UK equalities watchdog warns move amid virus to focus on online sessions could hamper rapport and access to justice
Remote video trials could disadvantage people with learning disabilities, the equalities watchdog has warned, as courts switch to online hearings during the coronavirus crisis.
An interim report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has highlighed concerns about the impact of conducting cases without defendants being present in court.
Continue reading...Ethiopian paper bag firm employs 18 deaf workers who use sign language to persuade clients to choose greener alternative
What do you say to a business owner who has heard it all before? Answer: Don’t speak, use sign language.
At least that’s the novel approach taken by Teki Paper bags, an Ethiopian enterprise developed by deaf women.
Continue reading...Patrick McLarry sentenced to five years for defrauding scheme of more than £250,000
The former head of a charity has been jailed for five years after he admitted defrauding a pension scheme for workers with disabilities and using the money to buy houses in England and France.
Patrick McLarry took more than £250,000 from the pension scheme of Yateley Industries for the Disabled and used it to buy homes for himself and his wife and pay off a debt for a pub lease.
Continue reading...MPs call for inquiry into case of Errol Graham, 57, who weighed 28.5kg when he was found dead
MPs and campaigners have called for an independent inquiry after it emerged a disabled man with a long history of mental illness starved to death just months after welfare officials stopped his out-of-work and housing benefits.
Errol Graham, a 57-year-old grandfather, and in his younger days a keen amateur footballer, weighed just four and a half stone (28.5kg) when his emaciated body was discovered by bailiffs who had broken down his front door to evict him for non-payment of rent.
Continue reading...Menus in sign language and jobs for the hearing impaired are challenging discrimination against those with disabilities
It’s not just the bright yellow walls that make the Abey Khao cafe in Islamabad’s Mughal Market stand out. The menu is in sign language, as is the English alphabet painted on the walls, along with the signs for “yes”, “no”, and “thank you”. Customers are encouraged to place their orders using sign language.
The Abey Khao - which means “Hey Eat” – cafe is the believed to the only fast food cafe in Pakistan set up and run by deaf people.
Continue reading...Gemma Quinn, who is paralysed, can continue trip across Asia after Emirates finds part of her custom-built chair it lost
A woman who was left stranded in Singapore after part of her wheelchair was lost while travelling with Emirates from Manchester airport can now continue her holiday after the part was found.
Gemma Quinn, 35, who was paralysed from the neck down in a car accident as a child in 1992, booked a 19-day trip across Asia with her two carers at a cost of more than £15,000.
Continue reading...Chinese owned video-sharing site restricted posts by users it identified as disabled, fat or LGBTQ+
TikTok has admitted censoring posts by users it identified as disabled, fat or LGBTQ+ as part of a misguided effort to cut down on bullying on the platform.
According to a report from the German site NetzPolitik.org, the video-sharing site artificially limited the reach of users who it thought would be vulnerable to bullying if their videos reached a wide audience.
Continue reading...About 90,000 people in America have dwarfism. The writer and podcaster Cara Reedy takes us on a journey to reflect on what it means to be a person with dwarfism – and why America's obsession with little people has left lasting damage
Continue reading...Operation could have corrected vision of many ‘overnight’, while 800 million struggle because they lack access to glasses, according to WHO
More than 1 billion people are needlessly losing their sight because of a lack of simple eye care, according to a landmark report on vision by the World Health Organization.
The research has revealed a wide inequality gap for sight and eye conditions. Rates of blindness in low- and middle-income countries are up to eight times higher than in wealthy countries, with people living in rural areas, ethnic minorities, women and older people suffering disproportionately.
Continue reading...French patient’s breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say experts
A French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.
The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough.
Continue reading...Adrian was held in seclusion 99% of the time between 24 September 2012 and 18 June 2018
Disability advocates have expressed outrage at revelations an intellectually disabled man judged unfit to face criminal charges was effectively detained in permanent solitary confinement for six years.
The case of Adrian, whose real name has been suppressed to protect his identity, is contained in a scathing report by the Queensland ombudsman into the state’s forensic disability services system.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Coalition needs to include over 65s and other disadvantaged welfare recipients to hit $600m budget plan
The Morrison government could target thousands of pensioners and other “sensitive” welfare recipients under a proposed expansion of the controversial robodebt scheme needed to achieve a promised $2.1bn in budget savings, according to confidential documents seen by Guardian Australia.
The documents, stamped “PROTECTED CABINET”, show the scheme would fall $600m short of its required budget savings unless it is expanded to hit “sensitive” groups originally quarantined from data matching.
Continue reading...Hand-marked paper ballots are widely seen as most secure, but advocates say voting machines are best for disabled access
Russian attacks on American democracy in 2016, carried out over the internet, have triggered a national debate over the use of technology in the United States’ upcoming 2020 elections.
