| Summary: | The general aim of this licentiate thesis was to explore the accessibility to different environments for children with restricted mobility, from the children's own point of view. The environments explored were the home, the school and playgrounds. With Bronfenbrenners theory "the Ecology of Human Development" as the main theoretical frame of reference the ambition was to see how both physical and social accessibility in different environments, could affect children with restricted mobility. The thesis includes four substudies. In study one the purpose was to investigate how children with restricted mobility perceive their home environment. The investigated group who responded to the questionnaire consisted of 82 children. The results showed that the children perceived the accessibility of the physical environment in their homes as relatively good. Problems of accessibility in the physical environment were most obvious in the setting outside the home. As regards the social environment, the results were polarised. One third of the children had peer contacts in the home several times a week, while one third had peer contacts in the home only once a month or less. In study two the purpose was to describe how pupils with restricted mobility themselves perceive their school environment. Ten pupils were interviewed. The results showed that even though the interviewed pupils consider that the indoor school environment was generally satisfactory, it still lead to the pupils being excluded from certain contexts, both teaching and play contexts. Problems with physical accessibility lead to that the pupils lost valuable opportunities for contacts and relations with friends; i.e. shortcomings in the physical environment had social consequences. In study three the purpose was to explore the attitudes to accessibility problems in playgrounds among two groups of key persons: "creators" and "users of playgrounds" in a mediumsized municipality in northern Sweden. The results showed that those who created playgrounds had 1) a ...
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