Our Week Online - 1/6/2019

our week online_asiam ireland's national autism charity and advocacy organisation

Our Week Online – 1/6/2019

Welcome to Our Week Online. This is a bumper edition for the bank holiday – sit back and enjoy.

Last week Ireland held local and European elections and another referendum. However, for blind and visually impaired people, voting was cumbersome, time-consuming, and even risky.

In the UK, an autistic senior analyst has successfully won a discrimination claim after his employer failed to make reasonable adjustments for his disability.

A 34-year-old Deaf woman who has been living in a nursing home for the past two years is suing the HSE. The woman has a physical disability, and uses Irish Sign Language (ISL) to communicate, the only person in the nursing home who has ISL. Her counsel says that despite the best efforts of the staff, the woman’s health and well-being is deteriorating and being placed in a nursing home for older people is inappropriate.

Eight disabled people who love festivals tell the Guardian about their experiences with access (and lack of access), how festival producers and fellow campmates can make the experience easier, and why they keep going back.

Scientists have induced certain autistic traits in mice after faecal transplants. In the study, animals that had faecal transplants from autistic children became less sociable, less vocal and developed repetitive behaviours. The scientists say that the links between autism and the digestive system have been made more concrete.

In Japan, two disabled women who were forcibly sterilised (amongst thousands of other disabled people under a past eugenics law) have been denied damages by a Japanese court.

Meanwhile in the United States, disability advocates say a new rule granting health care providers more powers to deny care that they disagree with could have serious consequences for people with disabilities and illnesses.

With the US presidential race filling up with candidates, Forbes asks if the 2020 candidates be truly inclusive and mindful of disabled Americans, the country’s largest minority group, in their campaigns?

Back in Dublin, the Dublin Inquirer talks to the people behind a new programme launched to help people with disabilities access work and education.

Research increasingly suggests that psychosis occurs in more than 3 in every 100 autistic people, more than three times the frequency in the general population. In Spectrum, two researchers write about their work trying to raise awareness of psychosis in autistic people and give appropriate care and treatment.

Pride festivals will be held across the world this June, honouring the legacy of the Stonewall riots and the LGBTQ+ movement. But many LGBTQ+ disabled people can still get left behind during Pride due to inaccessibility. Here’s how that can change.

In the last few weeks, groundbreaking new research was launched on autistic social dynamics and communication, which found that autistic people find it easier to communicate with other autistic people, even easier than neurotypical people communicating with other neurotypical people. The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism interviews one of the researchers on how the study was conducted, how the results break autism stereotypes, and what happens next.

And one from the archives…

Jess Thom, also known as Touretteshero, writes a personal and emotional blog post about her challenging behaviour as a person with Tourettes Syndrome and a neurodivergent person – the types of challenging behaviour she experiences, the toll it takes on her and on her close friends and family, and learning to accept and manage this part of her.

I feel really sad.
A deep churning sadness.
A very familiar and crushing mix of shame, frustration and exhaustion.

It’s a mix of feelings I can’t remember ever not being present. Experience tells me these feelings won’t last with the intensity I’m feeling them right now, but neither will they ever fully go away.

I’m mostly very happy, but there’s an aspect of myself that I’ve always found hard: hard to experience, hard to think about and hard to explain to others.

by Eleanor Walsh - 2 June, 2019

Last updated by Eleanor Walsh - May 31, 2019

in Accessibility, Advocacy, Arts and Culture, Challenging Behaviour, Communication, Employment, Featured News, Healthcare, Meltdowns, Our Week Online, Socialising

Tags: Accessibility Activism Advocacy Communication Employment Employment Support Health and wellbeing Inclusion Mental Health Our Week Online Pride

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