As a society, we have a responsibility to provide an inclusive built environment. As part of the need to promote inclusion, there is now a growing trend to place pupils with special educational needs (SEN) into a mainstream school setting. This is often facilitated by providing a specialist SEN resource base located within the mainstream school.…

Classifying disability for children and youth has typically meant describing a diagnosis or developmental lag. The publication of the "International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Child & Youth" version (ICF-CY) marks a global paradigm shift in the conceptualization and classification of childhood disability. Knowledge and…

Playing with toys as a means of environmental engagement has long been considered important in early child development (D. J. Messer, D. Rachford, M. E. McCarthy, & L. J. Yarrow, 1987; M. Wolery, M. G. Werts, & M. Holcombe, 1994). However, children with highly significant disabilities often engage in toy play less frequently than their peers…

Impairments pose a certain degree of difficulty to disabled people, however the impact of the environment is the major cause of disability. Despite the fact that the disabling effect of environmental factors is acknowledged, little research has been done to explore the impact of the environment on varying degrees of disability and different…