disability, and other questions that are essential in determining what approach in education would be best for them. After filling in the questionnaire, they will have a consultation with a child psychologist and a physician so that they can get a diagnosis on the specific disability they have (whether it be physical, mental, or behavioral). This step is not used for any means to gatekeep some from entering our program, rather it would be used to create the best personalized education for the child to cater to their disability. After this process, students would be officially enrolled into our program and begin their learning experience.

Whilst learning with our program, students will study with the help of our application, as well as, through the guidance from educators so that they will receive the best personal educational experience throughout the learning process. Meanwhile, our intuitive application is also well adjusted and designed specifically to make the whole learning experience easier for students. The application serves as an LMS (Learning Management System) that can help to administer students' syllabus, connect students with their educators at all times, and offer disability-friendly features, such as:

• Practices that will be adjusted based on the student’s needs.

Practices are needed because it is a way to do repetitive learning. As we keep repeating the lessons that we have been studying, our brain plasticity will be stronger and as it is stronger, our memorization skill will be much better.

• Speech-to-text & Text-to-speech.

It is a  type of assistive technology that reads digital text aloud which will be included in the audiobook featured in the application and also recognizing as well as translating spoken language into text through computational linguistics.

• Visual Alert System

It is an alerting device which uses a loud tone, flashing lights, or vibration to alert people with hearing loss to various environmental sounds.

• Word prediction

Word prediction is to improve writing fluency for students whose typing is slow and laborious, and also has the potential to increase accuracy by.

• Graphic organizer

It helps the children to have a better understanding in certain lessons by visualizing and constructing ideas, organizing  information, planning what to write, increasing reading comprehension, brainstorming, organizing problems and solutions, comparing and contrasting, organizing ideas and showing cause and effect. 

• Dictionaries

• Interactive whiteboards

It supports inclusive learning environment by offering students many ways to learn information, express ideas, and demonstrate understanding, and it also allow teachers to address different learning styles (auditory, visual, etc)

In summary, this application and program are for the willing specially-abled students, willing parents, teachers, small organizations and schools as a tool for learning and teaching. In Indonesia, specially-abled children have limited access to education. The main purpose of this solution is to make education more accessible for those children because we believe that every child has the right to get proper education. 

Our solution serves specially-abled students who are facing difficulties indulging in education and/or are facing financial difficulties. These specially-abled students aren’t getting the same treatment in our current education system as other normally-abled students. This is because the education system doesn’t/can’t support these specially-abled students because of numerous factors. The solution will help address this problem by providing free education catered towards children with disabilities, so that they can be better educated and provide a financial ease to the needed families. 

Considering our role as fellow students (currently studying in high school), we believe that we are the right people to design and deliver this solution to the target population. We strongly believe that every child in this world wants to get the same equal rights as what other children do. Because of this reason, we strongly understand that the children who are unable to access education will feel the unfairness of the society and feel that the activities that they can do are very limited due to certain barriers, like physical disabilities and mental disabilities. Because of this, we want to seek for equal education and justice, to speak up and to give voice to those who are unable to do so, so that they will be heard and be given freedom to do things that they want to do despite the barriers that they face. We want to give an opportunity for them to get an education like what other children do, so that they will not be left behind and not be forgotten by many other people through our solution. Specially-abled students are lacking representation and their concerns are hardly ever given consideration in political, academic and administrative spheres. To find the solution to this problem, we must try to understand them, we have to try to think like them and place ourselves in their position. As we do that, we will feel empathy. Empathy is very important because it will help us to respond appropriately to the situation. With the empathy that we feel, we can understand better what actions that can benefit their condition and situation, and that is how we frame the problem as well as making and developing the solution. 

We tried to find relevant data and statistics regarding this problem and did some interviews with people who are involved in this problem to know the things that have become problems and challenges for specially-abled children to access education and also the educators. With this problem framing, we decided to build an application that would benefit them and we keep rechecking the solution to ensure that there will be no follow-up problem in using the app. We tried to include certain features that will ease them in learning too.

As fellow students, we want to make a difference by taking actions to provide a solution to the problems encountered by the people and we want to change the world into a better place where everyone gets their rights without being discriminated against. That is why we want to apply to Solve. 

We saw an opportunity in making this difference through Solve as the difference we wanted to make needed a good financial foundation as well as to find and form connections with other organizations who might find mutual benefits in partnering with us, so that more people will be able to obtain more information about our organization and our organization can reach more people. As NGO can only be created under a public trust Act, we do need legal actions to obtain that trust from the public so that the organization can run well. 

Since we are only high school students, we need more resources and mentors so that we are able to run the organization better and can provide better for those who need it. Through Solve’s help, we believe we can get more resources, connections and get legal and financial help.

We believe that our solution is an improved version of the current education system in providing education to children with disabilities because our solution incorporates technologies and certain features to create a more up-to-date system of learning. These technologies not only help students to learn, but also to help administrate and lessen the burden faced by educators and administrators in approaching this problem. Unlike the current education system, our solution also allows widespread use throughout the country, thus not limiting our service due to location. This is specifically done to prevent disparities when serving the community as a whole which can be caused when only a specific area is targeted. 

Not only that, our solution not only faces the problem head-on, but also considers the factors that contribute to this problem as well. We have done an in-depth research and identified some of the main causes to this problem. From that, we have tried our best to counter these causes to make our solution sustainable in handling the problem.

Overall, we believe that our act can shed more light on this topic, and  inspire others to approach this problem. Our solution will also be offered to existing learning institutions so that we can encourage them to contribute in helping us solve this glaring problem; to aid by sharing their resources, whether it be financial, accommodation, or manpower, in assisting our mission. We also hope to show an example to take action; to show that not only the government should take part in opposition to this problem.

Our impact goals for the next year and the next 5 years are to give more highlight to this problem so that more people will have more attention and concern to this problem. We want the government and the people to be able to represent this problem better so that every child can get the freedom to access education. Our goal is also to establish a better curriculum for the underserved children through inclusive education and assisting the children with helpful technology for their study. To get more exposure to people's attention, we have to promote it through internet marketing such as websites and social media. Aside from that, campaigns can be done too to provide better information regarding the problem.

We expect our solution to have an impact on the problem as we have done research into the problem and we have a good grasp in understanding it, as well as have a good idea of how to solve the problem that is education for the specially-abled. We have been intensively researching information and data about specially-abled children in Indonesia for the purpose of helping us understand the current situation so that we are able to give the best possible solution we can towards the problems. We have interviewed parties from education institutions from local schools which specify on the specially-abled students to make sure our research and data that we have gotten are concrete and accurate. The research we have done is used to make a more in depth and detailed solution, for example, from the research we have done about the requirements along with laws of teaching in Indonesia we now know where and how we would find educators for our application. Further research and developments are needed to streamline our solution but the base we have right now seems to be solid enough.

The core technology that powers our solution is software. We would use that technology to make an application which contains all the features necessary to give education to the specially-abled children, but not only that this application serves as a tool for education institutions to teach those specially-abled children better than before as most other education applications are not specified for specially-abled students. This way the application can work as an education platform as well as a tool to teach those specially-abled children.