91Èȱ¬

I often think I'd like to start a new series of posts on this weblog, called Suewatch, detailing all those fascinating - and some of them really are fascinating - cases in which disabled people sue businesses, organisations and employers for so many varied reasons.

Like this latest one, for instance: Robert Neil, a dyslexic man from East Anglia, is because he says he has racked up thousands of pounds worth of bank charges, got himself a bad credit rating and suffered stress because he cannot understand his bank statements. He claims that both Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland are in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 because they did not take into account his difficulties in comprehending written words and figures, nor did they offer him alternative ways in which to access this information. The case is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK.

Mr Neil's suggestion for how banks should serve customers with dyslexia is as follows: "What we need is for people like me to be able to go into banks, say you've got dyslexia, and be taken into a separate room where they can verbally explain to you about loans and bank statements. What you get now is 'read this' and you're handed a leaflet even though they know you're dyslexic and you cannot read". Meanwhile, in response to the case, the Royal Bank of Scotland has pointed out that it offers statements in alternative formats such as audio tapes, large print or Braille, while Barclays has defended itself by saying that it has a dedicated Disability Issues Unit which oversees procedures in all such matters.

But what do you reckon? Has Mr Neil got a case?

A pointer to a potentially interesting television programme coming up this week, though you'll need Sky Digital (if you're in the UK) to see it. , the 24-hour English language news and current affairs channel broadcasting from the Middle East, will be featuring an interview with the Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair, as she visits the region in her role as patron of the disability charity Scope. The interview will be shown as part of , the channel's magazine show for women, and Cherie will be speaking in particular about her support for the United Nations' international convention to improve rights for disabled people and end discrimination against them.

Whatever you think of Cherie Booth - and there's no denying that she has been a controversial figure at times - it could be interesting to hear the views on disability of someone who has such close access to the Prime Minister that she can chat about the topic over the cornflakes and eggy soldiers in the morning.

Everywoman is being shown at various times on Tuesday 1, Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 May (visit the for all the details). The channel itself is available on Sky Digital channel 514, and full details of how to receive it across the rest of Europe can be found .

Crippled Monkey hates it when my working week begins with spying a news story that has me slapping my monkey-ish forehead in exasperation even before I've had a chance to slurp down my first extra strong frothy coffee. But so it was this morning as I read that .

Yes, it seems that the lack of disabled people in the workplace is because employers feel that the "politically correct" language of disability can be a barrier to employing more of us, according to a new survey. Well, you know, we're sorry for being so awkward and stuff. Ahem. But have you considered - oh, I don't know - crazy ideas like getting some equality traning? And if that sounds all too much like hard work, you could even ask those disabled applicants how they would prefer you to refer to their impairment rather than just deciding not to invite them for interview because it's all too much trouble. Crippled Monkey, for instance, prefers to be referred to as, er, "Crippled Monkey". But maybe that's not a good example.

I'm off to pulverise a banana for my lunch.

It's time for that latest bonanza of disability blogging goodness courtesy of the Disability Blog Carnival. This time out it's being hosted over at and the topic for this edition is 'What Box?'. A huge number of entries that we can't possibly tell you all about here, so get on over and discover them for yourself.

Plus, here's a final reminder before the big day itself. Now, you don't need me to tell you that Tuesday 1 May is , do you? No, I didn't think so ...

Paralympic legend (and, let's not forget, former Ouch columnist) Tanni Grey-Thompson reaches the end of her career in May, with a final race in at the Visa Paralympic World Cup in Manchester. Before that, however, 91Èȱ¬ Disability Sport are offering you the chance to to this sporting great, and she'll answer the best ones. Go add your question today.

And talking of Tanni's final appearance on the sporting world stage, the in Manchester is only just around the corner. Apart from the competitive events, the city is also hosting a in Albert Square on Wednesday 9 May. This is an event to find the next generation of Paralympians, and throughout the day schoolchildren will be trying out sports and showcasing existing community sports in Manchester. If you've always wanted to try out some disability sports - this is your chance!

Coming up next Monday 30 April at 9.00pm on Channel 4 is a new Cutting Edge film called . it's a "thought-provoking and heart-warming, observational documentary" following three blind or partially sighted teenage students who all attend the in Hereford. It looks at their journey towards greater independence - as well as how they deal with the issues that affect all people their age, such as sex, love, partying and what they are going to do with their lives after they graduate. So tune in and let us know what you thought of it.

With the production and sale of audio-described DVDs really picking up recently, we thought we might bring you occasional news of some of the latest releases you can get your hands on. Recently hitting the shelves have been Daniel Craig's debut as James Bond in Casino Royale, Oscar-winner Helen Mirren giving an impeccable performance as The Queen herself, the film version of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, and Sacha Baron-Cohen causing havoc Stateside as Borat.

