Familiarity with State Regulations regarding Access to Information for Persons with Disabilities in Serbia

ABSTRACT

The quality of life of people with disabilities is largely influenced by their access to information. Good communication with state authorities is the key to knowing state regulations regarding this access, proposing their improvement, and monitoring their application in society. By using a convenient sample of 89 persons with disabilities, this study examined the extent to which the participants were familiar with these regulations, and whether this familiarity could be explained in terms of the quality of the participants’ communication with state authorities concerning their access to information, as well as several background variables regarding the participants, including their gender, age, and educational level completed. It was found that the majority of participants were not familiar with these regulations. Path analysis evidenced the positive and significant direct influence of communication quality on familiarity with regulations (0.356, p < 0.01), with the former positively influenced by age (40–49) and educational level completed (upper-secondary) to a significant degree (corresponding regression weights were 0.432, p < 0.01, and 0.171, p < 0.05, respectively). The path model applied could explain 12.7% of the variability of the familiarity in question. Implications for research and practice are included.

KEYWORDS:

• Access to information
• communication
• education
• state authorities
• persons with disabilities
• state regulations
• statistical analyses
• Republic of Serbia

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia; and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia through the institutional funding of the Institute for Educational Research [451-03-68/2020-14/200018] and the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, University of Belgrade [451-03-68/2020-14/200053]