Latest news with #disabilityAwareness
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Paralympic champion to take centre stage at national awards ceremony
A Paralympic champion will take centre stage at a national awards ceremony. Chris Hunt Skelley MBE, a gold medallist in judo at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, has been announced as the keynote speaker for the 2026 Loo of the Year Awards. Advertisement The event will be held at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull in January. Read more: Co-op thanks customers following cyber attack with special offer Mr Skelley, who was ranked world number one in his sport and most recently claimed bronze at Paris 2024, retired from competitive visually impaired judo earlier this year. He now works as a motivational speaker, judo instructor, and advocate for disability awareness. Becky Wall BEM, chief executive of the Loo of the Year Awards, said: "We are absolutely delighted to welcome Chris Hunt Skelley MBE as the keynote speaker at the Loo of the Year Awards this January. Advertisement "Having Chris join us is not only an incredible honour, but a powerful opportunity to amplify the message at the very heart of our work: that accessibility matters for everyone. "Chris represents the ability to rise above challenges and push for a more inclusive world. "His journey reminds us that the right support, opportunities, and accessible environments can make all the difference, not just in sport, but in everyday life." Now in its 38th year, the Loo of the Year Awards celebrates excellence in public and commercial washroom provision. Entrants—from hotels and pubs to shopping centres and offices—agree to unannounced inspections that assess facilities against 101 criteria, including cleanliness, accessibility, décor, signage, and customer care. Advertisement Mr Skelley will share his personal story at the event, highlighting the vital role accessible washrooms play for people with disabilities. "It's a huge honour to speak at the Loo of the Year Awards," he said. "It means a lot to share my story." Ms Wall said Mr Skelley's involvement will bring a "powerful" message to the awards. She said: "We believe Chris will do more than inspire our audience, he will empower them. "His presence will encourage everyone in the room to think differently, to act boldly, and to consider how their spaces and services can become more inclusive." Advertisement Read more: Paddy McGuinness 'heartbroken' on Father's Day morning as star shares message Inspections for the awards will take place throughout the summer, with entries closing on July 31. Nominees are graded from 'diamond' down to 'bronze,' with the top facilities honoured at the annual ceremony. Nominations for the 2026 Loo of the Year Awards are now open.
CBS News
13 hours ago
- Health
- CBS News
North Texas family raising awareness of muscular dystrophy struggles
With his face focused on the screen, Brandon Hale's fingers moved like lightning as he created masterpieces in Minecraft. "I'm currently building a house," the typically shy 16-year-old said when gently asked. "Took me two years to get good." He is bright and funny, but Brandon's body is slowly betraying him. He was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy at age 5. Family remembers the day everything changed "I can remember the day he got diagnosed," said his older sister, Emily. "I can remember sitting on the stairs while my mom was on the phone with the doctor, and then the air in the room — the air disappeared from the room the second we kind of found out." Duchenne is a severe form of muscular dystrophy caused by the body's inability to produce dystrophin, a protein essential for muscle health. Over time, all muscles — legs, arms, lungs, and heart — deteriorate. CBS News Texas Living in the moment, despite the odds "We just try to take it one day at a time and do the best we can and enjoy every day," said Brandon's mother, Margaret Hale. "Because I know when you think about the big picture — that it's a degenerative disease and it's going to cost him his life at some point." Still, Margaret refuses to lose hope. "But you never know. I mean, you don't have tomorrow necessarily," she said. "So, you've got to make the best of what you've got right now." Father's health adds to family's burden Even "right now" is hard. Brandon's father, Eric Hale, is in a Denton rehab hospital. A few weeks ago, he woke up with a swollen foot. It led to a below-the-knee amputation due to complications from diabetes. "I just want to bring awareness to it — the struggles, the everyday struggles," Eric said. And not just his own, but Brandon's and those of other families navigating this disease. Eric and Margaret both grew up watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA telethon. When it ended in 2014, he said, much of the awareness disappeared—but the disease did not. Financial strain and lack of support "You know, most people probably think we get assistance, and we don't," Eric said. "The only time we've ever gotten help was when he first started taking the steroids. If we had to pay for them every month until we hit our deductible, they'd be almost $5,000 a month." Eric said he speaks for "all the families falling through the cracks of a broken system" — earning too much to qualify for significant assistance, but not enough to meet their