Development practitioners and governments continue to grapple with how best to ensure the participation of socially excluded and marginalised groups in the development of poverty reduction strategy plans and national development programmes. This paper analyses the challenges involved in ensuring that persons with disabilities and their representative organisations are effectively included in such initiatives, using examples from recent practices in Uganda. It concludes by making some tentative recommendations on how such initiatives can be genuinely inclusive. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Ugandan effort to provide AIDS education for the entire population raised questions about how to reach people with disabilities. Based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation with Deaf people in Kampala, this study examined how communication technologies are used in general by Deaf people, and what is specific to communicating about HIV and AIDS. It found that communication technologies, whose purpose is to mediate information, are themselves mediated by social relations. Two contrasts are apparent: between types of technology and types of relationships. The ‘old’ technologies – broadcast and print – often depend on mediation by hearing people, who create the messages and explain audio information to Deaf associates. The ‘new’ digital technologies in the form of smartphones allow Deaf people to communicate directly with one another and facilitate new forms of Deaf sociality, both online and in person. They convey information about AIDS prevention directly, obviating the need to discuss sex with family members of the parental generation, which is culturally sensitive. Smartphones are highly appreciated by Deaf people but the costs of obtaining and using them exclude many.