NADS E-Newsletter - 16/06/09

NADS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING REMINDER

We have received a good response to the NADS AGM notice (which will take place on Thursday 25th June 2009 at West Ham Utd Football Club) and places are still available. 

If you wish to attend, we would be grateful if you could complete and return the AGM RSVP and Access Needs document (downloadable here) to confirm your attendance and to enable us to order sufficient refreshments for all members. Tea and coffee will be served from 1pm.

If you need any further information or help before or on the day, please do contact NADS at info@nads.org.uk or by calling the NADS helpline on 0845 230 6237.

See London through the eyes of disabled people

Scope's Time to Get Equal Week kicked off with a blitz on the capital. Masses of blue-shirted Scope staff and volunteers handed out pledges in support of disabled people’s equality and left bright blue tags both to congratulate places that were easily accessible and highlight areas that continued to put up unfair barriers to disabled people.

They have produced a great video which shows, in just 2 minutes, a fast-paced glimpse of what it's like for wheelchair users to travel around London and the many obstacles they often encounter. The Time to Get Equal Week 2009 film is ready to view at www.youtube.com/user/scope4equality.

Scope have also recently published research that shows half of British society see disabled people in a negative way - for more information, click here.

The report, Promoting Safety and Security of Disabled People, concludes that not only are conviction rates for crimes against disabled people low but that recorded incidents do not reflect the true scale of the problem because individuals are often fearful of reporting abuse or attacks. Many are concerned that health and criminal justice professionals will not respond, it concludes.

Disabled people are four times more likely to be a victim of crime, the report says, with people with a learning disability or a mental illness at greatest risk of becoming a victim. Harassment can be serious enough to force people to move home.

For more information, click here.

Katrina in Kazakhstan

Englandfan and NADS roving reporter, Katrina Hammond, reports back on her recent trip to the Almaty Central Stadium, to see England v Kazakhstan.

To read her report, click here

Fans supporting fans!

On September 22nd 2009, Sheffield Wednesday legends David Hirst and Chris Waddle will be joined by former Newcastle United star John Beresford and a host of Sheffield Wednesday fans (and Wednesdayite directors) for a coast-to-coast cycle ride in order to raise funds for the Sheffield Wednesday Community Programme Charity (Sheffield Owls Disabled Association) to improve facilities at Hillsborough for disabled supporters. To read more and/or donate, click here. 

This is what the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters Trust says: 'WEDNESDAYITE will continue to champion the cause for all SWFC fans to be able to attend home matches, presenting ideas and initiatives to the club....We will continue to play an active part in the Owls Against Racism (OAR) Steering Group and provide practical support, wherever possible, to the aims of Sheffield Owls Disabled Association (SODA).'

Good luck to all at WEDNESDAYITEs, we appluad your commitment to ensuring that football is truly accessible to everyone.

Wednesdayites are not alone, most recently Southport FC Supporters' Trust ("Trust in Yellow") raised £10,000 for improvements to the club's disabled facilities.

If your club or trust is currently raising money to improve facilities for disabled supporters, please drop us a and we'll be very pleased to publish a piece in our next enewsletter.

National Talking Newspapers and Magazines produces more than 200 popular newspaper and magazine titles in audio on CD, tape, DAISY CD and via MP3 download, and digital full-text format by email, web or CD-ROM, for visually impaired and print disabled people. For more information, click here.

Talking Nerwspapers also have a commercial arm called SoundTalking who are specialists in transcribing the written word into alternative formats for those who have difficulty reading printed material using techniques to really engage the end user. Alternative formats can include audio, Braille and large print. Translation services are also available to help get your message across to non English speaking members of our community.

To learn more, or to request your free publications, click here to visit the Soundtalking website.

Can you imagine being a teenager, living a normal healthy life and perhaps with a promising career in football, athletics or anything else for that matter, just around the corner and then being told by your doctor that you have cancer, NO? Neither can Paul Smith, so this is why he challenged himself to do 15 laps around the outside of the Emirates Stadium in his NHS wheelchair. One lap of the stadium for someone in a wheelchair is a great achievement, 15 laps is a monumental task.

Paul has a brain injury and physical disabilities, pressure in his head 24/7 and in continual pain with his physical injuries which he sustained in an RTA in 1991. However Paul has always insisted that there are millions of people in this world far less privileged than he is and has never complained about his own problems.

We were delighted to hear that Paul completed the 15 laps in 1 hour 18 minutes in his manual NHS standard wheelchair, 15 laps is equivalent to 9.6 km / 5.9 miles.

For more information about this, click here.

Inclusive Fitness Week

Inclusive Fitness Week is a national annual awareness week, developed by the Inclusive Fitness Initiative (IFI), bringing together IFI Accredited Facilities and those working towards accreditation, to focus on introducing disabled and non-disabled people to local leisure and physical activity opportunities.

For more details, click here.

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NADS, PO Box 2909, Reading, RG1 9LD / 0845 230 6237 / info@nads.org.uk