son's growing needs. "We've drained our savings. We've drained our retirement," he said. "Just to provide for my kids. And again, it's a struggle every single day. I want — both my kids — but to make his life as comfortable as possible for as long as he's got." A father's love and unspoken fears Eric called his teenage son "my hero." "Both my kids are. But the strength that that little boy has..." His voice quivered. "We haven't talked about it. But I'm smart enough to know that he's done his own research on it. I have no doubt. But we've never had that conversation with him because I can't." He paused, overcome with emotion. Home not built for disability The emotional toll must wait. Each day, the Hales face practical challenges, like a home that isn't accessible. "The doorways are just not wide enough for him to even get through in the wheelchair," Margaret said. "A roll-in shower for him. And then, just maybe widening some of the doorways to help make it easier to get him in and out. Those are the real major things we would want to have done if we could." Family sacrifices to stay together So, day to day, they do the best they can. Margaret, who built a career in education, is now a full-time caregiver and homeschool teacher. She's looking for a part-time, remote job to help support the family. Emily was accepted into Texas Tech but is postponing that dream to stay home and help. "I mean, that's my family," Emily said. "I would do anything for them. So if that means me working the next couple of years of my life, I mean, it's not the end of the world to try to figure out what's next while still being here for them." Focusing on today, not tomorrow Even if "what's next" is simply enduring the "right now." "I don't think about 10 years from now," Eric said. "I think about a month from now, two weeks from now, tomorrow. That's all I can do."
Forbes
4 days ago
- Sport
- Forbes
Sports Access For Children, Weekend Warriors And Veterans
The intersection of accessibility and sports often conjures images of high-speed blade runners at the Paralympics—the elite level of competition. These are the athletes who get featured on television and set records. But for millions of others with disabilities, the issues are more under-the-radar. Amputees who long to go for a casual run—or snowboard, or ski—need affordable prosthetic solutions for lower or upper limbs. Adaptive sports athletes need rehabilitation strategies tailored to their disability and unique injuries. Below are the champions in all of these fields, and more. Courtesy of Angel City Sports A two-time Paralympic gold medalist, Ezra Frech is on a double mission: get Paralympic sports recognized and covered and appreciated in the way that Olympic competitions are; and have Angel City Sports, the adaptive sports organization founded with his father Clayton, create a pipeline of elite Paralympic athletes. Born with a left leg needing to be amputated and missing fingers on his left hand, Frech could become the hometown face of the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympic Games, where he will attempt to be the first athlete in either Paralympic or Olympic history to win gold medals in the 100-meter dash, the long jump and the high jump. Frech's story will be featured in Adaptive: Paris, a documentary series airing on Peacock July 28. "I genuinely feel I was put on this earth to normalize disability," Frech says. "My dreams of going down as one of the greatest Paralympians of all time, one of the greatest athletes of all time, is just a stepping stone to create broader change." Angel City Sports hosts competitions, trains athletes in 30 sports and has conducted hundreds of clinics. "Not everyone's going to go to the Paralympics," Clayton Frech says, 'but once you find your spot, even if it's just fitness and going to the gym, you go live your life." Obtaining quality lower-limb prosthetics is difficult even in developed countries. "In the U.S., up until last year, Medicare and private insurance only paid for those they consider to be 'active' amputees, meaning typically younger individuals," says Sveinn Solvason, president and CEO of Iceland-based Embla Medical, which produces the prosthetics and orthoses (external frames for weak limbs) used by millions worldwide under its Össur brand. In developing countries, the story is even worse, with only a fraction able to obtain proper prosthetics. Embla is attacking that on three fronts: by investing almost $40 million a year in new technology (bionics, sensor-based motion and new materials); by deploying hundreds of engineers on research that could reduce the cost of prosthetics; and by educating insurance/payer systems on the long-term health benefits—and therefore reduced costs—of better mobility and therefore healthier lifestyles. Embla also runs about 200 clinics that custom-assemble prosthetics for people in 11 countries. Traditional prosthetics for amputees are clunky and almost discourage activity, let alone the playing of sports. But fancy blades, the kind you see at the Paralympics, cost thousands of dollars even in less-sophisticated home versions. Eight French college students set out to change that, creating a carbon-fiber blade for the everyday runner (or walker) that uses "end of roll" leftovers from Airbus' aircraft manufacturing. A patented Velcro attachment lets tread be swapped out when it wears down. The