Category Archives: Disability

German court rules disabled people must be protected in Covid triage cases

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Country’s highest court calls for legally binding guidelines if hospitals are forced to choose which patients need treatment

Germany’s highest court has ruled that disabled people must be protected by legally binding guidelines in case hospitals are forced to introduce a triage system as the country braces itself for a new, more infectious wave of coronavirus.

The constitutional court announced its decision on Tuesday, ordering legislators to create a legal framework that would prevent disabled people from being unfairly treated.

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Life in the ward: how do you care for Covid patients in prison?

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‘You can only build a net, it’s never a wall,’ says Dr Michael Novy, who cared for 160 inmates through a flap in a locked door

  • Read more in our series Inside Covid

From prisoners to the homeless and people living with disabilities – these are some of the at-risk communities hidden from public view during the pandemic. Now the health workers working with them share their stories.

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Qld border to reopen 13 December, Palaszczuk says; SA premier advised to close border with NSW over Omicron – As it happened

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Annastacia Palaszczuk brings forward Qld border reopening; Steven Marshall ‘very concerned’ by Omicron as SA records four Covid cases; Perth stripped of Ashes series finale; Victoria records 1,073 new cases and six deaths, NSW records 208 cases, ACT six; Katherine lockdown extended as NT records one case; Australia could be renewables ‘superpower’ but has wasted time, Chris Bowen says.

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A New South Wales government plan to control feral horses in Kosciuszko national park will allow horses to remain in the only known habitat of one of Australia’s most imperilled freshwater fishes and risks pushing the species closer to extinction.

Conservationists say allowing horses to continue to roam around some sections of the park will put vulnerable wildlife and ecosystems at risk.

There are lot of reasons even though they don’t get as sick as adults, they have a pretty strong role in spreading it back to family members and of course that can include parents and also, of greater concern, the grandparents. The older you are, the impacts of getting seriously ill or worse with Covid is greater.

The other reason is just so kids can do what kids are meant to do – go to school, play with their friends, do sport, do exercise, do social things.

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The urinary leash: how the death of public toilets traps and trammels us all

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Britain has lost an estimated 50% of its public toilets in the past 10 years. This is a problem for everyone, and for some it is so acute that they are either dehydrating before going out or not leaving home at all

For about an hour and a half before she finishes work and gets the bus home, Jacqui won’t eat or drink anything. Once, while waiting at the bus stop, and suddenly needing the loo, she had to head to the other end of town; the public toilets nearby had closed. She didn’t make it in time. Jacqui, who has multiple sclerosis, which can affect bladder and bowel function, says: “I go everywhere with a spare pair of knickers and a packet of wipes, but it’s not something you want to do if you can help it.”

Jacqui was diagnosed with MS five years ago, and in that time she has noticed a decline in the number of public toilets. Of the ones that are left, one only takes 20p coins, “and in this increasingly cashless society, you have to make sure you always go out with a 20p”. The other block of loos are “up two flights of stairs or the lift, so it’s not the most suitable access”. If she is out for the day, she will research where the loos are, and it has meant missing out on trips with friends, such as to an outdoor festival, where the loos just weren’t accessible enough. The MS Society has given her a card, which she shows in cafes requesting access to their loos when she’s not a customer, and every person she has flashed it to “has been wonderful”. But, she adds: “You use it as a last resort because you don’t really want to burst into a cafe in front of people and say: ‘Excuse me, I need to wee.’”

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The everyday assault of disabled women: ‘It’s inappropriate sexual touching at least once a month’

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They are almost twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as non-disabled women. Why is so little being done to address this harrowing, pervasive problem?

Amy Kavanagh is as happy as anyone else that the world is opening up – but there is one thing she is not thrilled to be experiencing again. “As much as I’m excited to be getting out and socialising again, it comes at a cost,” she says. Kavanagh is blind and sexual harassment is as frequent in her everyday life as it is disturbing. “I get harassed in public, on the street, in shops, on public transport, in cabs and even in professional environments. Pre-pandemic, I experienced inappropriate sexual touching at least once a month,” she says.

While there has been a renewed focus on women’s safety since the deaths of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, little attention has been paid to the harassment and violence faced by disabled women. Yet women with a disability are almost twice as likely to have experienced sexual assault (5%) as women without a disability (2.8%), according to ONS data for the two years to March 2020. This is not an anomaly; in the previous three years, the figure was 5.7%. In 2021, a survey of more than 1,000 disabled women carried out by the Trades Union Congress found that 68% had experienced sexual harassment at work. The figures constitute a hidden blight on disabled women’s lives.

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Many disabled women are assaulted each year. Forgetting my own rape feels impossible

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After the attack, I became preoccupied with the idea that my case would be questioned because of my disability. But what happened continues to haunt me

I have been a wheelchair user for a number of years, due to a progressive condition. I have been a rape survivor for four. These things are more connected than you might think.

