ARU Final Report

24 Young people with disabilities’ experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic them greatly. Her contact with them over the computer has been fine and facilitated well by the hospital. I have fallen out with a friend due to how selfish people have been and breaking Covid rules. I have had good and bad experiences with contact with people. Not really. I used to see my friends outside mainly, so I have lost touch with a lot of them. I have still seen my mum. However, technology and online platforms have enabled many of these young people to stay in touch with friends and loved ones, as well as engaging with education: I text my brother all the time to wind him up because it’s my job as his little brother that helps me through the day. I use skype to talk to my family and friends, text, call I’m from that generation, the cool generation! I did, I texted two friends not much. I did portal video calls with family, and a WhatsApp video call with my school friend. I did online lessons at school. I did some video calls with XXX on the Tablet they loaned me. If my Mam did not prompt me and help me to use the gadgets I would not have done it at all. I don’t like to sit for a long time on the family portal. Facebook / mobile phone / Zoom meetings / some face-to-face contact with family and at college. Recently received a laptop from college provision to complete online learning from home. As mentioned above circumstances of lockdown and family living across the country has stopped me seeing them but I have been able to stay in contact, I haveWi-Fi at home and use technology to stay in touch. Shakespeare, Ndagire and Seketi (2021) note the positive developments around internet access associated with the pandemic for people with disabilities. They report that these developments have enabled people with disabilities to participate in society as education, shopping, leisure activities and other forms of social communication moved online. However, in our study it is noted that some young people needed support either in terms of technology provision or prompting to use technology before they were able to benefit from contacting family and friends and interacting in society in this way.