work went from a student project to commercial in 2022, with a product that costs 30-50% less than competitors. Next up: feet for skiing and snowboarding, and branching out into the U.S. market. "You have more energy return—it's really the sensation of springing," Hopper cofounder Lou-Emmanuelle Leclercq says. "When some people try our blade, the first thing that they say to us is, 'Oh wow, I just felt the wind on my face. That was something I forgot in my daily life.' " Courtesy of Jill Moore It's called 'the dignity of risk'—a child's need to challenge themselves on a playground even if it means learning the hard way by falling off a jungle gym or tumbling down a slide, skinned knees be damned. But kids in wheelchairs and with other disabilities often can only sit and watch their friends. Landscape Structures builds playgrounds across the U.S. and Canada with universal design so disabled children can use them as readily as anyone else: merry-go-rounds and swings accommodate wheelchairs so all kids can enjoy them together; for low-vision children, contrasting colors and shapes help them see where different activity stations, even dangers, are. 'Playgrounds can be scary but they're important—you want the chance to try,' says Moore, a former Team USA wheelchair racer. 'We have the right to make informed choices and take reasonable risks to learn how to grow and succeed.' Millions of disabled children—and disabled parents—have enjoyed Landscape Structures playgrounds in the past several years alone. Paralympians get the attention, but what about the everyday athlete with a disability who just wants to shoot some hoops or go for a neighborhood jog? Since 1956, Move United has provided nationwide sports opportunities, competitions and education for people with disabilities. With 245 member organizations in 45 states, most of the country's population is within an hour's drive of a Move United facility or competition, and about 125,000 athletes participate annually in 70 sports. "We're about just getting people out of their couch, out of their house and engaged in community," CEO Glenn Merry says, who notes that people with disabilities involved in sports are twice as likely to enter the workforce. The organization also offers free, on-demand virtual adaptive fitness classes and special programs for wounded veterans, which could have unique effects on that community: Merry says that although the formal research is slim, anecdotal evidence suggests that wounded veterans involved in sports take their lives by suicide less often. After decades of lip service at best, NBC has finally figured out how to broadcast the Paralympics as sports, not disabled people playing sports. Wheelchair basketball players crash the boards as ferociously as anyone in the NBA. Powerlifters' neck veins fibrillate. Last year France's blind soccer team won the gold medal in Paris in a shootout, with its home fans going bananas. 'The athleticism, once you really understand what you're watching, it makes you appreciate them as athletes even more,' says Alexa Pritting, who oversees winter and summer Paralympic coverage for NBC. 'The No. 1 thing I've heard from athletes is that their disability is the least interesting thing about them. It's appreciation for the sport and not always the backstory.' Today, NBC hires former Paralympians to serve as color commentators during live events, just like any other sports broadcast, and paralympic coverage (both live television and streaming) has grown from a mere trickle 20 years ago to 1,400 hours across all 22 Paralympic sports in 2024, reaching 15.4 million viewers across all platforms. The 2028 Los Angeles games could be the ultimate coming-out party, introducing fans to a whole new world of sports and encouraging disabled athletes to play, too. Courtesy of Nico Marcolongo Many U.S. service people come home from conflict missing limbs or with other injuries that keep them from playing sports again. Operation Rebound, a program run by the Challenged Athletes Foundation, has provided thousands of veterans (as well as injured first responders) with prosthetics, orthotics and other equipment that insurance and the Veterans Administration do not cover, while also offering coaching, training, competition expenses and other support. 'Sports equipment is considered a luxury,' says Kristine Entwhistle, CEO of the Challenged Athletes Foundation. 'If a running prosthetic is $15,000, a rugby chair is $7,000, these are big-ticket items required for participation that aren't affordable.' Operation Rebound's service to the veterans community is particularly vital, as sports and exercise are known to reduce PTSD symptoms and increase feelings of community. After winning seven Paralympic medals in wheelchair racing from 2000-2008—and winning two Boston Marathons—Blauwet earned her medical degree from Stanford and has become perhaps the nation's leading expert on preventing and rehabbing injuries for all adaptive sports athletes (professional and recreational) to get them back into competition. For example, wheelchair athletes' shoulders take a unique pounding; fractures and other musculoskeletal injuries can require altogether different therapies; and blind athletes must take different concussion tests. 'A shoulder tear for me is like an ACL tear for a soccer player,' says Blauwet, who beyond her posts at Spaulding Rehabilitation and Mass General is also an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. 