But some of the best ways to beef up the security of the voting process and fight off future cyber-attacks could have an unintended consequence: limiting access to the vote for people with disabilities.
Continue reading...Government will offer standard interim plans for children who face long delays getting onto the scheme
Disability advocates say the Morrison government’s new plan to reduce lengthy delays in the national disability insurance scheme should only be a stopgap measure.
In a bid to reduce waiting times to 50 days, the new NDIS minister, Stuart Robert, announced on Wednesday the government would offer interim plans for children aged six and under who were expected to face long delays to get onto the scheme.
Continue reading...Promise by Japan that rooms will stay accessible as Paralympics legacy follows Guardian revelation that hotels wanted payment for conversions
The Japanese government has promised that all hotel rooms that are converted to make them accessible for wheelchair visitors to the 2020 Paralympics will now remain accessible as a legacy of the Games.
The pledge comes after the Guardian revealed in April that British Paralympic officials were stunned when hotels near their training camp in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, demanded they pay to make rooms accessible – and then pay again to convert them back afterwards.
One senior figure said the problem had been a “huge headache” for more than 18 months until the authorities in Yokohama, part of the Greater Tokyo metro area, finally agreed to help. What made the issue harder to solve is that it was beyond the remit of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee or government. Rather, it was down to individual hotels – many of which did not see the social or economic benefits of providing more accessible rooms.
However, the Japanese government insists the issue is now “obsolete”. Jun Mitarai, part of the cabinet secretariat that co-ordinates Olympics planning, said: “After the refurbishments, the hotel rooms will not go back to the original state. That is an agreement between the Yokohama city and the hotels. The rooms will be left as a legacy.”
Mitarai said the government was also addressing concerns from the International Paralympics Committee (IPC) about the lack of accessible rooms in Tokyo by introducing new legislation to ensure all new hotels cater more for people with disabilities, with at least 1% of rooms accessible if the building has more than 50 rooms.
Continue reading...From flattened cobbles to threshold ramps, the Dutch city of Breda has much to teach its neighbours
When I arrived at Breda station last month to find out why this Dutch city was recently named the winner of the 2019 Access City award, I did something I have not done while travelling in a long time. Instead of taking a taxi, I independently pushed the two kilometres to the hotel, to see whether lack of access for wheelchair users like me is as big a problem here as it is in most other cities.
Usually, a journey like that would be a nightmare, particularly in older European towns like Breda, a city of just under 200,000 people that was an important centre during the Holy Roman Empire. Medieval city centres and cobble-stoned markets are a recipe for broken castor wheels and painful pressure sores for wheelchair users.
Continue reading...The day started with Scott Morrison talking about a $387bn Labor tax slug and ended with Bill Shorten calling a Peter Dutton jibe ‘disgusting’
Scott Morrison’s ambition to make day two of the election campaign all about a $387bn Labor tax slug has been disrupted by Treasury disavowing the number and Peter Dutton accusing his Labor opponent in Dickson of using her disability “as an excuse’’ for not moving into the electorate.
Morrison hit the hustings on Friday armed with what the government said was new Treasury numbers revealing Labor’s “tax hit on the economy” would be $387bn but, later in the day, the Treasury head Phil Gaetjens confirmed officials had costed Labor measures at the government’s request but had not provided a total, making it clear the calculation was the government’s number.
Continue reading...Prejudice faced by Afghan women with a disability has proved no barrier to its national wheelchair basketball team
Nilofar Bayat played her first game of wheelchair basketball in an open court in the middle of Kabul, surrounded by mainly male onlookers who shouted insults and called her names.
She decided to keep playing anyway.
Continue reading...The likely cost of £2.7bn to the taxpayer due to Chris Grayling’s incompetence will ring hollow to the parents of disabled pupils in Leicestershire and across the country, who have been informed that their council can no longer provide transport to special schools and colleges post-16 due to lack of funds. The implications for these families, who already face substantial additional burdens of care due to cuts in respite and other services, may place another group in the foodbank queue.
Kate Warner
Claybrooke Parva, Leicestershire
• If Donald Trump genuinely believes that Kim Jong-un did not know of the brutal treatment of Otto Warmbier which led to his death (Report, 2 March), has he asked Kim to investigate the matter? And if not, why not?
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
A clinic making artificial limbs in CAR – the country’s only centre of its kind – is changing lives devastated by conflict
Exaucé Bagaza can’t keep his eyes off his feet. A moment ago the five-year-old boy had one foot and now he has two: they are tucked into a pair of white tennis shoes adorned with flecks of green glitter.
Wobbling a little, the child presses his right hip on to his new leg, a prosthesis made of polypropylene. His physiotherapist leans forward, reaching for his hands: “Come here,” he says.
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