Don't forget that you can check out the full list of around 200 audio-described DVDs via the website - and then order yourself a bucket of popcorn for a good night in.

No, that's not the title of a new sci-fi movie but rather, as we reported on in the blog a few days ago, Professor Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight in a specially-modified plane. The dramatic event took place yesterday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and , which includes video of the Prof obviously loving the experience of a few weightless seconds in air (which he did a record 8 times over, incidentally).

Following the flight, Professor Hawking told assembled journalists that he planned to boldly go where no man had gone before. Oh no, that's not right. He said: "It was amazing. The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!"

Yes, it's true. Could the beardie bloke with the dubious taste in shirts, who presents Channel 4's Deal or No Deal?, be one of us? That's what concerned disabled people up and down the land are asking after the shock news broke that ! "Stunned onlookers" were apparently aghast and appalled as Mr Edmonds sped his £110,000 Aston Martin DB9 into a blue badge bay outside a fitness centre in Bristol, where the great man was due to speak at a charity fundraising event.

Sadly, as I was busy getting all hot under my monkey collar about this, ready to boycott any future afternoons watching Noel talking to the banker and opening 22 red boxes on the telly, I read on and discovered that apparently he had been given permission to park there by the centre's owners, so that he could get in and out of the building quickly without having to mix with members of the general riff-raff - er, I mean, public.

Crippled Monkey says: Boo and hiss to Noel! You would never have dared behave in such a flagrantly disrespectful and disablist manner in your Multi-Coloured Swap Shop days. Sniff. My childhood dreams have been shattered, innit?

Now you may have noticed, if you've been paying attention, that I, Crippled Monkey, am a bit of a hard-nosed cynic. Part of my cynicism is that I don't like all this endless hugging business that people get up to these days - hugging the postman for delivering a parcel, hugging the cab driver for dropping you off at the right address, hugging that person opposite you in the office when they pop out to get you a coffee. It's just too much. Me? I prefer a nice, firm, manly shake of the hand.

So you can imagine my reaction to the report of . The featured four-minute video - accompanied by quite the most sickeningly sentimental song I have ever heard - shows disabled people in wheelchairs sitting in the middle of a bustling Seoul shopping mall, holding signs above their heads appealing for random hugs from passers-by. These hugger muggers (did you see what I did there?), according to the caption at the start of the video, "want to know if a disabled person like me can get others to hug them". And they've decided to do that by, frankly, looking pitiful and smiling watery smiles, whilst waving placards above them.

Now, of course I'm not saying that we, as disabled people, shouldn't get our fair share of hugs and gropes (well, actually, let's leave gropes out of this for the moment), if you like that sort of thing. But doesn't this stunt just display a dreadful lack of self-respect, make us look sad and needy and desperate, and isn't it just trying to pluck at the heartstrings in a way that even the most tragic scenes of a Lassie movie can't manage? Or is that just me?

According to the report, "People who watched the video have posted such comments as 'It left a deep impression on me' or 'Tears fell from my eyes'." Well, it's left a deep impression on me too, and tears were falling from my eyes - though possibly not the kind of tears they were aiming for. I'm now feeling quite nauseous.

Next Thursday 3 May sees elections taking place north of the border in Scotland for council seats and seats in the Holyrood Parliament. 91Èȱ¬ Scotland's Ian Hamilton has conducted a special election webcast featuring a panel of party representatives from across the political spectrum, all of them facing questions from disabled people and disability organisations. You can on the 91Èȱ¬ News website, which points out that with 1 million disabled people listed as residing in Scotland during the last census, if all of them turn out to vote in a week's time they could make a significant impact on the shape of the Scottish Parliament and local authorities.

Time to take another look around the disability blogosphere for cool and interesting posts.

In the latest entry on his site, Professor Stephen Kuusisto writes about being in and coming to a realisation: "I'm not a blind person who is trying to be a sighted person. I'm a blind person. That's a big difference. You could say that it's like the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. I am a blind person who roams about the world and the whims of architects and the painted lines don't mean a thing to me. There's nothing I can do about this fact". Oh, and he once worked into a hospital's morgue by mistake, when he was in fact looking for patient services. Oops.

In , Attila The Mom writes powerfully (and with a great deal of humour) about the perceived stigma of having a child with autism - the 'Little Guy' she refers to in her post "Maybe if we raise awareness, people might stop expecting Little Guy to balance a plate on his nose, and juggle a bunch of turnips while playing Handel's Messiah with his toes on an accordion as he barks like a dog in harmony when they hear the word 'autism'."

Written out of frustration, New York blogger provides a list of thoughts on : "I'm the person who sits at a table in a restaurant and gets more stares than a movie star because of how I eat/drink, and who I'm with. I am the person who doesn't want pity, but gets it anyway because of my disability. I am the person who has to say, 'No thank you, I can do it myself,' and mean it, because people don't seem to take me seriously".

