Access All: Disability News and Mental Health

Chris Young describes himself as a cuddly and warm person but says that when dissociating due to borderline personality disorder nothing feels real, the world goes “seriously fuzzy” and touching his wife becomes “like handling meat”. He’s walking and talking his way around the UK to raise awareness of the condition. Also in studio are two young stroke survivors who fell in love, and US disability...

It seems that using the acronym LGBT has allowed people to talk more openly about gay community issues more easily. So, if the disabled community replaced the D-word with some letters, what would they be and would it sweep away the worries people have about using that word. First heard in February 2015. With Damon Rose, Kate Monaghan and Lee Kumutat Please tell your friends about us. Like and shar...

Robyn knows a lot about trumpet playing and Jamie watches hours of milling machine videos each night to wind down. They’re both autistic and love talking at length about what they call their “special interests” - that obsessive geekiness often considered a classic autism trait (just Google 'hacker' and 'Asperger' to get the gist). But while obsessing and learning can bring deep knowledge, its inte...

Jennifer Brea has ME, known to many as chronic fatigue syndrome, and is director of the multi-award winning documentary film Unrest. In it, she documents her personal journey by video on a smart phone - including those moments where she finds herself lying flat out on the floor. She and husband Omar spoke to the BBC's Natasha Lipman who also has the condition.

How does America’s Got Talent star Mandy Harvey hit the correct notes and tour successfully with a live band when she can’t hear? Why did a conversation in the radio studio change bipolar comedy songster Chris Smith’s stance on having children? And who were Bristol’s Brave Poor things? The latest BBC Ouch Talk Show is presented by Kate Monaghan and weather presenter Lucy Martin. Produced by Emma T...

The Labour Party has suspended MP Jared O'Mara after he posted misogynistic and homophobic comments online, but who is he? BBC Ouch's Damon Rose met the MP earlier this year after O’Mara unexpectedly knocked former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg off his Sheffield Hallam seat in the general election. The 35-year-old, who was born and bred in Sheffield, has cerebral palsy and, for accessibility re...

Ambulances were white when Damon lost his sight over 30 years ago and Lucy’s mental image of her sister, Alice, hasn’t changed since she went blind in 2013. Having been born blind, Emma has no real interest in what colour represents. The three blind journalists take a light-hearted look at what colour does and doesn’t mean to them with the help of token sighted person Beth. If you have an idea for...

Is Robyn the only autistic person who doesn’t love fidget-spinners? And what's this about Jamie's T-shirt? We gave two autistic people free rein in a studio with a tin full of questions only “neurotypicals” would ask. The result is an entertaining and enlightening chat about stimming, social gatherings and sensory overload. This podcast is one of a series of takeovers, produced by Damon Rose and E...

They're talked about a lot at the moment, but can "sex robots" help disabled people? Also, the disabled teen punk who left home to find an independent life for herself in the less-accessible 80s. And the action movie where sign language is a super-power. Presented by Kate Monaghan and Simon Minty. Subscribe to the Ouch podcast and have our programmes delivered to your device every week. And please...

Vlogger Charles Michael Duke, 22, posts comedy songs and videos about life with cystic fibrosis on YouTube. People with CF shouldn’t meet face to face due to fear of cross-contamination. So they hang out online, where Charles feeds the community with his niche CF references such as having fingers like ET and potent flatulence caused by a low-functioning pancreas. The Southampton-based actor has be...

Being part of the male gay scene can be tricky when you “wobble and spasm like I do” says Robert Softley Gale. The actor with cerebral palsy says there is also a lack of accessibility in "queer" pubs and clubs. But for now Robert has a big enough challenge putting on tights in his new touring stage show Blanche and Butch, where he plays a drag queen. Interview by Emma Tracey. Subscribe to Ouch, sh...

Ria found herself in prison after she set light to her home when she was in it. She had been suffering from psychosis brought on by distress at the death of a friend. While on remand, she worked hard to make herself better. With Beth Rose and Damon Rose Subscribe to Ouch, share it on social media and be sure to review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from so that others who a...

