Abstract

This exploratory study is part of the Resilience Equality Across Disability (READY) Project, which is aimed to establish disaster response guidelines for people with disabilities and seek factors enhancing disability inclusive community resilience Post– COVID-19. This preliminary work focused on the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring the February 2020 experiences of Daegu, which faced a devastating outbreak. A qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with four caregivers of people with disabilities was conducted. Analyses revealed seven categories, including 32 clusters of themes and 123 subthemes. The revealed categories were as follows: “Exclusion from accessing information and self-solutions,” “Collapse of people with disabilities and their families under social distancing,” “Responses and limitations in the private sector while lacking governmental responses during the early period of self-quarantine,” “Barriers to hospitalization of COVID-19 patients,” “Isolation from daily assistance while being hospitalized,” “Experience of the corona darkness and connection among people with disabilities and their caregivers,” and “Infectious disease disaster response policies in coherence with promoting disability rights.” Further, implications and suggestions were made concerning disability-inclusive disaster preparedness and response, learning from the strategies, achievements, and lessons from the community of people with disabilities.