In recent decades, there has been a change in the perception of the rights of people with intellectual disabilities and in the orientation of public policies towards the defense of the rights of this group (Glicksman et al., 2017; Navas et al., 2012). The care model has also changed, acquiring a more social perspective (Pallisera, 2017; Victoria, 2013). To a large extent, the causes that originate the disability are social and place the emphasis on the contribution that these people can make to society, from the value grant to inclusion and respect for diversity. It is related to values such as human dignity (Ward and Stewart, 2008, Flores, 2010), personal freedom and equality (Baylies, 2010), which support the elimination of barriers and favor social inclusion based on the principles of autonomy personal, non-discrimination, universal accessibility, environment normalization, etc. The society limits that the person with disabilities can enjoy their life project in equal opportunities that the other citizens (Victoria, 2013, Šiška et al., 2018). Etxeberria (2011) also defends that psychic barriers are decisive because they are linked to prejudices that suppose the non-recognition of dignity. Therefore, the rights of persons with disabilities have become one of the major concerns at the international level (Memari & Hafizi, 2015; Browne & Millar, 2016). This concern leads to governments to adopt a moral and political commitment and reflect it, over the years, in different declarations, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enacted in 1948 and the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UN, 2006).

Despite of this, fundamental rights continue to be contravened in very different contexts in which the person develops his/her family, cultural, educational and work life (Verdugo and Navas, 2017). Thus, Perlin (2013) asks to the Member States of the United Nations to elaborate policies and enact programs to safeguard and advance in these rights. Frequently, they are denied to the opportunity of being protagonists of their own lives and have personal projects according to their own interests and preferences, as well as being able to lead an independent life due to, among other reasons, being considered as eternal children and therefore, unable to make sound decisions (Ward and Stewart, 2008).

In fact, the level of self-determination acquired by the person recognizes him / her as a full member of society (Browne & Millar, 2016, McCausland et al., 2018). All people, without distinction, must be able to practice and make their own decisions and communicate them to others in order to achieve the basic human right of autonomy (Shogren, K. et al., 2017, Werner, 2017). In this way, the right to have an independent life should be treated as a human right (Houston, 2004), since the enjoyment of rights has a valuable influence on the quality of life (Arellano and Peralta, 2013).

As a result, the aim of this study is to identify everyday situations where the rights of these people are respected or infringed and set objectives to determine if variables such as age or educational level influence in the violation of rights, how overprotection behaviors are conceived by family members and professionals, establishing differences between men and women regarding to skills valuation, self-determination or social inclusion through the implementation of a questionnaire addressed to professionals who work in this sector. In addition, hypotheses are formulated in relation to the variables age, level of studies, contact and gender.

This study belongs to the quantitative research approach and is developed through a descriptive design. The people who have participated in this study are professionals who work in the field of intellectual disabilities. A total of 182 people participated, 52 are men and 130 women. In relation to age, the half of the professionals who have participated in the study are between 31 and 40 years. Regarding the educational level, the professionals who have a diploma degree are most noticeable. An important number of the responses come from professionals who work in occupational centers (20.9%), professionals working in special education centers, professionals that are common to all the services of an entity (such as management, administration staff, transport or cleaning staff, etc.) and other services or centers, with 13.2%. Regarding the job position, technicians and psychologists occupy a higher percentage of responses, with 18.1% and 13.2% respectively. For data collection, a specifically designed questionnaire for this research was used. It is composed by 30 questions divided into six sections: the first, it refers to sociodemographic data and the rest of the questions are organized in five dimensions, such as (Dignity and Respect, Value of the Person, Supports, Freedom and Social Inclusion). For each item, the professionals had to indicate their perception or their opinion by using a format of closed answers, in which they had to select the frequency that the proposed rights are violated (never, sometimes, frequently or always). Content validity was obtained through a consultation with scholars in the field, about the adequacy, level of understanding and clarity of each dimension and every proposed item. Every scholar was informed by email, with the link to access it, requesting the return of their punctuations by the same means through the application of Google Drive form. All the answers and suggestions were processed, analyzed and considered for the construction of the final version of the questionnaire.

Based on the results and hypotheses presented, the following conclusions are presented: Age is not presented as a factor that influences respect for rights, but it can be a variable that interferes with attitude towards these people, as shown García and Hernández (2011), where younger subjects show attitudes more positive. The right to privacy is violated more frequently according to the opinion of the professionals and also of the persons with disabilities themselves. This result is similar to the work carried out by Gómez et al. (2011). On the other hand, the population with higher education considers that society respects the rights of these people in the same way as does it with lower level studies. Similar results have been found in the research conducted by Macías (2016) where the correlation between attitudes and having previous studies was studied. Likewise, it is found that the family context is the main socializing agent for the life of people with intellectual disabilities. However, in many cases, it reinforces overprotective behaviors towards them (Díaz et al., 2014). Likewise, it is considered that social-labor inclusion helps to open the way and to eliminate erroneous beliefs. Thus, the study conducted by Pegalajar and Xandri (2015) indicates that the access to a job favors the improvement of the quality of life. It is also established that the reason for contacting (family or work areas) does not influence the consideration of self-determination. Although works such as the one carried out by Zalueta and Peralta (2008) confirms that a very low percentage of families consider that their children have enough or a lot of capacity to make decisions or make choices by their own.

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