Warning: this programme contains discussion of a sexual nature. Disabled writer and performer Penny Pepper join the team this week. (see Related Links for a transcript) This is a replay of a fascinating interview from early 2016. Pepper talks openly about how she found out about the joys of sex thanks to friends at a hospital boarding school she was at in the 1970s. Though the interview is full of...

The playwright who experiences pain as sounds and pictures, Tourettes Hero Jess Thom on performing Beckett’s play Not I, the comedian with cerebral palsy whose slow speech is part of her act and the man whose poem OCD has 62 million YouTube hits. The sounds and images in The Shape of the Pain represent how playwright Rachel Bagshaw experiences chronic pain so accurately, that watching her own show...

Lost Voice Guy uses an iPad to speak and has become an expert handler of awkward questions as a result. “Can you really not talk?” and “have you ever tried to speak to see what would happen?” are just two questions put to the comedian with cerebral palsy by drunk people after gigs. His many witty comebacks, including pretending he has a side-line as a satellite navigation system, are revealed in t...

Awkward! This week’s podcast, the first of two recorded live in Scotland, is all about a badly timed dislocation, a wheelchair user who stunned a nun by walking and the depressed man who got too good at pretending to like people. BBC Ouch recently took five listeners and two comedians to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where they told awkward tales relating to their disability or mental health diff...

No doctors, no charities, no family members - just a frank conversation between two women with chronic illness, about navigating life when energy is at a premium. Faced with a box of random questions such as “do people think you’re lazy?” researcher Catherine Hale and blogger Natasha Lipman praise left-overs for dinner, extreme flexible working and the online chronic illness community. Ironing, an...

With stories of running away to Skegness aged 14 and the culture-clash of going from a council estate to Cambridge University, it’s fair to say Allan Hennessy stole the show this month. He’s that visually impaired Iraqi refugee whose recent BBC video went viral after he graduated with a first class law degree. Also in the studio is autistic trumpeter Robyn Steward who sparked a lively debate on th...

Comedian John Scott was labelled schizophrenic for five years before he ended up in crisis in hospital and face-to-face with the psychologists who had gone to his show. During their night out the medics had decided the performer they were watching was definitely bipolar. The chance encounter meant the second time they met - in hospital - John was correctly diagnosed and treated. John has experienc...

Mark Neary’s recurring nightmare is that six months after his own death, son Steven who has autism and learning disabilities will end up in a residential unit similar to the one where he was detained in 2010. Later that same year, a human rights court case ruled that Steven’s detention was unlawful. Nowadays he lives independently, with support painstakingly managed by dad, Mark. It's a tough thin...

Dr Hannah Barham-Brown made the news recently after revealing she couldn't afford the fairly modest £2,000 wheelchair she wanted but managed to raise the money through online crowdfunding in just 24 hours. She says what was being offered for free wasn’t fit for purpose. Barham-Brown talks about navigating a busy hospital on wheels and how she is very used to talking about disability because many o...

Meet heavyweight boxer Joe Joyce who was born almost 30 years ago to his mum Marvel Opara, then a teenager with a visual impairment. The mother and son combo from London have done many challenges together but have now gone solo - Joe won silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics and Marvel is about to climb Kilimanjaro. Glaswegian comedian Ray Bradshaw is a child of deaf adults - also known as a CODA. His 2...

Meet Jared O'Mara. He's the MP who knocked former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg off his Sheffield Hallam seat in the recent General Election. It was one of the most talked about scalpings from the early hours of 9 June and O'Mara himself didn't expect to win. [Find a full transcript in the Related Links section below] The 35 year-old was born and bred in Sheffield and has cerebral palsy. A form...

Fewer than 6% of people with a learning disability have a job. Government figures show that disability employment rates are going up but Mencap says that employment in this group is going down. Mencap's CEO Jan Tregelles and employee Vijay Patel, who has a learning disability, came in to tell us how things could be different. Patel loves his work and says it’s unfair that more people with learning...

The podcast this week dives into some of the stats and happenings around disability at the 2017 general election with two interesting guests. [For a transcript, scroll down to the Related Links section on this page] "Deaf people were more engaged than during any other election," says Charlie Swinbourne, editor of popular deaf news blog Limping Chicken. Facebook and other social networks allowed Br...