'And your life is completely disrupted. Like you can't push off to get yourself into bed.' Away from the clinic, Blauwet has spearheaded equal support for elite athletes—none more symbolic than the adding of 'Paralympic' to the 'U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee,' which led to higher medal bonuses and media coverage. For decades one of the most prominent impact-makers in the field of intellectual disability, Special Olympics holds close to 50,000 events per year for four million athletes. But the real mission of the organization goes beyond the positive experiences in competition. "We use the power of sport to ensure that our athletes are more accepted in communities, in the workplace and wherever people operate,' Global CEO Mary Davis says. Special Olympics also educates professionals in a variety of fields, including education, healthcare and software development. "People with intellectual disability are one of the most marginalized populations in the world when it comes to provision of healthcare," mostly due to lack of understanding, she says, while adding that software developers, including those working on AI tools, can have a huge impact on the community: "If developers fail to listen to people with intellectual or developmental disability, that's going to result in about 3% of the population being locked out of this technology. We do not want to be left behind." Courtesy of USOPC The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic committees became one entity in 2019, almost instantly leading to better rewards, training and exposure for elite Paralympic athletes. The USOPC works not only to serve both Olympians and Paralympians and facilitate competitions, but also to encourage venues to become accessible and collegiate competitions to welcome both groups, as USA Track & Field did this year when it absorbed the U.S. Paralympic Track & Field program. The committee made Operation Gold, the monetary bonus for winning a medal, the same for all athletes. It extended Elite Athlete Health Insurance to all. Sometimes the committee must treat athletes differently—a wheelchair basketball or sled hockey game is very different from traditional versions—or health needs may be different from one athlete to the next. "We constantly look at, 'Are we doing this differently for a reason, or are we just doing this differently and they should be integrated?'" CEO Sarah Hirshland says. "Yes, our name is integrated. Yes, our team and the way we talk about team USA is fully integrated. But operationally, there's still work to be done." The Warrior Games, held annually by the U.S. Department of Defense, were founded in 2010. "We were at the height of the wars," says Amanda Miller, who leads the Warrior Games' Army team. "Many service members sustained very severe injuries. They said, we've come a long way in the medical recovery of these service members and saving their lives on the battlefield, but let's do something fun to really showcase their resilience. It really brought to light the impact adaptive sports plays on the healing recovery journey." Prince Harry watched them in 2013 and was inspired to create the Invictus Games, a similar competition which expanded to multiple nations. The Warrior Games return to Colorado Springs in July and will include about 350 athletes, eleven sports and five teams: Army, Navy/Coast Guard, Air Force/Space Force, Marines and Special Forces/Command.
BBC News
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Lincolnshire artist Jason Wilsher-Mills awarded MBE in King's Honours
A Lincolnshire artist has been awarded a MBE in the King's Birthday Honours Wilsher-Mills, from Sleaford, described it as a "wonderful honour".His recent exhibition Are We There Yet? attracted more than 50,000 visitors to the Ferens Art Gallery in Wakefield-born artist has used a wheelchair since he was 11 after suffering damage to his central nervous system from contracting chickenpox. He said it was "one of the highest accolades that I could receive"."As it acknowledges my work as an artist, and the work I do to raise awareness about disability related issues," he on the list include Paul Boucher, director of the Lincolnshire Traveller Initiative, who is awarded an OBE for services to the traveller community in the Hutton, manager of Grimsby pre-school centre Explorosity Education, receives a MBEAlso honoured was Helen Keneally, who received a British Empire Medal (BEM).Ms Keneally, from Scunthorpe, works as a children centre manager and involves families in activities such as community picnics and summer to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Daily Mail
13-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
To Exist as I am by Grace Spence Green: Don't ignore me - and don't pity me, either