I first met Alex (not his real name) four years ago. We were at a house party. He was drunk and I was sober; this would become a running theme.

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York’s anti-terror measures make centre a ‘no go zone’ for disabled people

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Campaigners say removal of blue badge parking to make way for new defences is in breach of Equality Act

Disability rights campaigners are planning a legal challenge against York council after it voted to ban blue badge parking on key streets in the city centre.

York Accessibility Action (YAA), an organisation founded by disabled York residents and carers, said the city has become a “no go zone” for many disabled people and there was now no suitable parking within 150 metres of the city centre.

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‘Diagnosis is rebirth’: women who found out they were autistic as adults

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Women from around the world describe the life-changing impact of finally receiving a diagnosis

Less than 20 hours after asking women who had received a late diagnosis of autism, we received 139 replies from around the world.

There were women whose lives had been scarred by victimisation, from bullying to rape, because without a diagnosis they did not know they were highly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.

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‘Disgraceful’: Italy’s senate votes down anti-homophobic violence bill

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Bill would have made violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime

Italy’s senate has killed off a bill that would have made violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime.

The 315-member senate voted by 154 to 131 on Wednesday to block the debate on the law, named after the gay centre-left Democratic party (PD) legislator Alessandro Zan and previously approved by the lower house of parliament in the face of months of protests from far-right and Catholic groups.

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Sick, broke and waiting for the disability support pension

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A Senate inquiry has been told Australia’s disability payment rules need to be ‘rewritten’ as people struggle for months, or even years, before receiving support – with some draining their super, relying on charity or accruing thousands of dollars of credit card debt to get by. Many are also forced onto the lower jobseeker payment, with government data showing that 36% of jobseeker recipients are sick or have a disability.

Laura Murphy-Oates speaks to 28-year-old Natasha Thomson, whose two-year battle to access the payment ended up at the top level of the administrative appeal tribunal, and inequality editor Luke Henriques-Gomes, about the barriers to accessing the disability support pension and the push for reform

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Holiday homes for disabled people face closure due to England’s vaccines mandate

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Charity says Covid policy is having ‘devastating consequences’ for sector already in crisis

Some of England’s only holiday homes for disabled people in care are facing closure due to the policy that means all staff must be fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

The charity, Revitalise, said England’s vaccines mandate for care homes was having “devastating consequences” for a sector already in crisis.

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Dennis Billups: he helped lead a long, fiery sit-in – and changed disabled lives

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Blinded by medical intervention as a baby, Billups became one of the leaders of a groundbreaking, world-shaking 1977 protest. He talks about what drives him and why Barack Obama loves his energy

“My mother used to tell us we had to be really good,” says Dennis Billups. “There were always two strikes against us – so you had to hit the third strike out of the park.” The “strikes” were being Black and being blind. And growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s, both were potential sources of open discrimination. “There were times when, even walking in our own neighbourhood, we would get: ‘You’re supposed to stay inside.’ ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ ‘Don’t you have a cane?’” At times this could turn physical. “Some neighbours would turn water on us and stuff like that.” Finding employment was also a challenge. “Being blind, they didn’t have to do too much except say: ‘We’re not going to hire you,’ or: ‘We don’t think you can do this.’ So it was a glass ceiling, more or less. I’m sure with my twin sister there was a lot more, being a woman, African American and blind as well, but she was a hell of a fighter.”

Billups is a fighter, too, albeit one whose principal weapons are determination, congeniality, optimism – and a mellifluous voice. Now in his late 60s, speaking on Zoom from the San Francisco public library, he still radiates an infectious positivity that helped him as a young man when he played a key role in a lesser-known battle for civil rights.

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Father, 86, dies trying to rescue disabled daughter from canal

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Lawrence Casey went into Bude canal in Cornwall after daughter Jessica lost control of mobility scooter

An 86-year-old man has died while attempting to rescue his disabled daughter from a canal.

Lawrence Casey went into Bude canal in north Cornwall to rescue his daughter Jessica after she suddenly lost control of her mobility scooter and plunged into the water.

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Lucy Dawson: the model who got a mystery headache, a misdiagnosis – and a new mission in life

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When she began experiencing head pain as a student, Dawson was diagnosed with a breakdown and sectioned. She actually had encephalitis. Five years on, now paralysed in one leg, she is speaking out for disability rights

Lucy Dawson was skating through life. Everything came so easily to her: she had friends, confidence, academic success. At the age of 20, she was studying criminology at the University of Leicester, determined to join the police. Then, in the summer of 2016, she got a terrible headache that refused to go away.

The headache was to change Dawson’s life. It took almost four months for her to be diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, an acute inflammation of the brain that leaves many people with permanent brain damage and has a mortality rate of about one in 10. She was showing classic symptoms of encephalitis from the off (confusion, personality change, hallucinations and the headaches) which should have been spotted within a couple of days.