Lastly, don't forget that next Tuesday, 1 May is Day. You are taking part, aren't you?

Got any blogs or particular blog posts that you think the Ouch team ought to know about? If so, drop us a line!

What are you doing on May Day? Let's face it, dancing round a tall pole on the first day of May isn't exactly the most accessible activity for most disabled people, so instead Crippled Monkey would respectfully suggest that you take part in the second annual day.

Last year's first BADD attracted almost 150 posts from across all sorts of blogs, from every corner of the world, and from bloggers both disabled and non-disabled. The 2007 effort is once again being put together by The Goldfish of fame, and it's there that you can find more information, download lovely badges to put on your site to announce your involvement, and get listed as taking part.

After that, all that YOU have to do on Tuesday 1 May - or as near to that date as you can manage - is post something on the subject of Disabilism, Ableism or Disability Discrimination. As The Goldfish says: "You can write on any subject, specific or general, personal, social or political, anything which states an objection to the differential treatment of disabled people".

So sign up now, and get thinking of what you're going to write about. Wouldn't it be great if this year's Blogging Against Disablism could be even bigger than it was in 2006?

(Yes, I know it's a tasteless headline, but it's nothing to do with me! Blame the for that one.)

So it seems that Crippled Monkey's favourite disabled theoretical physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking, is going to take the flight of his life this Thursday, as he "abandons his wheelchair" (it says here) to experience weightlessness in a specially adapted passenger jet. Cool.

What happens is that the plane is put into a steep 8,000ft dive for a few tantalising seconds to enable participants to feel like they're doing a spacewalk in zero gravity - though the downside is that when the plane pulls out of each dive the occupants feel a G-force that is almost double that of noemal gravity.

Professor Hawking is obviously quite excited about the flight, and is quoted as saying that he's grateful that this experience has been made "available to the general public, especially for disabled individuals".

So this has got Crippled Monkey all excited too, because apparently the egghead Prof is getting his flight entirelyfor free, when it normally costs £1,875 for a few brief minutes of floating about a bit. Is this because, of course, he is a top scientist who has studied gravity and black hole all his life? Or, to ask the famous question, is he getting it for nothing because he is disabled? I think we should be told.

And I might write to the Zero Gravity Corporation, c/o of the Kennedy Space Center, to ask for a free flight too. Just in case. After all, there haven't been enough disabled monkeys in space, have there?

As a bit of a gadget freak myself, I confess that I get a little excited when other gadget freaks get excited over 'our' technology - stuff aimed at improving the lives of disabled people. So an 'exoskeleton' robot suit being developed at a university in Japan, which will help some disabled people carry out routine tasks, improve maneuverability and move limbs at will, might not look like something I would be want to be caught trying to lumber around in all day, but I like the fact that CB Tech report on it with thoughts about how such a robot suit could be used to "throw cars and fight injustice", and believe that such days may not be too far away. Maybe that's why they titled their report: .

There seems to be a controvery afoot (sorry, dreadful pun, as you'll come to discover) in the world of disability sport.

South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who runs on a pair of carbon fibre prostbetics, can zip through the 400 metres in just 46.34 seconds, which is only 0.8 seconds outside the country's required Olympic qualifying time. And it's the fact that a place in the 2008 Olympics - rather than the Paralympics - alongside non-disabled athletes is one of Pistorius's stated aims that is causing such debate in athletics circles, plus the fact that there are claims that the runner's ultra hi-tech prosthetics give him an unfair advantage. The latter is something that Pistorius vigorously denies, saying that it's his hours of dedicated training which make all the difference. For the moment, however, we'll just have to wait and see what happens - because the International Association of Athletics Federations is to make its decision about Oscar's Olympic eligibility in the Spring.

You can read more on the sporting controversy surrounding Oscar Pistorius on the 91Èȱ¬ World Service website, which also includes an audio report. And there's a Q&A with the man himself on the site.

But what's your view, Ouch'ers? Should Oscar be allowed to run in the Olympics, or not?

Monkey completely loves the web. No. Monkey completely loves blogs - the blogosphere, if you will. Further, Monkey loves what people write in their personal blogs about disability, especially if they're not disabled-up themselves.

Here's a goodie from this week's collection. It's from a blog called .

You know how disability trainers like to selotape people's eyes shut or wrap bandages round heads to show people what it's like to be blind? It's usually for professional reasons like for those training to be social workers. This guy is just blind curious though - and why not? Oh and do you think blind people see in their dreams?

In he goes into great detail about the sightless challenges he sets himself when walking down the street. Quite brilliant.

"I've often wondered what it's like to be blind." He starts.

