mastodon 4.7.3I am a deaf and disabled cis bi woman living in the UK. I am interested in disability rights practice and law, assistive technology, cats (always cats) and I am fuelled by lots of tea.
My profile picture is a red lizard for no reason other than I like it.
I don't think UKGov should be allowed to require commercial software for the submission of data and information to government.
They should be required to use open standards and allow open source tools. Or provide one.
RE: @kityates@mas.to
Reducing hospitalisations for babies with RSV by 80% due to a maternal vaccination during pregnancy is amazing.
I hope more vaccine trust building can up the rate of vaccination and reduce suffering for babies and their families as well as reducing demand on the NHS.
Ugh, just seen an article about Tony Blair's thinktank (lobbying group) pushing for certain conditions (anxiety, depression, ADHD) to be blanket excluded from Personal Independence Payment (PIP) a not-employment-linked disability benefit to cover extra costs of living while disabled.
It's all promoting this idea PIP is easy to get, doesn't require evidence and is based on condition not specific criteria of "having difficulty with things".
I'm getting tired of Labour kicking disabled folk.
I have seen a few posts recently where volunteers as part of services that offer blind people "sighted assistance" are recording the calls without consent or the blind person's knowledge and sharing them online.
The organisations offering the service don't seem inclined to deal with these massive privacy breaches. They must be traceable if someone cared.
Blind people may be told "that's the price of free support" but that is not OK.
This is why we need to discuss ethics in volunteering.
RE: @WeirdWriter@caneandable.social
I really enjoyed this article about blind audio producers, the very real barriers they face and what success looks like (and how tenuous that is).
The blind networking, blind people supporting other blind people (hopefully sometimes even getting paid for that deep expertise), the affordability or not of some solutions and suboptimal least-worst solutions used sometimes. Where sighted people have been flexible and worked to help (or hinder).
I think of many students past and present.
