Accessibility and Inclusion

Accessibility and Inclusion considerations are a vital part of any shelter response. The following are some fundamental considerations that the Shelter Cluster would like to promote:  

• Promoting and ensuring meaningful participation - Involve persons with disabilities and their representative organization in the development of community participation mechanisms. And more importantly, persons with disabilities and the organization of persons with disabilities (OPDs) participate in all phases of programing (shelter design, implementation monitoring, and evaluation)
• Ensure the barriers are addressed – provide reasonable accommodation in consultation with persons with disabilities, OPDs, and their families to facilitate full inclusion. Ensure assessment reporting tools are translated into multiple formats considering deaf/hard of hearing, blind, difficulty seeing, etc. in consultation with OPDs and organizations working with persons with disabilities review sectoral guidelines and tools to ensure the rights of persons with disabilities,
• Empowerment and capacity development- Provide training to shelter actors and stakeholders on the rights of persons with disabilities and the interactions between disability and gender, age, etc.. on the other hand, build the capacity of OPDs to engage with shelter agencies and LGUs,
• Ensure inclusive Data collection (using Washington group of questions - https://humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/projects/disability-data-in-humanitarian-action  ) and monitoring -  Collect and analyses shelter and settlement data on persons with disabilities; disaggregate the data by sex, age, and disability.