To Exist as I am: A Doctor's Notes on Recovery and Radical Acceptance by Grace Spence Green (Wellcome £16.99, 244pp) On October 17, 2018 Grace Spence Green, 22, a fourth-year medical student, was walking through the atrium of Westfield Shopping Centre in east London towards the tube station when a stranger jumped head first from the top-floor balcony and landed on her neck. The fact that she happened to be walking past at that moment meant Grace broke the man's fall and thus saved his life. But his fall broke her spinal cord. She was paralysed for life, from the chest down. The two would never exchange words. She doesn't even mention the man's name in this powerful and excoriating memoir. On the night of the accident, he happened to be in the bay beside hers in A&E, just for one night. Much later, she discovered he was a migrant who'd been high on weed. He was sentenced to four years in jail for grievous bodily harm, released after serving two, and then deported. She doesn't feel bitterness towards 'The Man', as she calls him, or even any emotional connection. All of her anger, and there's a great deal of it, is directed towards us, the general public, for getting things so wrong in what we say to disabled people, and how we treat them. Prepare to be severely chastened – and re-educated. Grace says she doesn't desire our insatiable curiosity, or our pity, yet she invokes both, strongly, in her visceral account of the aftermath of that fateful day. The week in a high-dependency unit 'in a warm, fuzzy, opioid dream'; the 26 metal staples put down the middle of her back by the surgeon Dr Bull; the eeriness of the 'bloodless injury', which nonetheless wrecked her body; the ominous words spoken by the doctors three months later, at the official prognosis and diagnosis meeting: 'It would be good to see things changing over the next few weeks.' But things did not change. Sensation did not come back to her legs or toes. Up to then, part of her still believed that the operation would 'fix' her, and make everything go back to how it was before. Now, 'my seemingly impenetrable bubble of denial had burst'. It would take eight months for the fact that the injury was permanent, and that she would never walk again, to sink fully into her brain. At the Royal National Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Centre in Stanmore, north-west London, Grace was relieved as well as shocked to meet other young people in a similar plight. There was competitiveness among some of the patients. 'Are you walking yet?' she was asked. 'Not yet,' she'd reply. She recalls the bleakness of returning to the Centre after a few days at home over Christmas with her loving family and her steadfast boyfriend Nathan, to whom she would later become engaged. She thought back to the weekend before the accident: she and her friends had sat up all night round a bonfire in a Kentish field, chatting and laughing. 'Now I find I have lost control of every bodily function, in a place I cannot leave.' She was told she'd need to insert a single-use catheter into herself every four hours for the rest of her life. She felt 'waves of hatred' towards the wheelchair at first – until she learned to appreciate it as a tool, just as spectacles are a tool. She now can't stand the expression 'wheelchair-bound'. She bristles when people use the word 'inspirational' to describe her progress – she calls it 'inspiration porn', as if people get some kick from her 'tragic' story. 'I've heard the word so many times that it's lost all meaning.' But it's hard not to see her as an inspiration. She completed her medical studies, became a junior doctor in 2021 and now makes it her business to protect the dignity and autonomy of her patients, in a way that sometimes did not happen to her. She notices that as soon as she takes off her lanyard and stethoscope at the end of the working day, she becomes 'hyper-visible and utterly ignored'. That's the daily status of too many disabled people. She does not like her wheelchair to be pushed or pulled 'in the name of helping'. It undermines her autonomy. She also hates it when people hold the door open for her: 'It can be much easier for me to do it myself, rather than having to duck under an outstretched arm.' We should say to a disabled person, 'You let me know if you need help.' Questions and remarks that annoyed her while she was in hospital were: 'Is there anything that can be done?'; 'Are you getting better?'; and 'It's not permanent, I hope?' So, don't say those. But also, whatever you do, don't say to a disabled person that you don't see them as disabled. ' 'You're not looking at me properly,' I want to say. 'You are missing a huge part of me by trying to ignore this." ' And on no account must you say you pity her. 'When people do that, it feels as if they have forced their way into my world and spat on it.' Nor must you single a disabled person out for notice, even out of kindness. Once, back at medical school, an instructor was on the phone cross that a lesson was starting late. 'And we have a lady in a WHEELCHAIR waiting in the corridor, so it's just unacceptable.' Grace felt 'shaken, to be singled out in a crowd of peers.' Later, the instructor said, 'Sorry – I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to be offensive, I'm sorry, it was just a stressful situation.' Grace didn't 'interrupt her ramble'. She just looked directly into her eye and said, 'OK'. 'Micro-aggression upon microaggression, piling up,' Grace calls all this. For her, it's an uphill battle to defend her happiness, when the assumption is that she's the 'poor brave tragic girl', whose boyfriend was 'a hero' not to desert her. Every October 17, she celebrates her 'alive day'. The fact that her wheelchair is full of scratches and dents is a sign of a life lived to the full. 'I am going to enjoy a life that society has told me is not worthy. That is activism.'
