Browsing by Author "Botha, Michelle"

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    Blindness, rehabilitation and identity: a critical investigation of discourses of rehabilitation in South African non-profit organisations for visually impaired persons
    (2021) Botha, Michelle; Watermeyer, Brian
    This study explores the role of rehabilitation in shaping the subjectivity of blind persons. It considers what engaging with rehabilitation services might communicate to people with visual impairments about their status, their value and their place in the world. Rather than being concerned with the practical aspects of rehabilitation, it explores how rehabilitative practices operate at the symbolic level, and interrogates the meanings about blindness which are produced within relationships where help is given and received. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts, this research traces the interplay between discourse, power and knowledge in rehabilitation services. The research design includes two phases. Through analysing the website copy of eight organisations located across South Africa, Phase One identified discourses employed by organisations as they represent themselves in the public realm. In Phase Two, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight service providers and eighteen service users across four organisations operating in the Western Cape province of South Africa. This phase identified the discourses framing rehabilitative activities and relationships. Visually impaired participants described sight loss as a significant trauma – as dislocation from society and self – revealing that service users might be particularly vulnerable to the shaping influence of rehabilitation. Data analysis found, firstly, that the discourses which frame rehabilitation services position visually impaired service users as passive recipients in relation to the work of service providers and the gifts of the public. This positioning objectifies service users and may signal to them that they are neither valued as stakeholders nor recognised as autonomous adults, while also requiring that they demonstrate gratitude towards service providers and the public. Secondly, rehabilitation is constructed as a linear journey with strictly defined outcomes. This ‘journey discourse' relies on polarised fantasies about blindness involving, on the one hand, dependency, dislocation and struggle and, on the other, independence, integration and coping. Visually impaired service users are required to demonstrate evidence of the latter while the former shadowy figure of pre-intervention blindness must be defended against. This discourse prohibits nuance and expressions of ongoing struggle, underpinning an imperative to cope found within organisations. Amid limiting discursive practices in rehabilitation, a key finding is that visually impaired service users are involved in complex negotiations of self and place. Investigating the discourses which frame and support rehabilitative practices sheds light on investments in promoting particular ways of being for visually impaired people, prompting us to consider what service providers, service users and, indeed, society as a whole might be colluding with. This work offers a novel perspective on blindness rehabilitation in South Africa as it explores an interplay between essential practical interventions found in rehabilitation and the influences on identity which those who experience sight loss undergo as they move into a new life with visual impairment.
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    TEDI 3 Week 1 - Conversations About Our Schooling as Visually Impaired Children
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer, Heidi Lourens, Benedict Leteane and Michelle Botha form a panel to discuss the topics brought up in Week 1 of the Teaching Children with Visual Impairment: Creating Empowering Classrooms MOOC. The members of the panel discuss their experiences of attending schooling in South Africa, both in mainstream education and the special school system. The panel members discuss the ways in which they were socialised and the kinds of anxieties and prejudices revealed in the social aspects of education, as well as the importance of the emotional aspect of care that can be ignored in the technical approach to 'fixing problems' that can become dominant in special needs education. Michelle discusses how she 'performed' sight in order to appease the emotional needs of her sighted teachers and classmates, and how these practices became increasingly maladaptive as she became an adult and she required additional assistance. The panel then discusses what they needed from their educators and the educational environment and members of their community in terms of dialogue and support, and how the educational environment could be improved to better support their learning environment.
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    TEDI 3 Week 2 - Career Education and Self-determination
    (2019-06-01) Botha, Michelle
    In this video, Michelle Botha discusses the relationship between work, independence and security for people with visual disabilities, who in South Africa experience unemployment levels of approximately 97%. She discusses the anxiety that surrounds the search for work for people with disabilities. She discusses the change in legislation that has opened up possibilities for employment and tertiary studies for people with visual impairment. She discusses the importance of early career guidance and development at school which can support learners in making informed subject and career choices, and how specialist organisations can support their self-development and provide useful guidance and support. She discusses the importance of assessing learner's self-determination, and how many job opportunities that were previously seen as inaccessible to people with visual disabilities can in fact be pursued successfully.
