Ensuring accessibility in social infrastructure is important for promoting inclusivity and accessibility for all individuals, particularly people with disabilities (PWDs). This study aims to investigate the extent to which social infrastructure in a developing country context meets accessibility standards for PWDs.
Quantitative method approach was adopted, gathering data from facility managers and officers as well as institutional heads through surveys. The research focused on public facilities, specifically educational institutions, and healthcare centers, to determine their adherence to the required accessibility criteria. Notably, 42 facilities were used as case studies. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Normality tests (Shapiro–Wilk and Kolmogorov–Smirnov) showed the data were non-normal (p < 0.05), justifying the use of a nonparametric test.
In terms of social infrastructure compliance with disability access criteria, the overall ranking reveals that the most prevalent accessibility elements include lever-type door handles, wide routes and spaces, and low-mounted controls. These were the highest-ranking features across facilities based on the mean scores (MS) obtained. The inferential analysis also revealed that some of the disability access criteria differ significantly from others, based on the test results. Multiple accessibility features showed statistically significant differences between health and education facilities (p < 0.05). The findings revealed that the most significant barriers to compliance with the disability access criteria were the cost of providing disability-friendly facilities/lack of funding, a lack of strong advocacy groups for disability access, and a lack of building code enforcement. Cost was the highest-ranked barrier (MS = 4.45), followed by weak advocacy (MS = 4.29) and limited enforcement (MS = 4.19). Furthermore, the Mann–Whitney U Test demonstrated a significant difference (p < 0.05) between the two facilities in terms of both the cost of providing disability-friendly facilities and the difficulty of constructing disability access.
This research offers context-specific insights into the difficulties PWDs encounter in public facilities in Ghana. It diagnoses compliance using quantitative field data across educational and healthcare facilities, offering recommendations for making social infrastructure more inclusive and accessible. While focused on Ghana, the findings also provide insights relevant to other developing countries facing similar accessibility challenges, contributing to broader discussions on disability inclusion and the improvement of accessibility research frameworks.
