Kazakhstan’s invisible children: Inclusivity and the Future

In Kazakhstan, children with special educational needs and disabilities are kept out of sight and out of mind

For most Kazakh citizens, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) exist in a parallel universe, a non–existent world where “normal” people will never have to tread – or at least don’t think they ever will, even today. A quarter century after the demise of the USSR, many people who were brought up and educated in the Soviet period are still naively convincedthat in Kazakhstan there are no people with either physical or learning disabilities.

You never see these people anywhere. The infrastructure of Kazakhstan’s towns and villages…