Sexuality is considered as a basic human right. Sexuality is an important part of defining a person that is why it is important for everyone to have information and guidance about their sexuality. Children with impairments have the same right regardless of their learning style, age, or level of functioning. Just like their nondisabled peers, they have the right to enjoy and take pride in this part of human experience. The focus of this paper is on the impact of reproductive health education on visually impaired students of Akropong School for the Blind in Ghana.
Visually-impaired children are not asexual simply because they are visually impaired. Although some syndromes and conditions may affect sexual development and functioning, most of these children follow typical patterns related to the physical development of sexual traits and sexual drive. Today, the government, health professionals and the society as a whole are realizing that children with impairments have special needs when it comes to reproductive health education. Sometimes it seems that the society believes sexuality is tied to health, beauty, and a mythical physical perfection. Most people buy into these perceptions even though reality and our own experience would tell us otherwise. Most of the time, people consider visually impaired people, especially those with significant development delays are to be completely different from the rest of humanity and thus they are not given equal respect. Much of what average person knows about sexuality comes from informal or incidental learning sources. Blind children do not have access to the same amount or type of information as a sighted child. They often cannot successfully learn about their own sexuality in typical ways because of their sensory impairment. Typical children learn everyday of their lives, simple by observation, about behaviors that may be considered sexual in nature. They watch their parents and peers interact, read books and watch movies and television where they learn about human sexuality and sexual behaviors. By observing the behavior of others and the reactions others have to those behaviors, most children develop rules related to their sexuality. They learn when and where these behaviors are considered appropriate. Feedback of this kind helps them to understand unwritten rules about personal space, touch, smell, personal questions, inviting or rejecting interactions, dating, parenting, public versus private behaviors, etc. Children with visual impairments simply do not have the same ability to access this information and make these same observations. Children with visual impairments frequently miss out feedback from others. When they are given feedback, it is often confusing. A person may tolerate a child’s hand as it moves across a face or an arm, but if it touches the breast or groin area, the person is likely to move away or push away the child’s hands. How does the child know that we consider these areas of the body to be private? To him these areas of the body may be just more of the same thing. The child is also likely to miss facial expression or body language. These are the things that help a typical child know that his behavior is frightening or offensive to others. Many times strangers will show some anxiety in their face or their body may tense if the child moves in to touch or smell them. A sighted person may see this happening and perhaps try to prevent an unwanted interaction. The child, however, has missed the reaction altogether. He or she may nit be aware of the change in the person’s response until that response becomes very strong.
Research Methodology
The researcher will employ both quantitative and qualitative approaches to data gathering. The researcher will make use of a survey and a focus group. A survey gathers data at a particular point in time with the intention of describing the nature of existing conditions can be compared, or determining the relationship that exist between specific events. Survey research according to Hutchinson (2004) can be defined most simply as a means of gathering information, usually through self-report using questionnaires or interviews (p. 285). The attraction of a survey lie in its appeal to generazability or universality within given parameters, its ability to make statements which are supported by large data banks and its ability to establish the degree of confidence which can be placed in a set of findings (Cohen et al., 2000, p. 171). The popularity of survey research is due in large to its utility on countless research situations. Surveys are used for such diverse purposes as needs assessment, program evaluation, attitude measurement, political opinion polling, and policy analysis, as well as for simple descriptions of behaviors, activities, and population characteristics. The scope of surveys can range from large-scale national surveys to smaller surveys confined to a single neighborhood, classroom, or organization. Another strength is its applicability on situations where direct manipulations of variables is either unfeasible to unethical (Hutchinson, 2004, p. 286). Surveys are best suited for descriptive research. Companies undertake surveys to learn about people’s knowledge, beliefs, preferences, and satisfaction, and to measure these magnitudes in the general population (Kotler 2000).
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