"I used to do this every now and then for fun: when I'm walking along a quiet and relatively safe path, I would look ahead to the next obstacle, estimate
its distance from me in terms of number of steps, then close my eyes and walk for slightly less than those number of steps."

He goes into it in a bit more detail then observes:

"Walking with the same stride after step 15 with your eyes closed brings about a different sensation - you don’t know if your direction is slightly off,
you don’t know if you might walk off the pavement, you don’t know if you might step into the drain, you don’t know if you might kiss the tree ..."

Monkey would like to add: You don't know if there's any dog poo on the pavement in front of you. You don't know if there is any street furniture that might further disable you. You don't know that people are staring at your every move and nudging their mates as you walk. And you don't know that HMV has a half price sale this week god damn it ... nor (sob) that you'll ever get a job ... or a partner ... or get taken seriously ... EVER. I hate this world and everyone in it!!

Um, we loved Tinker Tailor's deep thoughts on this. Send us any blog entries you've enjoyed and we, the Ouch team, will laugh privately at them and/or post them for everyone to see. God we love you guys.

According to a press release we received this week, the Red Cross are running first aid courses, specifically for disabled people. You could be forgiven for thinking, ah, how nice, now we will know how to attend to a disabled person, if they bump into something, fall over, have a seizure, or some other disability related calamity occurs rendering them injured and requiring some first aid attention. But no, in a fantastic twist, the lovely folk at Red Cross want to provide disabled people themselves with first aid training.

Apparently there are things we can do!
"For instance, a person with a mobility impairment may be able to assist a casualty who is not breathing by giving chest compressions with their foot, instead of getting on their knees and using their hands. They may also be able to instruct a passer-by in what to do."

The volunteers have been trained up, and courses are happening all over the country between now and 2008. They are particularly interested in working with disability organisations, to tutor their staff to, in turn, teach their disabled members the skills.

If you want to find out more, check out
.

There has been a fair bit of traffic on the blogosphere this week, so we thought, why not treat you to some of it with a blog roundup.

had an inlightening conversation with her doctor this week,
ME: " I don't sleep. Ever"

Primary Care Physician: " Do you know why?"

ME: " I've had insomnia since I was 6. Or 3. I have an IQ of 150. I am, or was, an actor, a chef, and a writer. My parents are both alcoholics, My mom is
bipolar. I have a new boyfriend and he wants to build me a computer. I have ( lists all ailments). I lived in NYC for a decade. I was there during 9-11.
I live really near my parents now. I just turned 30. I had brain surgery. I'm too busy THINKING to actually be SLEEPING."

I'll bet!!

makes a very valid point when she says,
"Don't assume something you see me do (or not do) is because I'm autistic, just because you know that I'm autistic. The reason that I have to move from foot to foot when I stand, for instance, is because my lower legs hurt a lot if I stand on them too long so I have to stay in constant motion when I'm standing
if I don't want to deal with pain. I doubt that's because I'm autistic."

And finally, Seaneen Moloy's

What can we say about this blog other than wow. It's worth reading!

Check back soon for another blog roundup, and if you have, or know of a blog you think should be included, send it in

If you take a look at our public toilets in Britain, you'd be forgiven for thinking there are three sexes: male, female and disabled. If you look at trains in Japan, you'd be forgiven for thinking that all disabled people are 'ladies'.

before 2000, sleazy male train passengers known as 'chikans' were regularly groping their fellow female commuters in the tightly packed carriages of Japan. A solution was found: female only carriages.

These carriages, less packed than the non-specific female carriages, also allowed disabled passengers in.

This week, the Japan Federation of the Blind are to make it more widely known that disabled people are also allowed in these set-side areas.

Visually impaired men in particular, who don't necessarily know they're boarding a female designated carriage, are often challenged by women and told to get out ... though they are entitled to be there.

We think disabled people are allowed in the lady cars because of the extra space ... but it could be because Japanese men also like groping the disabled.

So, disabled men out there, how masculine do you feel right now? Public loos and trains are questioning your gender or even your sexuality? Can you deal with it? Are you still reaching for the Lynx in the mornings or Soft & Gentle?

Does 'the mad genius' really exist? Nick Van Bloss thinks so.

Nick developed Tourettes Syndrome at the age of seven, and is convinced that his illness has played a big part in his success as an award-winning international pianist.

Tonight's Horizon on 91Èȱ¬2 follows Nick as he undertakes a personal journey to see if Tourettes made him the person that he is today. Along the way he meets scientists who believe that genius has a chemical root, a manic writer, a schizophrenic painter, a composer with Parkinson's, and finally, a fellow musician who also has Tourettes.

Horizon: Mad But Glad goes out tonight (3 April) on 91Èȱ¬2 at 9pm, and you can download and watch again for one week only with the Horizon Video Podcast.