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    TEDI 3 Week 2 - Conversations on Empowering the Visually-Impaired Child
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) from a critical and personal point of view. They discuss their experiences of being taught certain skills (such as walking with a cane) and how these educational techniques often did not take into account the emotional needs of the learners. They reflect on the ways in which the teaching of the ECC can appear to be designed to fit people with visual disabilities into the existing societal framework rather than transform society to be more accepting of difference and diversity. Michelle reflects on the ways in which career opportunities are discussed with visually-impaired individuals and how best to have those conversations in a productive way.
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    TEDI 3 Week 2 - Orientation and Mobility and Daily Living Skills
    (2019-12-01) Botha, Michelle; Dzapasi, Golden
    In this video, Michelle Botha and Golden Dzapasi discuss the importance of physical mobility and daily living skills in assisting people with visual disabilities in participating fully in the social, cultural, economic and political life of South Africa. Michelle discusses how visually-impaired people experience difficulties navigating a built environment that is not designed with accessibility in mind, as well as experience difficulties in a communicative culture that is largely visual in nature. Michelle and Golden discuss how education can be adjusted to teach concepts that would be learned incidentally in a more intentional way. They discuss the full range of skills (such as gross and fine motor skills), directional indicators, different surfaces, and other aspects such as traffic and travel that visually-impaired learners will need to grasp in order to function as full members of society. They close by discussing how teachers (and parents and other professionals) can model and encourage the development of these skills at school and at home.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Conversations on the Experience of Accessible and Inaccessible Learning Material
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss their experience of accessible and inaccessible learning materials. Benedict reflects on his experiences as a learner in the special school system, in which there were not sufficient braille books for the number of visually-impaired learners in the classroom, and insufficient tools (such as Perkins braillers). He explained the difficulties of having to rely on partially-sighted learners in the classroom, who had to take on additional responsibilities in the classroom, and the anxieties this could induce in the classroom. Heidi, who had full access to accessible learning materials, discusses the difficulty of submitting assignments which were scoped in inaccessible ways (such as requiring images and photographs) for visually-impaired learners. Michelle discusses the difficulty of advocating for her needs and negotiating for assistance with different teachers, which she had to do herself, and the experience of feeling singled-out as the only child with visual impairments in the classroom. She discusses the experiences of shame of asking for consideration from her teachers and the sense of imposing on their teaching techniques, and how her school experience and grades were very dependent on the willingness of her teachers to accommodate her learning needs. Heidi discusses the lack of accessible leisure reading material in the school library and the lack in general of recreational activities for learners with visual disabilities. The panel closes by discussing the transformative potential of assistive digital technology while being aware of the pitfalls, particularly with the focus on audio at the exclusion of braille.
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    TEDI 3 Week 4 - Closing Conversations on Key Insights for Teachers
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Botha, Michelle; Lourens, Heidi
    In this video, the panel members discuss the most important things or 'learnings' that they would like educators of children with visual disabilities to take away from the TEDI-VI MOOC. They discuss how educators can provide nurture for children with visual disabilities in talking about their future potential and their lives beyond school; the need for collaboration between parents and teachers around the educational situation for their child and the need to avoid confrontation and blaming; the need for educators to listen to the needs and problems expressed by children with visual disabilities, and other improvements that could be made to make education more inclusive.
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    TEDI 3 Week 4 - Conversations on Listening to Children with Visual Impairment
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Botha, Michelle; Lourens, Heidi
    In this video, members of the panel discuss the emotional adjustments they had to go through once they entered the special schooling environment, from learning new skills (such as Braille) to receiving little to no emotional support. They also discussed how they as people with visual disabilities felt that they needed to manage the emotions of their friends and family members, and how their educational and home environments didn't encourage honest emotional conversations of the difficulty of living with visual disability. They also discuss the similarities between the way in which people with disabilities are treated and the segregationist policies that structure South African society in the past and continue to influence South African culture in the 21st century.