واقع استخدامات ذوي الإعاقة البصرية لمواقع التواصل الاجتماعي : دراسة ميدانية مطبقة على معهد عمر بن الخطاب للمكفوفين

Abstract EN

The area of persons with disabilities is of great interest to the Sultanate of Oman due to the importance of this social group and their right to live a normal life that could satisfy their different needs.

This area is characterized by various problems caused by the development of society and its ability to keep pace with the speed of modern technology.

This has prompted the research team to study one of these problems; that is, the use of social media sites by people with visual disabilities.

The study is a descriptive one, based on a survey sampling method.

It was applied to about 34 blind and visually impaired students at the Omar bin Khattab Institute for the Blind, through the questionnaire technique.

Some specialists from the Department of Sociology and Social Work, College of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sultan Qaboos, were also interviewed.

The study reached a number of findings, including: that there are reasons and motivations for the use of social media sites, beside some impacts resulting, and some difficulties encountered when using these sites.

The study presents suggestions on the role, which the social workers could play with people with visual disabilities for an appropriate use of social media sites.

Most important among these suggestions is: the role of educational awareness, which is based on raising the awareness of people with visual disabilities to use appropriate social networking sites by providing them with information and knowledge about these sites.