Institute of Sociology NASU

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with disabilities: Perspectives from people with disabilities

stmm. 2023 (2): 182-192

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/sociology2023.02.182

Full text: http://stmm.in.ua/archive/ukr/2023-2/11.pdf

KIRILL SHARAPOV, PhD in Politics, University of Glasgow; Associate Professor at the School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University (Sighthill Campus, Sighthill Court, Edinburgh, EH11 4BN, the United Kingdom)

k.sharapov@napier.ac.uk

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5781-2953

DAVID ANDERSON, Research Assistant at the School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University (Sighthill Campus, Sighthill Court, Edinburgh, EH11 4BN, the United Kingdom)

D.Anderson3@napier.ac.uk

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0963-9874

OLGA BUROVA, Candidate of Sciences in Sociology, Research Fellow at the Department of Sociopolitical Processes, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (12, Shovkovychna St., Kyiv, 01021); WAPOR National representative for Ukraine (WAPOR University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Political Science, 1019, Oldfather Hall Lincoln, NE 68588-0367, USA)

olga.burova@i-soc.org.ua

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4149-8859

VIKTORIA NAZARENKO, Secretary General of the National Assembly of People with Disabilities of Ukraine (8/5A, Reitarska St., r. 110, Kyiv, 01030)

office-naiu@ukr.net

OLENA POLISHCHUK, Employee at the National Assembly of People with Disabilities of Ukraine (8/5A, Reitarska St., r. 110, Kyiv, 01030)

office-naiu@ukr.net

In this paper, we relied on co-researching with persons with disabilities in Ukraine not as a means of understanding the epidemiology of this disease, or of its impact on human health. We approached COVID-19 and the Ukrainian authorities’ response to the pandemic as proxy, or a magnifying glass, to better understand the everyday life of persons with disabilities in Ukraine, and to explore how things could and should be done differently in the context of public health or other emergencies. The pandemic unsettled and disrupted the meanings of personal space and time for virtually everyone across the world; it unmasked, reinforced and reconfigured existing inequalities, cascading them into further injustices of (im)mobility and access. This is especially true for persons with disabilities. Kennedy-Macfoy uses an analogy in relation to COVID-19. She describes COVID-19 as a ‘looking glass’. Our ‘COVID-19 as a looking glass’ findings presented in both parts of the project report paint a picture of entrenched economic and social deprivations experienced by people with disabilities in Ukraine, patterned by the intersecting and reinforcing inequalities of gender, age, locality, displacement, and socio-economic status, and exacerbated rather than created by the pandemic.

This article is devoted to the second part of the extensive study ‘The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on People with Disabilities in Ukraine’. In this article, the authors elaborate on the methodology of the second phase of the study and the views of people with disabilities on the issues of communication about the COVID pandemic and access to medical care during a pandemic for people with disabilities.

Keywords: COVID-19, disability, internal displacement, human rights, disability organizations, inequality, discrimination, accessibility

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Received 27.04.2023