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Swimming superstar Ellie Cole on diversity, accessibility and bringing people joy

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The six-time gold medallist is campaigning for WeThe15 – a global human rights movement that will feature at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics

Ellie Cole is a bonafide Australian sporting champion. Yet as other women athletes, or sportspeople of colour, or other minorities can attest, success is no shield sometimes.

Related: Tokyo 2020 Paralympics briefing: two more weeks of glory and despair

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Thomas Quasthoff: ‘From birth, my mum felt guilty. I had to show her I made the best of my life’

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Born disabled due to the effects of Thalidomide, the exuberant star rose to classical music’s pinnacle – then quit at the peak of his powers. Now he’s back – singing jazz

Thomas Quasthoff has been retired from classical music for nearly a decade now. The German bass-baritone was in his early 50s when he made the shock announcement – an age when singers of his type are still in their prime. His elder brother Michael had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010, and that diagnosis and his brother’s subsequent death had left Quasthoff temporarily physically incapable of singing.


“Three days after being told that my brother would not live longer than nine months I lost my voice,” he recalls. “Doctors looked at my throat and said: ‘Everything is fine.’ But my heart was broken, and if the heart is broken ...” he pauses. “The voice is the mirror of the soul.”


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‘Hidden pandemic’: Peruvian children in crisis as carers die

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With 93,000 children in Peru losing a parent to Covid, many face depression, anxiety and poverty

When Covid-19 began shutting down Nilda López’s vital organs, doctors decided that the best chance of saving her and her unborn baby was to put her into a coma.

Six months pregnant, López feared she would not wake up, or that if she did, her baby would not be there.

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How the ‘art of the insane’ inspired the surrealists – and was twisted by the Nazis

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The author of an acclaimed new book tells how Hitler used works by psychiatric patients in his culture war

On a winter’s day in 1898, a stocky young man with a handlebar moustache was hurrying along the banks of a canal in Hamburg, north Germany. Franz Karl Bühler was in a panic, fleeing a gang of mysterious agents who had been tormenting him for months. There was only one way to escape, he thought. He must swim for it. So he plunged into the dark water, close to freezing at this time of year, and struck out for the far side. When he was hauled on to the bank, soaked and shivering, it became clear to passersby that there was something odd about the man. There was no sign of his pursuers. He was confused, perhaps insane. So he was taken to the nearby Friedrichsberg “madhouse”, as it was known then, and taken inside. He would remain in the dubious care of the German psychiatric system for the next 42 years, one of hundreds of thousands of patients who lived near-invisible lives behind the asylum walls.

Bühler’s incarceration disturbed him, but it also marked the beginning of a remarkable story, one in which he played a leading role. It reveals the debt art owes to mental illness, and the way that connection was used to wage history’s most destructive culture war.

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‘Deaf is not a costume’: Marlee Matlin on surviving abuse and casting authentically

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The only deaf actor to win an Academy Award discusses going to rehab, speaking out about William Hurt and starring in deaf drama Coda

When early financial backers of Marlee Matlin’s new film, Coda, expressed their preference for hiring big-name actors to play the roles of two major deaf characters – her onscreen husband and son – she threatened to quit. She told them that deaf actors should play characters written as deaf. “I said: time out. This is not right. It’s not authentic and it’s not going to work. If you go down that route, I’m out, because I don’t want to be part of that effort of faking deaf. I’m glad they listened.”

I can’t imagine anyone not listening to Matlin. Speaking from her home in Los Angeles, she is funny and warm, but there is something intense about her, almost intimidating. She sits straight-backed, her focus sharp. She is not a woman to mince her words – which are translated from American Sign Language (ASL) by her longtime interpreter and producing partner, Jack Jason, who is also on the call from his front room. The pair have been working together since 1985, just before she won the best actress Oscar at 21 for her first film role, playing a young deaf woman in the 1986 drama Children of a Lesser God – beating Sigourney Weaver (who was up for Aliens), Jane Fonda, Kathleen Turner and Sissy Spacek.

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Comic Jamie MacDonald on being creative and blind: ‘It’s triumph with – not over – adversity’

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In new BBC show Blind Ambition, MacDonald and Jamie O’Leary meet artists who have lost their sight – including a rapper, a photographer and a wood turner ‘who still has all his fingers’

I’m a blind standup comedian, currently co-starring in the BBC Two documentary Blind Ambition. As the title suggests, the show is about blindness. But please don’t think this is a violins, tissues at the ready, “oh didn’t they do well” type of documentary. The show creator and Essex wide boy Jamie O’Leary wanted to make a different kind of show about disability.

You’ll know the classic disabled show formula: person has a dark phase then overcomes their disability and achieves something wonderful. In this paradigm the disability is a hurdle that needs to be jumped over. Or, if there are mobility issues at play, an obstacle to get around. In the Blind Ambition paradigm, blindness – a disability readers of the New York Times voted the worst thing a person could have in the world (which is bollocks as blind people can’t read the flipping New York Times so couldn’t vote) – is positive.

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